>>>OK, let's try another angle. You're first on the beach, so you're out of the water when the others are just coming. They will ask you "kakva je voda" - "..... is the water" - and you will answer "cold", "warm", "wet", "hard" etc. Replace the dots.
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>>If you want to know if the water is warm, ask, "Is the water warm?" If you want to know if it's wet, "Is the water wet?" I'm having a problem discovering what is so difficult about this.
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>Different habits then, dictated by the language. We have similar "you can't get there from here unless you go this way" situations in other places.
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>>>You may get what you didn't ask for if you happen on a wisecrack, but it's generally the property of interest to both sides - in case of a swimmer and the newcomer, temperature of the water; in the case of driver asking about the road ("kakav je drum?") it's how's the road for driving - bumpy, slippery, smooth, rough, curvy...; in case of the weather ("kakvo je vreme?") it's "sunny", "rainy", "cold", "freezing".
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>>I guess I'm just too used to the English language. If I want to know a thing, I ask about that thing. Seems simple to me, but maybe not.
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>Except when you don't know which thing to ask about, you actually want to know, well, what's it like (but not by "it's like a..." comparison). Anyway, they say it's impossible to explain left and right to an extraterrestrial by just voice.
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>>>And it's not anything Serbian specific. I think the word exists in several other languages (apart from the whole Slavic family, I think it exists in Romance languages, there's a proper phrase in German). Also, the phrase "kakav otac, takav sin" (literally, .... father, such son) is equivalent to "like father, like son".
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>>But for some reason, you feel that the 4 words in slavic work better than the 4 words in English?
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>No, the example was just another attempt to explain the usage of the word. I presume we can drop the matter, having got nowhere - if someone as openminded as you can't see a possible use for the word, then, well, it won't exist. I'm just glad I don't have to translate anything anymore, because I'd run into this on the next corner.

Ah, now translation is a whole different issue. I can see where the problems would arise when trying to do a translation. I just couldn't see any problem in simply using the language.