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Tags: Afrikaans | Wanderlust | Brain | Teach Yourself | Finnish | Swedish | Vocabulary learning | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Pronunciation | Grammar | Spanish | ||
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5924 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 137 of 223 19 July 2009 at 1:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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I guess I can claim that I've been learning, or perhaps more truthfully trying to learn Swedish for about a month and I know already wrote that my initial impression was that Swedish sometimes sounds like it's being sung (I think it was sometime last month, but I won't go looking for it now), but this isn't new information. Another thing that isn't probably surprising; since Swedish, Afrikaans, Dutch and English are all Germanic languages, is that there is much shared vocabulary, making many words easy to recognize, and occasionally the Swedish word is closer to English than the corresponding Afrikaans/Dutch word. Since I like to ride my bicycle I'll use the word bicycle as an example
Afr./Ned. "fiets", but Sv. "cykel". Another thing I notice is that the spelling of Swedish seems to be less phonetic than Afrikaans but still more phonetic than English or Dutch, probably because Swedish hasn't had a spelling reform since the early 20th century, while Dutch has had at least 3 or 4 spelling reforms. Another thing I've noticed is that some consonants are not often pronounced at the end of a word thus "det" sounds like "de", the personal pronoun "jag" sounds like "ja", while "och" becomes simply "å" (or in English "oh"). There is also a difference between hard and soft k sounds, dependant upon which letters precede or follow k (at least I think that's right) in a word. Swedish has two genders "en" (common gender about 3/4 of Swedish nouns use this one) and "ett" (neutral gender for the remaining 1/4) and just like in Spanish or Dutch, it's best to learn the gender when I learn the noun, to avoid thinking things like "I can't remember if "hus" is an "en" word or "ett" word" I just learn "ett hus" (a house) and "huset" (the house) and be done with it. It's almost time for me to go eat something, and study chemistry so I'll write more about my initial impressions of Swedish sometime next week. God natt! Mick Edited by mick33 on 28 July 2009 at 6:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5924 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 138 of 223 22 July 2009 at 1:19am | IP Logged | |||||
Now back to my initial impressions, and observations about Swedish. There are "hard" and "soft" c,g, and k sounds, but what I struggle to remember is that this is because Swedish has 9 vowels which are classified as being either "hard" or "soft". The hard vowels are a, o, u, å and when c,g, or k precede these vowels; c is pronounced just as it is in "cat", g is the same as the English hard g in "gift" and k is pronounced like the k in "kill". The soft vowels e, i, y, ä, ö change things a bit, when the aforementioned consonants come before a soft vowel; c sounds like the c in "city" g is pronounced like the y in "year" and k becomes a "ch" sound, but without the puff of air that is heard in "cheese". All 9 vowels have long and short pronunciations, most of which I have little trouble; excepting ö, which I think sounds like the "u" in "fur" but I'm not sure I hear it correctly. Next time I will write more about Swedish spelling and also post my first word list for Swedish. Hej då Mick Edited by mick33 on 27 July 2009 at 6:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5924 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 139 of 223 23 July 2009 at 2:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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A little more about Swedish spelling, which although not phonetic is still far more regular than English, (at least until I find some exceptions) there just seem to be many consonants and consonant clusters that have more than one sound, and/or sound the same. In addition to the consonants already discussed in my last post, there are the following consonant clusters that I don't always remember how to pronounce: sj, sk (only because sk has two pronunciations), skj, rs, and stj all of which are pronounced similarly to the "sh" in shoe or shout; at least I think that's the sound I'm supposed to be hearing. That's enough about spelling and pronunciation for now, I'll try to figure out the tones (or are they called pitch accents?) later, which should be fun to practice, especially since my American English pronunciations have already interfered with Spanish, Afrikaans and Finnish phonics.
My first list of Swedish words jag - I ofta - often vi - we kanske - perhaps tala - speak dansa - dance månad - month onsdag - Wednesday igen - again eftermiddag - afternoon nu - now där - there mig - me igår - yesterday Hopefully I'll be able to write something in Swedish soon, but I don't when that will be. Vi ses senare Mick Edited by mick33 on 25 October 2009 at 9:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5924 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 140 of 223 25 July 2009 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've written enough about my initial impressions of Swedish for now, although I am still learning Swedish, Afrikaans and Finnish, today I'll write about Spanish. I've been focusing a lot on Spanish reflexive verbs. Reflexive verbs are how one expresses doing an action to or for oneself and in Spanish these verbs are easily recognized because their unconjugated forms always takes the reflexive pronoun "se" as a suffix; e.g. "acordarse" (to remember), "lavarse" (to wash), "dormirse" (to sleep), "afeitarse" (to shave), "despedirse" (to say goodbye)etc. this is important because some verbs like "lavar" and "dormir" are also non-reflexive. Also when a reflexive verb is conjugated it takes the reflexive pronoun for the person who is being referred to.
For practice, and hopefully to clear up what seems to be a confusing explanation, I wrote the following sentence, "Yo siempre me ducho por la mañana" or "I always shower in the morning", which is pretty straightforward. However, it is also possible to add the reflexive pronoun to the uncinjugated form of the verb thus the above sentence becomes "Yo siempre ducharme por la mañana". Anyone who remembers my Afrikaans log from last winter will know that I really like languages that allow double negatives, and I have more good news, Spanish allows double, triple and even quadruple negatives!!! List of Spanish negative words no - no; not nada - nothing nadie - no one; nobody ninguno/a, ningún - no; none; not any ni...ni - neither...nor nunca, jamás - never; not ever tampoco - neither; not either In Spanish I can say, or write things like, "Él nunca le hablas a nadie." or "No quiero hacer nada nunca." which literally translate to, "He never to them to talk to nobody" and, "No want I to do nothing never." respectively. Isn't this wonderful? I wish correct English grammar allowed things like this; I can't even say ain't and be speaking properly. My next mini-project is to learn how to express negation in Finnish and Swedish too. I think I wrote that in Finnish "ei" acts like a verb, that is to say, it can be conjugated (or is the proper term inflected). Swedish has the word "inte" which is one word that makes a statement negative, but I'm unclear on the details, and I'm sure there are more negative words in both languages. My next post, or maybe the next two posts, will be about negation; both languages deserve separate posts since I enjoy negation so much. Hasta luego Mick Edited by mick33 on 02 November 2009 at 8:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 141 of 223 27 July 2009 at 9:43am | IP Logged | |||||
You often find the infinitive with affixed pronoun in constructions with some kind of an auxilliary verb ("Yo quiero ducharme por la mañana") or in an infinite verbal phrase, typically after a preposition ("Para ducharme por la mañana necesito agua caliente"), but a subject in the nominative plus a verbal phrase based on an infinitive with or without a pronoun can't constitute a sentence in Spanish. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5924 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 142 of 223 27 July 2009 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
Edited by mick33 on 31 July 2009 at 12:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5924 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 143 of 223 31 July 2009 at 2:14am | IP Logged | |||||
Now, as promised, I will explain negation in Finnish. I already wrote that "ei" means no, or not and that it does conjugate like a verb; an intriguing idea for me. So here is how this works in the present tense with pronouns (Minä) en - I do not (the pronouns in parentheses are often omitted) (Sinä) et - you do not Hän ei - he/she do not (I believe hän cannot be left out) (Me) emme - we do not Te ette - you (plural or formal) do not (I think te has to be included also) (He) eivät - they do not A conjugated verb follows "ei" to show what is not being done, but I think the conjugation is the same no matter what pronoun is being used. To give examples using "ymmärtää" (to understand) "En ymmärrä" I not understand "Et ymmärrä" You not understand I'm getting hungry and tired, so I'll continue this explanation tomorrow. I may have to read more on Finnish verb conjugation , but that isn't a problem there are only four tenses and for this mini-project I'm only using the present tense. Mick Edited by mick33 on 27 October 2009 at 7:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5924 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 144 of 223 31 July 2009 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
I was right; I did need to read more about Finnish conjugation. So much for the mini-project! Oh well, I need to make more progress in Finnish, so this is a good thing. Below I will list what I call the positive and negative present tense conjugations for one verb. Olla - to be (Minä) olen - I am (Sinä) olet - You are Hän on - He/She is (Me) olemme - we are Te olette - you (plural) are (He) ovat En ole - I am not Et ole - you are not Ei ole - He/She is not Emme ole - We are not Ette ole - You (plural) are not Eivät ole - They are not Olla is irregular, but I listed it first because it was the first verb conjugation I learned. ...To Be Continued Hyvää viikonloppua! mick Edited by mick33 on 01 August 2009 at 10:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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