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Interesting / rare grammar experiences | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 9 of 21 31 October 2011 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In some languages to make the conditional you conjugate the verb.
Moreover many Turkic, Korean, Japanese, languages, use totally backward word order to this of European languages. Girl after eating a cookie, went to school - girl cookie eat after school-at went. In Yi-Burman languages, to say "this man", this hat", you say: person this classifier "water this glass" etc Chinese would use "this glass water". In Hani you say person this person col xil col (if I am not wrong) col being the word and the classifier. Hani is a language close to Burmese, spoken in China. In Yi you change verb's transitiveness, by changing the tone. In Manchu you change vowels to denote the gender (not in all words). haha = man hehe = woman From Polish I think the personal ending detachement is quite fun: wypiłem piwo - i drank a beer can be changed into piwom wypił -m the verb ending goes after then noun! it's like Italian would say: lo sportiamo guardi instead of guardiamo lo sport. In Japanese, and Kazakh (and maybe some other Turkic languages) you can use plural as denoting collectivennes garfields eat fish = garfiend and his friends eat fish In Japanese you don't use a word "can" instead you conjugate the verb = nomu = to drink nomeru = to be able to drink Edited by clumsy on 31 October 2011 at 3:29pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 10 of 21 31 October 2011 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Conjugation in Uralic languages ranks as one of the more interesting things that I've encountered. About a year ago I made a post about this subject.
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 11 of 21 01 November 2011 at 7:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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Cantonese has these wonderful particles that I miss when I speak other languages. You tack them on at the end to change the feel of the sentence, almost like verbal emoticons! Mandarin has a couple, but Cantonese is positively swarming with them. I'm at work, so I can't write the characters, but here are some examples. Note that many of these have multiple uses and the meaning is hard to pin down, so don't take it too literally.
Hou2 sik6: Tasty aa3: general intensifier Hou2 sik6 aa3!: Wow, that's really tasty! tim1: suggests something additional, more than you expected Hou2 sik6 tim!: (Not only is it healthy,) It's tasty, too! gaa3 laa3 / gaa3 laak3: Suggests it might not be as the other person thinks Hou2 sik6 gaa3 laa3: It's actually quite tasty ze1: Sort of like "only", there's no big deal, there's nothing else Hou2 sik6 ze1: It's just tasty, that's all bo3: Used when reminding someone Hou2 sik6 bo3: It's tasty, don't you remember? wo3: Can mean you're trying to convince someone, or that they ought to know the information you're giving them Hou2 sik6 wo3: It's tasty, c'mon! Have a try. laa3: Can mean a dozen different things, but amongst others it can make the sentence a suggestion "Hou2 sik6" laa3: Let's say "tasty" (maybe discussing an advertising slogan) me1: Makes it a question Hou2 sik6 me1?: Is it tasty? ne1: Makes it a question about something not already discussed Hou2 sik6 ne1?: What about the taste? Is it tasty? gwaa3: Suggests hesitation Hou2 sik6 gwaa3: It's tasty ... I guess. lou3 / lu3: Man, I can't explain this one. Sometimes I think it's used to denote a conclusion Hou2 sik6 lou3: So it's tasty! ... but really, this meaning is just really hard to pin down. It's very common and I think sometimes it doesn't really mean anything. Those are all I can come up with now. Remember, the meaning is a bit elusive on many of these, and they are often used in many ways. For example, the "wo3" is sometimes used to denote "Right, I had forgotten about that", as in "Hai6 wo3". But there you go. These particles are super useful and the natives (and me, too!) use them all the time. And Stephen Chow, the master of Hong Kong comedy, is extremely skilled at using these, and can pile up two or three of them in a row at the end of a sentence (yeah, you can combine them to get even more nuanced meanings)! 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Remster Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4806 days ago 120 posts - 134 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: German, French | Message 12 of 21 01 November 2011 at 9:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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For some reason, I'm always interested in how the noun agrees with the rest of the sentence through either case or word order.
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| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6666 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 13 of 21 02 November 2011 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In Turkish there are two distinct past tenses: one for events you witnessed yourself and another for events you have been told about by someone else.
By the way, Tamil also has a distinction between exclusive and inclusive "we". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5067 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 14 of 21 03 November 2011 at 12:24am | IP Logged | |||||
Bulgarian makes the same distinction. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 15 of 21 03 November 2011 at 1:41am | IP Logged | |||||
Albanian, Estonian Macedonian too can express similarly under renarrative mood (or quotative mood in Estonian). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4890 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 16 of 21 03 November 2011 at 3:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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I wonder if you can trace the birth and evolution of grammatical idea? It seems as if a
lot of the SE Asian and Pacific languages have the inclusive and exclusive "we." And four of the languages mentioned that have the renarrative mood were once part of the Ottoman Empire. I always thought that grammar would become less complex over time, or as it spread to multiple regions (look at Bahasa Indonesia). But maybe new grammatical concepts can also spread through a population? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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