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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 2673 of 3959 09 November 2011 at 4:22am | IP Logged |
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I have spent some of the evening chewing my way through some excerpts from my Indonesian guide to Singapore, and I have afterwards used the finds in wordlists.
I would like to give one example of the derivative nature of the vocabulary of Bahasa. On page 34 you find this passage: Jika kesukacitaan dan dekadensi Singapura adalah yang Anda ingin alami, maka Bar Opiume adalah tempat yang tepat. Which is translated as follows in the English version: If it's the excitement and dekadence og Singapore you want to experience, then Bar Opiume is the place to be. The word "kesukacitaan" ('excitement' in the translation) isn't found in my dictionary, but I see two word roots: "suka" ('to like something') and "cita". "Kesukaan" means 'hobby', while "cita" turns up in word combinations where it refer to a feeling: "cita rasa" = 'taste' (taste), "duka cita" = sorrow, grief. Both the "ke-" and "-an" push a word in the substantival direction, so the result of these elements put together would be something like 'the feeling of really liking something' - which is close to 'excitement', although not quite the same thing. Having done this analysis I added "kesucitaan", "kusikaan", "cita rasa" and "duka cita" to my wordlist and went along, but now where I am writing about these words I have checked "kesucitaan" in an online Indonesian-English dictionary, and lo and behold, I found this explanation: "joy, state of being glad". Which goes to show how useful it is to learn some wordroots and affixes. However the roots can be more difficult to identify. For instance "menyajikaan" ('serve (food)') is in the dictionary identified as a derivation of "saji" (also = 'serve') - you couldn't guess that if you didn't already know the meaning of both words and some other cases with the same sound change, Or take "menerangi" ('illuminate', cfr."menerangkan" = 'to explain'), which is defined as a derivation of "terang" ('clear', cfr. "terus terang" = 'frank, open', with "terus" = 'straight on, continuous, constant'). Luckily my "Concise Indonesian Dictionary" from Tuttle systematically points out the wordroots - and just think: I accidentally saw this dictionary in a bookstore in Manila (in the Philippines) and bought it and my favorite Latin dictionary because they were cheap - at that time I had no plan to learn any of the Bahasas. Edited by Iversen on 09 November 2011 at 3:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 2674 of 3959 09 November 2011 at 8:13am | IP Logged |
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ESP: Mi ricevis via Twitter la informon, ke la libro "Babel No More" nun havas sian propran retpagxon:
Michael Erard: Babel No More Tie Michael Erard ankaux volas publikigi la rezultojn de sia "survey". Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 2675 of 3959 09 November 2011 at 3:15pm | IP Logged |
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Estas malmulta enhavo sur tiu ĉefpaĝo - lia blogo estas pli bona - sed espereble mi legos la libron la venontjaro.
As mentioned by Fasulye, Michel Erard has now got a homepage dedicated to his upcoming book "Babel no more", which will tell about the lives and methods of hyperpolyglots - this project was briefly discussed here at HTLAL last year. There isn't much specific content there - his blog is actually more informative. But nevertheless I see forward to reading the book itself some time in the future. Edited by Iversen on 27 November 2011 at 10:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 2676 of 3959 11 November 2011 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
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PO: Wczoraj studiowałem ponownie druków w polskim języku. To był pierwszy raz od dłuższego czasu.
RU: Текст было на польском, русском и датском языках, сделанные с помощью Google Translate, и первая часть была клип из веб-сайт для зоопарка во Вроцлаве. Da: Men ellers gik aftenen med at lave om i mit foto-og-postkort-registreringssystem. Min mor anskaffede en lille computer for noget tid siden, men med en stor ekstraskærm, fordi hun ikke ser så godt længere. Hun bruger den blandt andet til at studere familiens fotosamlinger, og fordi min lillesøsters billeder bliver vist i en viewer fyldte de det meste af skærmen. Mine blev vist i en meget mindre størrelse, fordi de blev vist via html-filer i en browser, og dette system blev oprettet til en meget mindre skærm. Det kunne jeg naturligvis ikke se med sindsro på, so nu har jeg også købt en ordentlig skærm, og jeg laver mine html-filer om, så man kan se billederne på fuld skærm ligesom i vieweren - men stadig med forklaringerne fra min database. Æren er reddet. -- Yesterday I made some new trilingial printouts in Polish, Russian and Danish, and I studied Polish for the first time since September. It was a text taken from the homepage of the zoo in Wroclaw. After that I spent a lot of time on a project concerning my photocollection, which I view through a homemade homepage (placed locally, i.e. not on the internet) - the pages herein are produced automatically/semiautomatically by a database as html files. The problem is that my mother now has got a small computer with a large screen (because her eyesight has deteriorated). My sister and I have put all our pictures (and her own) there for her amusement. But because my sister doesn't have a similar system all her pictures have to be shown through a viewer, i.e. almost full-screen, while mine - via the html system - were shown as much smaller because I had fitted the sizes to my own bad, small and old screen. So now I have also bought a better screen, and I have revised the sizes indicated in my html files so that my pictures also are shown in a big size. And of course still with all the explanations. So this cut my study time short yesterday, but I did watch TV (first a program with Jan Gintberg visiting Southern Jutland - some interesting dialect samples there!, then the quiz QI in English, and even later 'Españoles por el Mundo' from TVE Internacional). Edited by Iversen on 02 January 2012 at 10:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 2677 of 3959 11 November 2011 at 12:57pm | IP Logged |
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SCO: Ah wad like tae contrebute ane piece o guid information for ferrins wha likes the Scots leid but dinna knoo whit tae do wioot a guid dictionar in yer hands: the online Scots Dictionar is back! Whaneer ah needed a wird faer a text in Scots during mine ain first time with this langage ah checked it thare. Than a while back it sudent becam tairible langsome - so langsome indeed that ah first thocht that it had died - in the time while it belaboured an single wird ah coud had baked a cake an ramshed it, an ah woud still hae had time left tae gae tae Scotland an home again. Than this day ah wi ocht speicial reason ah tried it on again, an against expectaition it warked agin as titely as in the guid auld days o yore. In the atween ah have survived by usin me small Scots dictionar from Edinburrae, but it wis a slaw process whilk didnae give the t'ae hauf o the wittins youse git frae this online marle. Edited by Iversen on 11 November 2011 at 1:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5374 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 2678 of 3959 14 November 2011 at 6:44am | IP Logged |
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I just have to post, as an Englishman who has a base in Scotland, to say how much I love reading Scots in my head on this forum, especially from a Danish polyglot who's taken it on like any other language. I say that because to a lot of people in the UK (including myself, to an extent) it's considered to be just a really strong dialect that you're either born with or you don't have, and for that reason I've not heard of anybody I know learning it. There are degrees to which people speak it on top of standard English, which does not help its status as a language rather than a dialect. I have one friend who occasionally uses words from Scots but has a dislike for doing so, while another will - not with me - speak in almost entirely fluent Scots and it becomes incomprehensible to me, for good reason. When the second speaks with me, she speaks probably half Scots and half standard.
Even when it is recognised as an independent language, it's still plagued by having so few second language learners. So I'm glad you're learning it, because it's certainly undervalued in our society. I'm also glad the dictionary's back up! I've seen you mention it before. I'm in need of a translation for one bit: could you tell me what ramshed means in 'ah coud had baked a cake an ramshed it' means, please? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 2679 of 3959 14 November 2011 at 10:41am | IP Logged |
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Translation: "I could have baked a cake and gobbled it up, and I would still have had time left to go to Scotland and back again."
I'm slightly worried that you didn't understand this passage because it suggests to me that the word "ramshed"* - which I definitely have seen somewhere, maybe in the dictionary - isn't in common use in Scotland. However I know from Danish that we have an insane amount of slang expressions for excessive, sloppy and greedy eating, and it could be the case also in Scotland. The sentence also attempts to illustrate another particularity of Scots, namely the use of participles instead of infinitives: "ah coud had baked..". But it is impossible for me to be sure that this is OK in precisely this case - after all it is extremely limited what I have seen about Scots grammar, compared to almost any other language I have tried to learn, so I have to go mostly by my ear (or 'Sprachgefühl'). Byt the way, speaking about eating I see that you also study Icelandic. Yesterday I worked among other things on some Icelandic wordlists, and the first two words here were "skýr" and "skýrhákarl". The first item is a kind of fermented milk, which isn't too bad - I had to taste it during my last visit to Reykjavík and I survived. The Icelandic prediliction for the second one is as incomprehensible to the outside world as the penchant for "surströmming" among Swedes or the ability of some Italians to eat old rotten cheese alive with fat crawling maggots. You can read about Icelandic cooking here and here. I quote from the latter: Chef Anthony Bourdain, who has travelled extensively throughout the world sampling local cuisine for his Travel Channel show No Reservations, has described shark þorramatur as "the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing" he has ever eaten. Chef Gordon Ramsay challenged journalist James May to sample three "delicacies" (Laotian snake whiskey, bull penis, and hákarl) on The F Word; Ramsay then vomited after eating hákarl, although May kept his down. May's only reaction was, "You disappoint me, Ramsay." On season 2's Iceland episode of Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Andrew Zimmern described the smell as reminding him of "some of the most horrific things I've ever breathed in my life," but said the taste was not nearly as bad as the smell. Nonetheless, he did note that hákarl was "hardcore food" and "not for beginners." Scots haggish is a good attempt to make something I wouldn't eat even if I got paid for it, but you must admit that the Icelandic gastronomic traditions beat most other culinary delicacies from around the globe - except maybe "surströmming".. * Suspicion partially confirmed: 'The Scots dictionary' (online) says: ramsh [ramʃ] v. To eat greedily. n. A munch. But 'The Essential Scots Dictionary' on paper only accepts it as an adjective, meaning "rough", "coarse" or "unpleasant". Edited by Iversen on 15 November 2011 at 3:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5374 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 2680 of 3959 14 November 2011 at 4:01pm | IP Logged |
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Honestly, Scots is in no way a formalised language, and its written culture has died out since the days of Robbie Burns, so without many grammars there's little you can do without trying out some Scots with Scots. So, 'had baked' is very likely correct, but it's difficult for me to know as 'had' in that phrase would be pronounced as just 'a'. I understood everything you wrote but ramshed, and me not knowing it is no cause for concern - west end Glasgow (where I live) is definitely the poshest area of the city, and I only know one girl who speaks proper Scots! Once taxi drivers identify my London accent, they too reduce the amount of Scots they use.
I have to tell you, I'm living in Iceland this year and I can't do without at least a bidaily dose of skýr (either the drink or the yoghurt). Skýrhákarl is normally abbreviated to just hákarl. I'm yet to try it and I won't deny it's weird that it's still eaten, but Þorri - the Old Norse winter month - is coming up, during which I'll eat plenty of Þorramatur at a Þorrablót (a sacrifice to the gods). Þorramatur includes commonly, in addition: - svíð (singed sheep's head, common to a few other countries like Kazakhstan) - rúgbrauð (ryebread, rugbrød) - harðfiskur (dried fish that's eaten with butter as a snack, definitely not just during Þorrablót) - blóðmör and lyfrapylsa (the equivalent of black and white pudding, which I love) - flatkaka (a thin unleavened rye flatbread) - hangikjöt (smoked lamb meat, perfect with flatkökur) Only a couple of those items are particularly odd. I think I'm going to be ramshing the flatkökur með hangikjöti on the whole though, as I agree with you, hákarl doesn't seem appealing. Its presence at the Reykjavík weekend market tells me that a fair number of people eat it regularly. Thanks for letting me know about surströmming - I'll look out for it when I'm next in Sweden. Scots haggis tastes brilliant, as do black and white pudding. None of them sound appetising, but they're perfect. Pop up to Scotland one year for Burns night, during which they read out Burns poems, eat haggis, neeps 'n' tatties (turnips and potatoes) and perform ceilidh (pron. kei-li) dances. It's a great tradition. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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