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Radioclare’s tac log 2015 (*jäŋe/*ledús) | ||
Tags: Macedonian | Serbian | Serbo-Croatian | Croatian | Esperanto | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 25 of 292 18 January 2015 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I made a bit more of an effort last night and read 45 pages of 'Три Мускетара', the Serbian children's book which I am slowly ploughing my way
through. I keep procrastinating picking it up because of how difficult I find it, but then when I finally started reading it last night it wasn't *that* difficult, so perhaps I am improving slightly. Having been working on my Cyrillic handwriting really helped me with reading the words that were written in italics. I watched the first episode of series two of the Montenegrin soap 'Budva na pjenu od mora' last night. I was a little bit worried that it would start by recapping the entire of series 1, so that by the time I got to the end of series 3 there would be 55 minutes of recaps and 5 minutes of actual storyline, but mercifully they started from scratch. The action picked up a few weeks after series 1 ended, so there have been some changes in the lives of some of the characters as a result of what happened at the end of series 1, but not too much. One particularly interesting thing about this episode was that one of the characters decided to leave Budva and go back to his roots, visiting his old family home in Žabljak. Žabljak is a town in northern Montenegro, in the very mountainous national park bit of the country, and so there were some wonderful shots of the scenery. Žabljak has just been promoted to the top of my list of places in Montenegro that I really want to visit :) My text on Lang-8 was corrected overnight by someone who is extremely thorough. I think I have a correction in every sentence!
Good points about these corrections... 1) I didn't make too many silly case errors :) 2) I didn't get accused of writing anything 'Serbian' 3) I managed to remember that I am female. Interesting points about these corrections and things I can learn... 1) My reviewer wasn't very happy with my word order for clitics. I had "Sljedeći dan sam istražila Skoplje." corrected to "Sljedeći sam dan istražila Skoplje." and "Taj projekt je ideja makedonske vlade." corrected to "Taj je projekt ideja makedonske vlade." This word order feels sooooo unnatural to me. I mean, I understand that clitics need to come in the second place in the sentence, but not defining a phrase like "Taj projekt" as being one grammatical thing seems absurd. I know I have read somewhere that being this pedantic with clitics is a marker of specifically 'Croatian' speech but I'm not completely sure whether it's obligatory to be grammatically correct in Croatian. I'm fairly sure that my original word order would have been acceptable in Serbian. 2) I then had the same sort of correction but in the opposite direction. I had written "Na vrh planine Vodno se nalazi..." and I had this corrected to "Na vrh planine Vodno nalazi se". When I was thinking about the sentence I thought that "Na vrh planine Vodno" (On the summit of Mount Vodno) was a phrase filling the first position in the sentence and that the clitic "se" should therefore follow that. But I'm guessing my reviewer took the view that the phrase "Na vrh planine Vodno" was so long that the sentence order needed to be reset, hence "Na vrh planine Vodno nalazi se" where "nalazi" is in the first place of the sentence and "se" is in the second place. I don't think I have ever successfully got this right. It seems so arbitrary to me when sentence order resets and when it doesn't. 3) Apparently there is a difference in when it's appropriate to use "mnogo" and when it's appropriate to use "puno". I need to figure this out. 4) Stylistically it is better to start a sentence with "Dakle" rather than insert it partway through the sentence. And "dakle" must always be followed by a comma, after which the word order resets. 5) In order to say that something happened in a year, I need to remember to insert "godine" after the numbers. 6) All my commas were wrong, but I haven't bothered correcting those. Commas are very far down my list of things to worry about :D Edited by Radioclare on 18 January 2015 at 8:51pm 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 26 of 292 18 January 2015 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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On point 1, you are correct. I find this application of the rules for placing clitics to be slavish/unduly strict and a little bit akin to how some English speakers proscribe sentences that end in a preposition or containing a split infinitive. You probably know already though how I feel about nationalism masquerading as proofreading/corrections in BCMS/SC...
Alexander has some comments on this application of the clitics using the example of "Western" Moja je sestra učiteljica and "Eastern" Moja sestra je učiteljica
She also has comments on p. 352 of the grammar book on clitic placement and the decision to break up or preserve noun phrases. It's under subheading "164b Optional rhythmic constituents" and even the descriptor "optional" gives a clue about its subjectivity. For our purposes as learners, placing the clitic in literal second position, or in the second position after a complete semantic unit is grammatical even if it may trample on a native speaker's judgement for non-linguistic reasons (see Alexander's comments above).
For point 2, it seems that your informant "started over" with that somewhat longer RC of yours in using Na vrh planine Vodno nalazi se... rather than Na vrh planine Vodno se nalazi.... As far as I can tell, your version was just as grammatical. Alexander's examples support that.
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| 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 27 of 292 18 January 2015 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thank you Chung, it is really interesting to get your perspective on this :)
I have to say that I really haven't seen many "live" examples of the "Moja je sestra učiteljica" sort when reading in Croatian. Quite a few of the books I've been reading recently have admittedly been Serbian translations, but I still read a fair number of Croatian books last year and I think if they had been full of sentences like that I would have noticed and started to absorb the style. I will keep an eye out for it in future but my impression is definitely that a lot of speakers of 'Croatian' use the so-called 'Eastern' style regardless of what is supposed to be correct Croatian. Thank you for quoting the passage about optional rhythmic constituents too. That is the sort of thing which went way over my head the first time I read Alexander's book, but which I would definitely benefit from going back and studying in more detail now! 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 28 of 292 18 January 2015 at 11:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Nema na čemu.
I have seen sentences with split adjective-noun phrases in Croatian Wikipedia and related discussions although I can't recall seeing it in dialogues of my textbooks or pedestrian material including Croatian comic strips. I should add that Croatian Wikipedia has had a problem with being dominated by nationalist editors and so it's not surprising that editors there would latch onto prescriptions that emphasize Croatian distinctiveness. I regularly use the supposedly "Serbian" tendency, although it's about as "Serbian" as a plate of ćevapi. That is to say that not one native speaker of BCMS/SC can monopolize it or ascribe it just to "his/her" people without looking like a twit. 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 29 of 292 19 January 2015 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Wow, I had missed the controversy about Croatian Wikipedia, but that sounds crazy!
I am quite tempted to change my language to 'Serbian' on Lang-8 next time I write something and see what sort of corrections I get. I got a second correction to my first sentence today from a different person: "Sljedeći dan krenula sam istraživati Skoplje." I guess this person has decided that "Sljedeći dan" is a long noun phrase and started over again with "krenula". It's interesting to see how people can look at the same sentence in different ways! 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 30 of 292 22 January 2015 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm afraid I've not had a very productive few days again! I've not had a very inspiring start to the TAC so far but it's not because I've lost enthusiasm but because I barely have time for anything except work at the moment. The next two weeks are probably going to be the worst out of my entire year, and then after that I hope to have time to start achieving a bit more, especially with Macedonian.
I had a 7am flight to Scotland this morning which was rather an early start but the upside was that a flight to Scotland really isn't long enough to do any productive work (it's about 50 minutes, half of which seems to be filled with taking off and landing, when computers have to be switched off) so I was able to indulge myself without feeling guilty and make some more progress with 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'. I've read another 64 pages in total and I think I'm about halfway through now. I have to say that John le Carre isn't really inspiring me. I prefer my spy stories to feature guns and car chases and perhaps a few deaths. This one seems to revolve around retrieving filed documents from archives. So I wouldn't really recommend it, unless you're an accountant and find filing very exciting. I do have some colleagues who would probably find that an excellent theme for a novel :D 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 31 of 292 22 January 2015 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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A quote from my Chief Financial Officer. "You know why people become accountants? They don't have enough personality to become undertakers."
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| 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 32 of 292 22 January 2015 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Haha, I would hope I have a bit more personality than that :D But I definitely work with
some people who don't. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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