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Mick’s Continuous TAC Multilingual Bliss! | ||
Tags: Scriptorium | Afrikaans | Wanderlust | Thai | 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) | Finnish | Polish | Swedish | Verbs/Conjugation | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Grammar | Spanish | ||
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5921 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 169 of 228 21 May 2011 at 11:24am | IP Logged |
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Ingen polska. Sanningen är att jag kunde aldrig riktigt uttala språket och blev ganska frustrerende dessutom jag vill hellre lära mig italienska. Min kärlek för italienska skulle vara verkligen självklar om bara jag har inte försökt att läsa en norsk artikel om ett nordisk förbund. Gunnar Wetterberg är en svensk historiker som hävdar att ett nordisk förbund är en bra idé. Det har ämne var intressant att läsa även fast jag vet nästan ingenting om skandinavisk/nordisk historik och politik. Jag läste artikeln att prova mina allmänna kunskaper i (av?) de skandinavisk språk. Jag kunde läsa liten norska men jag behövde änvända google translate och två ordboker. Kanske ska mitt nästa inlägg vara på italienska.
God natt Mick Edited by mick33 on 26 May 2011 at 11:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5921 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 170 of 228 18 June 2011 at 12:10am | IP Logged |
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I can hardly believe I let almost month go by without writing anything here, but that's what happened. I complained about my old and very slow PC in December and January but it was still functional so I didn't replace it, based on the idea that I should "Use it up, wear it out, make do with what I have as long as possible or do without". As you may have guessed, using my PC became more and more difficult as it got slower and slower and finally about mid May I was just viewing websites and not typing anything anywhere.
But I have a new computer YAYYY!!!!:) so I'm back. I have learned a little Italian but not very much. As often happens when I start a language I allowed myself to get distracted by regional languages and/or dialects, this time I became curious about Sicilian, Neapolitan and Venetian. I even found a Venetian website Raixe Venete, but regional language wanderlust is the most dangerous variety of wanderlust and I haven't really looked at Raixe Venete again. My listening comprehension in Spanish needs work (make that a lot of work). I knew this already but when I rode the bus Wednesday afternoon I sat next to three men who were speaking Spanish and I couldn't even think of joining their conversation because I understood only a few words, even though I'm past the stage where I think Spanish is spoken too fast. This experience actually wasn't discouraging, as I knew that my Spanish skills (which were never great, if the truth be told) would have declined, but it does give me more motivation to listen to Spanish more often. ciao Mick Edited by mick33 on 20 October 2011 at 10:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5921 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 171 of 228 29 June 2011 at 1:18am | IP Logged |
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I've been busy learning, and learning about, the past tenses of verbs in Italian, and unless I am mistaken there are at least 5 tenses though I have not looked at the conditional or subjunctive moods yet which will no doubt add a few more past tenses. At this beginning stage stage Italian the most important thing for me is to be able to recognize the conjugation patterns for each tense and also when the tense is used in speaking and writing. The first past tense I have noticed is called il passato prossimo and for some reason the English name for this tense is the present perfect, which I assume is not an accurate translation of the Italian as passato looks it could be past and prossimo doesn't resemble perfect. The passato prossimo requires two verbs with the first being a conjugated form of "avere" or "essere", but it looks like "avere" is more common and is used with transitive verbs while "essere" is usually used with intransitive verbs. The second verb is in the past participle form so this tense is what grammar books call a compound tense.
Okay, that's enough technical linguistics terms for now, but when and how is this tense used and what might it look like in a sentence? As for when to use this tense, I think that passato prossimo is one the more frequently used tenses and it expresses actions or facts in the recent past or that could have happened a long time ago but have some relation to the present. There are three basic past participle forms of verbs: -are verbs add "ato" to the stem, -ere verbs take "uto" and -ire verbs get "ito"; thus parlare becomes parlato, sapere becomes saputo, and capire becomes capito. Using "avere" I could make the following statements: (Io) Ho scritto un romanzo - I wrote (or have written) a novel. (scrivere has an irregular past participle, but this is the sentence I thougt of first) *Italian, like Spanish, does not require the use of the pronoun (Noi) abbiamo parlato ieri - We spoke yesterday. Next a few sentences using "essere" Sono andato è tornato arrivederci Mick EDIT: Added more to this post about il passato prossimo. At this stage in learning Italian I know very little vocabulary otherwise I could attempt to write something in Italian here, but that will happen soon enough and besides that I think it's better if I am not in such a hurry to write in a new language. Edited by mick33 on 20 October 2011 at 10:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 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 172 of 228 29 June 2011 at 1:25am | IP Logged |
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Actuallo the Italian "passato prossimo" is the same compound form as the perfect of English (or passé composé of French). So why this exotic name? Well, because the simple perfect is called "passato remoto", i.e. close past and far away past. The first is in principle used when a past action still has effect up to this day, while the other is used to simply inform about historical events without drawing the line up to the present day. But in practice there is a certain overlap, although not nearly to the same extent as in for instance French or German (!), where the simple form is being pushed more and more out of the language.
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5921 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 173 of 228 29 June 2011 at 10:56am | IP Logged |
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I haven't looked at the passato remoto yet, but this makes a little more sense now and I am also grateful that so far I have found nothing in Italian grammar that is nearly as frustrating for me as the pretérito in Spanish, then again I'm just starting on Italian. That's very interesting about German and French simple perfect forms gradually falling into disuse. Edited by mick33 on 29 June 2011 at 11:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5921 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 174 of 228 02 July 2011 at 11:07am | IP Logged |
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Now for a brief explanation (or maybe overview) of the imperfect tense or imperfetto. I think imperfetto is the next most common past tense after the passato prossimo and it is similar to the English construction "used to" although Italian utilizes this much more often for describing actions and conditions that lasted in indefinite amount of time in the past. This tense also expresses habitual or repeated actions in the past, mental physical and emotional states and time age and weather in the past as well.
The conjugation pattern for imperfetto is usually the same for -are,-ere and -ire verbs though are a few irregular verbs. Imparare (to learn or to memorize) io imparavo tu imparavi lui/lei/Lei imparava noi imparavamo voi imparavate loro/Loro imparavano Temere (to fear) io temevo tu temevi lui/lei/Lei temeva noi temevamo voi temevate loro/Loro temevano Capire (to understand, realize, grasp, catch on, admit) io capivo tu capivi lui/lei/Lei capiva noi capivamo voi capivate loro/Loro capivano Finally just to show one example of an irregular verb Essere io ero tu eri lui/lei/Lei era noi eravamo voi eravate loro/Loro erano I'll need to think of some example sentences or phrases in my next post as I'm getting very sleepy. Buonanotte Mick 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5921 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 175 of 228 07 July 2011 at 10:46am | IP Logged |
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I have been enjoying the lovely weather for the last three days, but balance is important so of course I have continued to learn Italian and to read about Italy. No, I can't really read Italian yet but I still like looking at the pictures on a website for Villa del Balbianello and also trying to find words I might recognize from Spanish and English.
As promised, a few sentences using the imperfetto tense: Giocavo a pallacanestro ogni pomeriggio. (I played basketball every afternoon.) Volevo andare a Svezia (I wanted to go to Sweden) ciao Mick Edited by mick33 on 20 October 2011 at 10:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5921 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 176 of 228 09 July 2011 at 11:12am | IP Logged |
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The next verb tense in my continuing overview of Italian grammar is going to be trapassato prossimo or, in English, the past perfect which is another compound tense. It makes sense to me to learn trapassato prossimo after the imperfetto because the first verb used in this tense is an imperfetto form of avere or essere and the second verb is the past participle. I have already listed the imperfetto conjugations for essere in message #174 and I will list the imperfetto forms for avere now:
Avere io avevo tu avevi lui/lei/Lei aveva noi avevamo voi avevate loro/Loro avevano Oh, I forgot to mention that this tense is used when describing two actions that occurred at different times in the past. This post is taking a while to write for two reasons: My Italian vocabulary is too limited right now and I need to get some sleep so I will have to continue this post later. Buona notte e sogni d'oro! Mick Edited by mick33 on 24 July 2011 at 10:17am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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