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Josquin’s Language Symphony (RU, IR, 東亜) | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Gaelic (Irish) | Icelandic | Portuguese | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 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 217 of 646 04 November 2012 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh right, sorry, I missed that. My bad.
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| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7013 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 218 of 646 04 November 2012 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Couldn't have said it better myself. P.S. The offending message has been deleted. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 219 of 646 05 November 2012 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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MONDAY, 05 NOVEMBER 2012
As I already told you, I've got a few free days to spend. Additionally, the weather has been bad lately, so what's there better to do than studying languages? I started by doing the exercises of lesson 11 in Colloquial Russian. They dealt with the verbal aspects in the past and the future tense. They were rather easy, as I already knew the basics or verbal aspect rather well. My only mistake was conjugating выпить according to the и-conjugation instead of the е-conjugation. The translation exercise was a bit more difficult, as there are always many ways to convey the meaning of a sentence into another language, but I did quite well. I was irritated by a verb of motion though and used идти instead of пойти, which would have been correct. After that, I continued with Scottish Gaelic and a thorough revision of unit 3 in the Klevenhaus Lehrbuch. Vocabulary was all about the weather. According to the book, weather is a favourite topic among Gaelic speakers, so if I ever manage to go to the Highlands or the Outer Hebrides, I should know my vocab rather well: 'S e latha brèagha a th' ann. - Chan e, tha i fliuch agus fuair an-diugh. - Ach bha i grianach an-dè. - Bha, bha i blàth agus tioram an-dè... ("It's a beautiful day. - No, it isn't. It's wet and cold today. - But it was sunny yesterday. - Yes, it was warm and dry yesterday...") Besides that, I also listened to the recordings to improve my pronunciation. Finally, I started the translation of chapter 3 of Hrafnkels Saga. The main characters are introduced one by one and Hrafnkell has already made the fateful oath that he would kill any man who would dare to ride his favourite horse Freyfaxi without his permission. Well, he should better have learned to share, because this will seal his own fate. But more about that later. @tarvos: It might interest you that there aren't any words for "yes" and "no" in Gaelic either. Affirmation and negation are expressed by repeating the conjugated (and, in the case of negation, negated) verb, which is mostly a form of "bi" ("to be"). So Gaelic and Breton are close in this aspect, too. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 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 220 of 646 05 November 2012 at 11:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Breton adds a Ya for an affirmative, but you then repeat the verb I think.
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| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 221 of 646 06 November 2012 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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TUESDAY, 06 NOVEMBER 2012
Well, today is Election Day in the US and America's fate for the next four years will be decided. I, however, had another free day to spend and continued my language studies. I started with unit 12 in Colloquial Russian. The text dealt with Russian newspapers and magazines and which of them to subscribe - not very interesting, but quite easy to read. The grammar of the unit consisted of the nominative and genitive plural of nouns and adjectives. I knew most of the stuff already, but some details were new to me, such as the plural of англичанин, which is англичане. The most confusing news was the use of adjectives after два, три, and четыре, which is genitive plural in the masculine and neuter gender, while feminine nouns take their adjectives in the nominative plural. Just as a reminder: Nouns after 2, 3, and 4 are in the genitive singular, so the combination of cases is simply crazy. Is there any rational explanation for this? Whatever, the translation for 'two Russian students' would be два русских студента, if they're male, and две русские студентки, if they're female. This is highly illogical, but grammatically correct. I did only a short revision in Gaelic today. I repeated all the vocabulary from unit 3 and read through unit 4. I didn't learn anything new and I didn't do any exercises either. But there are good news for Old English! I was able to obtain a copy of Stephen Pollington's First Steps in Old English via my uni library, the only step-by-step introduction to OE that seems to be out there. I had a quick glance at it, but haven't really worked with it yet. Nevertheless, I hope that my Old English will take some roots now. The Pollington book should prepare me for some more formal introductions to OE. I didn't work on Hrafnkels Saga today, perhaps again tomorrow. Edited by Josquin on 06 November 2012 at 8:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5054 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 222 of 646 06 November 2012 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
The use of the gen. pl. of adj. with fem. nouns seems correct to me. I remember it seemed strange to me when I first saw in a book две or три тяжелые дивизии, not тяжелых дивизии. There must an explanation to that. The gen. sing. of nouns comes from the nom. dual. Edited by Марк on 07 November 2012 at 11:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 223 of 646 06 November 2012 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks, Марк, for this insight. So, if you usually say две тяжелых дивизий, does that mean you use the genitive plural for the noun as well? Would you also say две русских студенток, where the ending is better recognizable? I would be very much interested in any explanation for this phenomenon in Russian grammar. Maybe the dual is the key to this mystery, but it doesn't seem logical either to use genitive plural adjectives with a nominative dual noun. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5054 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 224 of 646 07 November 2012 at 11:59am | IP Logged | |||||
Oh, sorry. I wanted to say две тяжелых дивизии. Две русских студентки. The system was consistent in the Old Russian but became complicated in the modern language. It's not stable and is changing because it can't work in the way it is written in grammar books. Real numerals govern their nouns in the nom. and acc. but agree with them in other cases. I sometimes wonder how illogical things occur in many languges. Why, for example, do many languages use ordinal numerals with centuries but cardinal ones with years? Or why do you say "to speak English" but not "to write English" and "to read English"? And how can I understand "to speak a language", if a language is a system, a set of elements and rules? Why do you say "Do you speak English?" and not "Can you speak English?"? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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