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Radioclare’s tac log 2015 (*jäŋe/*ledús)

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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basica
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 3528 days ago

157 posts - 269 votes 
Studies: Serbian

 
 Message 105 of 292
25 March 2015 at 12:26am | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
Radioclare wrote:

I saw an article on Twitter today about a drive to create new Croatian words for
English expressions working their way into the language. There's a new website called
Bolje je hrvatski which has suggestions for Croatian
translations like "razvojna tvrtka" for "start-up company". I don't know whether there
is a nationalist agenda behind this, but politics aside I much prefer when languages
have their own words for things rather than using English ones. I find it confusing
when seemingly English words crop up in other languages without necessarily having
quite the same meaning or being pronounced the same way as they would be in English
(eg. punk/pank!) :D


I'd say that there's a bit of a nationalist agenda, although it definitely isn't
unique to Croats. See Language
Reform
and Croatian
Linguistic Purism
for a bit of background. I have mixed feelings about the place
of foreign words or loanwords in any language. On one hand, I often get mildly annoyed
when I see fellow native speakers use "je ne sais quoi", "verboten", "sans" or "summa
summarum" for "indescribable"/"something special", "forbidden"/"not allowed",
"without" or "in total". They just rub me the wrong way. On the other hand, terms such
as "realpolitik", "candy", "et cetera", "special" don't engender the same annoyance
even though they too are loanwords or outright foreign terms.


This is the nature of languages though. You look at a lot of languages today and they
have big portions of their vocabulary imported from other languages. A lot of English
vocabulary is based on French or Latin words, but they were imported so long ago we
think of them as English words now without cognizance of their foreignness. For me I'm
glad if there are foreign loan words in use - less for me to learn and easier for me
to hook onto the word even if the meaning is different :)
1 person has voted this message useful



Radioclare
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
timeofftakeoff.com
Joined 4575 days ago

689 posts - 1119 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto
Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian

 
 Message 106 of 292
25 March 2015 at 10:12am | IP Logged 
basica wrote:
I'm learning Serbian at the moment so I'll definitely be keeping an eye out on your log to see how you progress - you said you have been studying for a couple years and are now around a B1 - perhaps my goal of reaching B1 in a year was a little too ambitious now that I think about it... :| I'm curious, what attracted you to Croatian in the first place?


Always nice to find someone else who is interested in learning these languages :)

I wouldn't be discouraged by how long it has taken me to reach B1; I've been learning for three years now, but not very efficiently. I started learning some tourist Croatian for an upcoming trip in 2012, made some progress, let it slip, made some more progress, let it slip etc until I started keeping a log here in 2014 and that inspired me to study more regularly. You can probably achieve a lot more if you are more disciplined and less lazy :)

I never intended to learn Croatian but when I went there for the first time in 2012, I immediately fell in love with the country. Also I had been periodically trying and failing to learn a Slavic language for years but Croatian seemed significantly easier to me than the others I had tried so I was able to make good progress with it straight away. Since then I've developed a wider interest in the history and culture of the whole region and I love travelling there :)
2 persons have voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7148 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 107 of 292
25 March 2015 at 5:59pm | IP Logged 
basica wrote:
Chung wrote:
Radioclare wrote:

I saw an article on Twitter today about a drive to create new Croatian words for
English expressions working their way into the language. There's a new website called
Bolje je hrvatski which has suggestions for Croatian
translations like "razvojna tvrtka" for "start-up company". I don't know whether there
is a nationalist agenda behind this, but politics aside I much prefer when languages
have their own words for things rather than using English ones. I find it confusing
when seemingly English words crop up in other languages without necessarily having
quite the same meaning or being pronounced the same way as they would be in English
(eg. punk/pank!) :D


I'd say that there's a bit of a nationalist agenda, although it definitely isn't
unique to Croats. See Language
Reform
and Croatian
Linguistic Purism
for a bit of background. I have mixed feelings about the place
of foreign words or loanwords in any language. On one hand, I often get mildly annoyed
when I see fellow native speakers use "je ne sais quoi", "verboten", "sans" or "summa
summarum" for "indescribable"/"something special", "forbidden"/"not allowed",
"without" or "in total". They just rub me the wrong way. On the other hand, terms such
as "realpolitik", "candy", "et cetera", "special" don't engender the same annoyance
even though they too are loanwords or outright foreign terms.


This is the nature of languages though. You look at a lot of languages today and they
have big portions of their vocabulary imported from other languages. A lot of English
vocabulary is based on French or Latin words, but they were imported so long ago we
think of them as English words now without cognizance of their foreignness. For me I'm
glad if there are foreign loan words in use - less for me to learn and easier for me
to hook onto the word even if the meaning is different :)


Apart from the benefit of internationalisms as outsiders learning a foreign language, I can relate at least partially to Radioclare's point. There are just some loanwords that'll rub a user (native or non-native) the wrong way regardless of their age or length of attestation. It's not always because they're foreign as much as they tend to be used in ways to convey a non-linguistic distinction/barrier that's tied to relative social or educational standing.

I'm very aware that languages change and also have noticeable stocks of words from other languages. As it relates to BCMS/SC, I've actually made pointed comments about Croatian language planning and politically-motivated purism (see here) not to mention analyses showing that many items (not just internationalisms) thought to be exclusive to Serbian are also valid in Croatian regardless of how Croatian language planning bodies favor different forms or calques and/or neologisms (see here for an example).
3 persons have voted this message useful



basica
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 3528 days ago

157 posts - 269 votes 
Studies: Serbian

 
 Message 108 of 292
26 March 2015 at 12:36am | IP Logged 
Quote:
Apart from the benefit of internationalisms as outsiders learning a foreign
language, I can relate at least partially to Radioclare's point. There are just some
loanwords that'll rub a user (native or non-native) the wrong way regardless of their age
or length of attestation. It's not always because they're foreign as much as they tend to
be used in ways to convey a non-linguistic distinction/barrier that's tied to relative
social or educational standing.


I understand where you two are coming from, I was just adding my 2 cents into the matter
:) As for your other comments, I don't particularly have any strong opinions on the
matter and wasn't really commenting on that aspect :)
1 person has voted this message useful



Radioclare
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
timeofftakeoff.com
Joined 4575 days ago

689 posts - 1119 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto
Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian

 
 Message 109 of 292
29 March 2015 at 8:24pm | IP Logged 
Hmm, what have I been up to this week?

I've just finished reading a German Krimi called Herzblut,
which is the seventh in my favourite series about Kommissar Kluftinger. Reading in German is fun - and so much easier than
reading in Croatian :)

I've watched another couple of episodes of 'Budva na pjenu od mora'. The storyline remains extremely exciting and something
which is really nice about the third series is that they don't have the five-minute recaps at the start of the programme anymore
:D I feel like I understand more and more each time but I really need to find a Croatian series to watch as well, because I
don't want to end up with a funny Montenegrin accent :D

Something particularly interesting in the past couple of episodes has been the introduction of a second Russian character. There
is already one Russian character, who seems to speak Serbian in a fairly neutral way as far as I can tell but throws in the odd
Russian word every now and again so that we remember what her nationality is supposed to be. For example she always says "ne
znaju" rather than "ne znam", there are a lot of "nyet"s and yesterday she said something which definitely wasn't "čovjek" but
which sounded quite similar (perhaps "čelovek"). Without wishing to spoil the storyline, someone from her past in Russia has
turned up in Budva and it is clear that he is up to no good. He also speaks Serbian pretty fluently - arguably better as he
hasn't been throwing in random Russian words - but with a really funny accent that makes him sound quite sinister. In the first
scene where they met a few episodes ago I was a bit nervous because they stood and had a long conversation with each other in
Russian and I was thinking "Eek, I hope fluent Russian isn't presumed knowledge for following the rest of the plot!". But
actually I don't think we were supposed to understand - I think the viewer was supposed to be empathising with the non-
comprehension of a Montenegrin character who was also in the room - and every conversation they have had in Russian since has
been helpfully subtitled :)

My Output Challenge reading aloud is currently at 177 minutes following the third chapter of 'Sumrak' today.

My Output Challenge writing hasn't progressed as I thought I might do some grammar revision this weekend instead in order to
ultimately make my writing more accurate. I've been revising some of the earlier chapters of the BCS textbook but struggling to
stay focused. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea.

Probably best not to mention Macedonian. I'm really struggling for motivation. It's not that I don't want to learn it but
somehow I keep lacking the energy to start. I actually feel more tempted to restart Czech at the moment in preparation for my
weekend in Prague in August.
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4699 days ago

5310 posts - 9399 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 110 of 292
31 March 2015 at 4:15am | IP Logged 
Человек means "human being, person" in Russian, it can by extension also mean "man". If
you're overly sexist of course.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Radioclare
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
timeofftakeoff.com
Joined 4575 days ago

689 posts - 1119 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto
Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian

 
 Message 111 of 292
31 March 2015 at 10:58pm | IP Logged 
Thank you, tarvos :) It sounds like it has the same meaning as čovjek in Croatian then :)
I'm interested to know though, does человек have a regular plural in Russian or is there
a completely different word to mean "people"? (In Croatian the plural of čovjek is ljudi)
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4699 days ago

5310 posts - 9399 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 112 of 292
01 April 2015 at 3:43am | IP Logged 
It does. The plural of человек in Russian is indeed люди. However, after large numerals
(when mentioning the numbers of attendees at a concert or football game, for example),
you will often simply see человек used instead:

Вчера 3000 человек поучаствовали в митинге за права человека в центре Москвы.

"Yesterday 3000 people attended a demonstration for human rights in the center of
Moscow".

Edited by tarvos on 04 April 2015 at 4:57pm



2 persons have voted this message useful



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