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TAC14 : Euskara eta txinera -- 汉语和巴斯克语 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5842 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 1 of 98 24 January 2014 at 12:53am | IP Logged |
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This year my main focus will be on Basque (batua) and Mandarin.
I've been studying Mandarin for over 2 years now and it surprises me where i'm at after such a long time. This year i'll be focused mostly on characters and vocabulary-building, as that's what seems to trip me up the most. When i know all the words, i can generally make myself understood :) Basque was a new addition from last year but i love it, even if it can seem impossible at times. There are so many verb forms to learn... I have more modest goals for Basque as i don't know if i'll ever get the chance to actually speak it, but i would like to read Basque literature and learn more about its history. I'll also be working on maintaining my Spanish and hopefully improving my Catalan, but as i use these two languages quite a bit in my daily life (reading, music, movies) i'm not too worried. I've been talking about French and German for probably 8 years now, but i think i'd spread myself too thin and now i want to focus myself a bit more. So these will, once again, be put on hold/maintenance. EDIT: Just adding some links here for future reference: 六六作品集 三毛作品集 第十二夜 series Super Challenge: This is where i will track my Super Challenge progress. Catalan: Audio/Vídeo: 2.5 ++ May : 2,5 ____ Una fulla a la barba ____ 4 programes de "Logofobiks" (ràdio - 3h49, aproximadament una hora cadascú) 1-5 &nb sp; &nb sp;++ Avatar: l'últim mestre de l'aire (sèrie) Llibres: 9 ++ June : 9 ____ Rodoreda - La Plaça del Diamant (277 pg) ____ Ferrer - Dies d'ira a l'illa (237 pg) Castellano: Audio/Vídeo: 34,5 ++ May : 27 ____ Cabezas de tormenta - #64 Malpaís (programa de radio - 1h00) ____ Eduardo Galeano - Las venas abiertas de América Latina (audiolibro - 3h15) ____ Jean Auel - El clan del oso cavernario (translation, audiolibro - 23h35) ____ Caballo de Troya 1, Jerusalén (audiolibro - 9h14) ____ Caballo de Troya 2, Masada (audiolibro - 4h45) ++ June : 7,5 ____ 15 años y un día (película - 1h36) ____ Abre los ojos (película - 1h53) ____ La persecución de los nazis (documental - 1h25) ____ El bosque animado (película - 1h43) ____ La seducción del caos (película - 1h36) ____ La voz dormida (película - 1h58) ____ 3 x Radio Cabezas de tormenta (radio - 3h00) Libros: 4 ++ May : 4 ____Rojas, Clara - Cautiva, historia de un secuestro (244 pg) Italian: Audio/Video: 59,5 ++ May : 40 ____ Il piccolo principe (2h53) ____ Q (25h03) ____ HP e la pietra filosofale (9h53) ____ HP e la Camera dei segreti (audiolibro - 10h31) ____ HP e il prigioniero di Azkaban (audiolibro - 11h16) ____ Braccialetti Rossi 1 (serie - 1h40) ++ June : 19,5 ____ Braccialetti Rossi 2 (serie - 1h30) ____ Tempo di uccidere (audiolibro - 10h03) ____ HP e il principe mezzosangue (audiolibro - 18h05) Libri: 0 Edited by Crush on 03 July 2014 at 7:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5239 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 98 24 January 2014 at 1:08am | IP Logged |
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Basque and Mandarin are certainly more than enough to keep you busy, Crush! My hat's off to you. I'm looking forward to following your log. Didn't the Devil get sentenced to learn Basque for 20 years and only learned how to say "no"? Edited by iguanamon on 24 January 2014 at 1:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4587 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek | Message 3 of 98 24 January 2014 at 2:56am | IP Logged |
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I once heard it said that Basque is the only language in Spain. All others are dialects.
My hat's off to you. Crush. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5842 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 4 of 98 24 January 2014 at 3:38am | IP Logged |
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Eskerrik asko :)
As hard as it is to admit it, my Mandarin's finally getting to a point where i can use it conversationally, chatting online is easy and i generally don't need to look up words. Reading the news, watching TV, and books are still way above my head, so this year i think my main focus will be vocabulary. I'm hoping to be able to put the bulk of my effort into Basque, though i think once i get the verb conjugations down it'll be a much smoother journey. I've tried writing out conjugation tables but it's just too large to fit on one page and not that straightforward since the verb can vary depending on the subject, object, and indirect object. There aren't any clitic pronouns in Basque, so the verb carries all that info. I'm currently working my way through the Assimil course for a second time (the first time i didn't make it all the way through, it really is a killer course) and also finished Gorka's course (even if there are lots of typos, sometimes rather confusing). Gorka's course is really comprehensive, but once they start covering verb conjugations there's so much material it's a bit overwhelming. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4616 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 5 of 98 24 January 2014 at 9:31am | IP Logged |
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Vow, eskara, I'm impressed, and a little envious. I've had an interest in Basque ever since I was in San Sebastian for the first time 20 years ago, but I've never got around to actually studying it. And now I have other priorities, but maybe some day. In any case I will certainly have a look at Gorka's course.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5842 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 6 of 98 25 January 2014 at 3:11am | IP Logged |
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I have to say i'm (pleasantly) surprised by all the interest in Basque!
Today i did lesson 36: hogeita hamaseigarren ikaskaia. Literally, 20-and 16th the-lesson. I think this is as far as i got last time, but i may have done one or two lessons more. I'm excited to be getting to new lessons, though. The whole course is only 50 lessons. Anyway, maybe making some comments on what i've studied or just what i find interesting about Basque can help settle things in as well as provide an opportunity for someone with a better understanding to correct what i've misunderstood :D So, to start: to form ordinal numbers (-st, -nd, -rd, -th) in Basque you just add -garren to the end of the number. I believe this is true for all numbers except one (bat, which also serves for 'a'), which becomes lehen. In general Basque numbers seem pretty regular, just quite a bit different from what i'm used to. Basque uses a "20" base counting system, so that's why lesson 36 is literally 20 and 16. 50 is something like 2-20 and 10, 75 = 3-20 and 15, etc. It takes a bit of getting used to and i can't say i'm quite there yet. It sheds some light on French's soixante and quatre-vingts, though. Another interesting thing is that the definite article is attached to the end of the verb (an -a) rather than preceding it. As for the content of today's lesson, it seemed mostly a review of some cases (there are 16 altogether) and what would've been the introduction of a new verb type if i hadn't seen it already in Gorka's course. The verbs are pretty interesting, so i'll talk about what they introduced a bit. This verb form is called NOR-NORK, the reason for that is because the first part of the verb tells you the "nor" -- literally "what", but here the direct object, "what" is being acted upon -- and the second part tells you the subject of the action, the "nork". Another important thing to know is that most verbs in Basque don't have their own conjugation, they have a participle that combines with a (conjugated) helper verb. Anyway, NOR-NORK verbs: Maite zaitut = I love you Love you-I "zaitu-" shows the direct object, here "you (sg)", and the "-t" shows who is doing the action, "I". Some other examples would be "Maite zaitugu", we love you, "Maite gaituzu", you (-zu) love us (gaitu-). In Basque, there aren't any clitic pronouns as the verb tells you who does what to whom. As you can see (zaitut, gaituzu, nauzu, dituzte, etc.) there are tons of forms that at first glance look nothing like each other. Fortunately, there are very few verbs that conjugate -- I touch you, I see you, I love you, all use "zaitut" -- and they do generally follow patterns, it's still a lot to take in and i feel like it will take a long time to internalize. Ah, and transitive verbs conjugate differently from intransitive verbs (or rather, use a different helper verb). I ended up writing much more than i'd planned to, sorry about that. And i would've liked to have written more! Basque is a really interesting language, even if a bit overwhelming at times... One step at a time, i guess! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4821 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 7 of 98 25 January 2014 at 1:22pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, that's really interesting! I've always wanted to know about Basque grammar. Keep writing such great posts! :)
Best of luck for your studies! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5842 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 8 of 98 26 January 2014 at 5:40am | IP Logged |
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Today, lesson 37. As usual, when first going through i understood almost nothing (even though they called it an "ikaskai erraz eta labur", an easy and short lesson). By the end i think i had a pretty good idea what was going on. This has been the case ever since i started the course, though. the first ten or fifteen minutes of a lesson i feel like i'll never understand it and it's really depressing. After maybe fifteen minutes i start to piece things together and by the end generally feel good about understanding most everything, they there have been a few times where i still didn't get a few things at the end. It's definitely one of the most ass-kicking (in the violent sense!) Assimil courses i've ever done. Another slightly annoying thing is that about halfway through the recordings only have the actual dialog recorded. By that i mean parts like "he said" and "explained the guide to the group" aren't recorded, only what that person said/explained. I'm not sure why they chose to do that.
Ok, one of the things worth noting today was the contrast between NOR-NORI-NORK and NOR-NORK verbs. NOR-NORI-NORK is essentially direct object-indirect object-subject. NOR-NORK is DO-subject (the same as last time). As you can see, the verb has a lot of different forms. The possible forms are: NOR, NOR-NORI, NOR-NORK, and NOR-NORI-NORK, each has its own conjugation. NOR-NORK is your general transitive verb: "I touch something", "I see you", "I drink tea", etc. NOR-NORI-NORK is a transitive verb that has a dative, so "I tell you (something)", "They showed me the house", etc. As you might guess, the first part of the NOR-NORK verb expresses the direct object, and the second part is the subject. In Euskara, unlike many other languages that mark the accusative, you leave the direct object in it's nominative form and mark the subject (called an "ergative") with an -(a)k for singular or -ek for indefinite or plural nouns. I is "ni", book is "liburu", and see is ikusi. "I have seen the book" would be: Nik liburua ikusi dut -Ni receives the ergative ending "-k" to show that it's the subject -liburu receives the definite article, "-a" (THE book) -ikusi is the past participle of "to see" -dut: du- shows that the object is 3rd person singular (he/she/it), -t shows that the subject is 1st person singular (I) The NOR-NORI-NORK verb has three parts. To say "They have given me the books": Haiek niri liburuak eman dizkidate -Haiek is the ergative form for "they". It just so happens that the nominative form is the same, i guess since it already ends in a "k" it just doesn't change. -Niri is the dative form (to me). -(a)ri is a common dative ending -Liburuak means "the books". The -ak ending is the definite plural. -Eman is the past participle for to give -dizkidate: dizki means that the object is plural (i think you can only use this for the third person sg/pl, i don't think you can say "I give you us" or "He gave me to you"). "da" shows that the indirect object is 1st person singular. "te" shows that the subject is 3rd person plural. I know my explanations aren't that clear, but it still takes me a long time to think these things through. I'm looking forward to the day when this will all be automatic! One last thing that really attracted me to Euskara is that there's no gender system built into the language. The 3rd person singular pronoun makes no distinction between masculine and feminine and nouns have no gender marker. There are gender-specific words (man, girl, gentleman, lady) though. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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