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Tarvos - TAC 2015 Pushkin/Scan | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 569 of 1511 13 March 2013 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been studying languages lately, of course. This morning's clumsy train ride was
spent on Modern Hebrew and I have studied possession in Hebrew, which is expressed (not unlike Breton and other Gaelic languages, as well as having a sort of parallel in Russian) as "there is to me an-object". The choice of preposition in Hebrew is "l" (usually pronounced as lo, but not always...), which is a particle (because it's one letter and that is never a word in Hebrew) you tack on to the thing possessing the item. Alternatively, because it is a pronoun (and in this it indeed again mirrors Celtic languages), it can take the personal suffixes to indicate "I have, you have etc.". Indeed you can do this with most (all?) Hebrew prepositions, INCLUDING the preposition that precedes a definite direct object (for which the rules are not the same as those of English). Therefore I love you translates as (in transliteration) "Ani ohev otach", where otach indicates that the direct object is feminine in gender. (For males you would say Ani ohevet otcha - ohevet because I am assuming the ani is female. Of course you can say Ani ohev otkha, but that would imply homosexuality of course.) Note also that in the present tense verbs conjugate like adjectives (because the present tense is formed from a participle) and conjugate for gender and number (but NOT PERSON!). So as long as we are talking about a male person, then it's ohev. In the singular. Furthermore I have studied some Romanian anecdotes in my trusty Assimil, and done ANKI reviews. Sunday was spent on some Breton as well. And apart from that I had Swedish class on Monday and will have both Russian and French tomorrow. Neither of which I have prepared, but if my return train has internet then I'll use that to do my French and my Russian on the way home. And if not... well... we'll find a way with smartphones and all that. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4359 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 570 of 1511 13 March 2013 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, keep it up. You are trully immersed in languages.
Taking advantage of "dead" time is great. It always helps get work done. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 571 of 1511 13 March 2013 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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1,5 hours+ of dead time. Eternal commute.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 572 of 1511 13 March 2013 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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From a thread on French pronunciation, an observation made during my high school days:
By the way, a tidbit of funny side info: in atlases, the back of the book lists a guide to the pronunciation of foreign place names for a wide range of foreign languages. Because most people own the "Bosatlas" which is used in the schooling system, and French (and German) are compulsory in secondary schools, it is assumed that German, English and French (aside from Dutch) pronunciations are KNOWN to Dutch speakers. Which seems to be a fallacious assumption given the strength of Dutch accents in all three languages (although a lot of it is prosodical; the phonemes are often prononounced correctly independently in French). This is a particularity of how Dutch people culturally approach languages. Because we are obligatorily whacked over the head with them in schools (everyone learns German and almost everyone learns French), and because we have borders with teutophone regions and (if you count Belgium) francophone regions, these pronunciations are assumed to be known. The German /g/ for example, is not a native Dutch phoneme - it is only ever used in loanwords, as to us /g/ represents a voiced /ch/ (or a voiceless /ch/) - but I rarely see someone incapable of distinguishing or pronouncing that phoneme (it does occur in a few loanwords) and saying "g van garçon" is a very common way of introducing that sound, because it is assumed that people know the g of garçon sounds like the voiced equivalent of k. | Of course most people do not ever use French or German often (or actively). So the ability of Dutch people to speak either varies much more crudely than that of English and can show very sharp peaks and troughs - mostly troughs, as language education reforms in the late 90s and 2000s caused a wholesale loss of foreign language ability in everything that was not English. The government has tried to reform and reintroduce the old language system, but it hasn't functioned particularly well (and it is only truly reinstated in the high school level that prepares for university, unless you choose to study languages in high school already - in which case French and German are usually your options, period). As a rule, I would say that older people (especially those in their 40s or 50s) tend to speak better German and French than today's youth, although I do not live near the German border where communication necessities in German are bigger than here (and the linguistic barrier of those dialects with their German counterparts is much smaller; westerners often refer to these parts of the Netherlands as "Germany" in a mildly pejorative way, the same way Limbourg and Brabant are also seen as "extensions of Belgium/Germany", because often their dialects have much more in common with German or Flemish dialects than they do with the standard Dutch language). My observation is, however, that French is all but forgotten by most and that German for most people survives only in a passive format, where people do not speak German but due to its similarities understand and can respond (often in English, sigh). Those Dutch people that do have enough basis in their school German (or French) often speak fairly Dutchicised versions of those languages, which leads to bad French and funny German - the structural similarities between the latter two can lead to curious misunderstandings. But a Dutchman who moves to Germany is expected to learn German and it would be considered quite strange for that person to not speak German - German is traditionally difficult grammatically but its syntax and lexis are close enough that most people's botched Dutch with awareness of German grammar rules, pronunciation and false friends seems to lead to a kind of "Dutch-German" that seems to be understood most of the time. Although most Dutch people hate speaking German and will readily resort to English if they can nowadays, that is how it used to be - and it is how I speak German because my priority is not German at this point and it allows me to be quite functional in that language. French only survives in the use of loanwords in Dutch, which from French are extremely plentiful and make up a substantial part of the vocabulary. But loanwords is not something Dutch is short of - our colourful history means that we occupy a fairly central position linguistically in Europe. And external communities also lead to borrowings - for example, Indonesian, Yiddish/Hebrew, and Latin/Ancient Greek have contributed to the Dutch language (in some cases quite substantially, and in some cases more dialectal). Hebrew/Yiddish is funny in that regard because most Hebrew/Yiddish loans are actually Amsterdam slang (I doubt they are used in Belgium if at all, maybe in Antwerp dialect? I think not), because of its great Jewish community before the second world war. However some of these loans are in very common use in the standard language and it would be unthinkable NOT to use them as a speaker: the use of "tof" for "cool", or "mazzel" for "luck" is very common and not at all dialectal, and used widely outside of its roots of origin. Some Dutch expressions can be rendered fairly well by using a Hebrew or Yiddish loan word. And in slang, Amsterdam has a Hebrew nickname: Mokum (from "makom", place), but that is a bit weird because it is actually "Mokum Alef" (city A), and other cities such as Rotterdam were called differently "Mokum Resh" (city R). Note how the letters mimick the initials of the city referred to. The latter disappeared but Amsterdam can still be called Mokum in slang. And Amsterdam is historically seen as a city with strong Jewish influence. Edited by tarvos on 13 March 2013 at 4:36pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4666 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 573 of 1511 13 March 2013 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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^ Very interesting info!
Your mention of "Dunglish" in another thread made me think of all the different portmanteau names like that (Singlish, Spanglish, Franglais, etc.). "Dunglish" must be the least pleasant-sounding of the terms. :-P 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4359 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 574 of 1511 13 March 2013 at 5:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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We say Greeklish. Latin script and all. It's unreadable really.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 575 of 1511 13 March 2013 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | ||
It is. But it's a common complaint, especially among students nowadays who all seem to have picked up English, getting annoyed at the language mangling that their professors do when English instruction is a requirement at university. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 576 of 1511 14 March 2013 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tonight some French class (my teacher couldn't make today's Russian lesson). Instead I
spent some time doing a short Hebrew unit and then in the metro to the Hague I will probably spend some time on Breton. I have also read a bit through my Romanian Assimil but not studied anything; I will probably do some Anki at a bus stop or something though. Hebrew seems to be fitting in a little better now. But I still lack any knowledge of past or future tense, which is basically the thing I really think I will need to study soon. Once I spend some more time with that and gain some more vocab my Hebrew will get a little better. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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