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Small Expectations | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kidshomestunner Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6404 days ago 239 posts - 285 votes  Speaks: Japanese | Message 121 of 431 27 June 2010 at 2:27am | IP Logged | ||
Did you pick this up from rote knowledge or a combination of paralinguistic wotsists and context? When you say 'saying' do you just mean with her mouth? If words have meaning why don't we get just rid of the words and keep the meaning? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5463 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 122 of 431 27 June 2010 at 5:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't the foggiest, Kidshomestunner! The 10-20% figure I provided was simply me
saying I understood a little of what she was talking about, but not much. Obviously I understood the questions that were posed to her, so I had vague ideas about possible replies. And after that, I just picked out words whose meaning I understood and strung them together in my mind to formulate the gist of her reply. I think I am pretty good at doing this, since I have had lots of practice in various languages, but obviously I wish I could have understood more of the words she was producing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5463 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 123 of 431 30 June 2010 at 9:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday and today have been good, productive days. Over the last few weeks I haven't
really done any systematic, focused study. Instead I've just been reading a few paragraphs of my novel before falling asleep, flicking through the pages of my textbooks rather randomly, and reading a few sentences of articles written in Georgian on various websites. Having come to the (obvious) conclusion that this method was not going to get me anywhere fast, yesterday morning I brought out the big guns! Yes, dear two and a half readers, I pulled my long-neglected copy of Georgian: A Reading Grammar from my bookshelf, went right back to Chapter 2 (Chapter 1 is just the alphabet and pronunciation), and started working through it all over again, reading the grammar explanations and doing the exercises. Over two lunch hours and four train rides I've managed to reach Chapter 5. In the process, I've managed to get the postpositions and their various cases sorted in my head, reminded myself of the conjunctive and conditional screeves, and picked up a bit more vocabulary. I'm now bogged down in verbs that are irregular in the aorist (almost every single bloody Georgan verb, it seems ocassionally), but it makes me feel nice and virtuous to have a bit of focus back in my study. I'm keen to get onto the perfect series and the participles as my lack of knowledge in these areas is seriously hindering my bilingual reading project, but I need to go through all I've learned so far and tidy it all up in my mind before venturing onward. Edited by TixhiiDon on 01 July 2010 at 7:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6141 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 124 of 431 30 June 2010 at 9:24am | IP Logged | ||
I know how you feel--it's the same situation in Greek. I can only think of one verb at the moment (ακούω; to listen, hear) that is regular in the aorist. It was maddening to have to learn that, and I'm very glad that I have enough regular exposure to Greek that I was able to mostly pick it up naturally. But yes, those verbs can be nightmarish, can't they? How does the aorist change the verb in Georgian? In Greek generally you have to... - remove the present tense ending (there is no infinitive in Greek either) - add a syllabic augment to the beginning of the verb if it is two syllables - shift the stressed syllable - perform some sort of random consonant mutation at the end of the verb root - add the appropriate aorist tense ending For example, the verb παίζω (pézo), I play, in the present becomes έπαιξα (épexa), I played, in the aorist. And comparatively this is considered a pretty regular verb! Luckily there are really only those two forms of the verb, for continuous and simple, which you can then apply to other tenses. I suppose it's probably like perfective and imperfective in the Slavic languages. So, from one verb root you have: - present (παίζω; pézo) - imperfect (έπαιζα; épeza) - continuous future (θα παίζω; tha pézo) - continuous subjunctive (να παίζω; na pézo) - present participle (παίζοντας; pézondas) And from the other root you have: - aorist (έπαιξα; épexa) - simple future (θα παίξω; tha péxo) - simple subjunctive (να παίξω; na péxo) - past participle (παίξει; péxi) I'm sure that the notoriously complicated Georgian verbs dwarf the Greek verbs' complexity by a long shot, but I just wanted to sympathize with you. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5463 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 125 of 431 01 July 2010 at 1:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Ellasevia, thanks for the sympathy. The example you give for Greek verbs actually
makes me think Georgian is not so bad after all!! That sounds pretty bad! It's difficult for me to give an example of a Georgian verb that is regular in all forms since I am still very much a beginner and don't actually know how to form all of the tenses yet. However, I'll try to give you an example as it will be good practice for me, as well as hopefully being interesting for you and others. ააშენებს (aashenebs) means "He will build it". The future tense third person singular form of the verb is the best point to start from in the absence of infinitives. The first ა is the so-called preverb, indicating future tense in this case. The second ა is the "theme" vowel, indicating the direction of the action (in this case, ა is neutral and does not indicate a specific direction). შენ is the verb root. ებ is the present/future formant used in the present and future series' of tenses, and ს is the third person singular subject suffix. To form the present tense, simply remove the first ა, leading to აშენებს (ashenebs) "He builds it". So far so simple. To form the imperfect, change ს to და, leading to აშენებდა (ashenebda) "He was building it". For the aorist, add the preverb again, remove the present/future formant, and add ა, leading to ააშენა (aashena) "He built it". In this tense, the subject changes from the nominative to the ergative case, so "He" changes from ის to მან, although pronouns are often omitted. So, as you see, it's not terribly difficult when the verb is regular. The problem is that all verbs without a vowel in the root are irregular, some verbs (but not all) with "e" in the root shift to "i" in the aorist, and then you have the four conjugation types, all of which form the aorist differently. For example: Group I verb: ააშენებს - ააშენა Group II verb: დაიწყება - დაიწყო (daitsq'eba - daitsq'o) "It begins" - "It began", which is irregular) Group III verb: ლაპარაკობს - ილაპარაკა (lap'arak'obs - ilap'arak'a) "He talks" - "He talked" Group IV verb: აქვს - ჰქონდა (akvs - hkonda) "He has" - "He had" Not to mention that you can add direct object and indirect object markers to the verb for forms like გიშენა (gishena), which mean "He built it for you", where the "g" indicates second person singular object and the "i" is the theme vowel indicating that the action is performed in the direction of someone else. I'm going to stop before I confuse myself.... Edited by TixhiiDon on 01 July 2010 at 1:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kidshomestunner Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6404 days ago 239 posts - 285 votes Speaks: Japanese | Message 126 of 431 07 July 2010 at 5:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Just out of curiosity
As a percentage how many Garaigo are there in Georgian? How do names and phone numbers work? How are phone numbers read out? Do native speakers think it is ridiculously long winded to say ოთხმოცდაცამეტი and such the like? Is this the first time you have learnt a vigesimal counting system? Is chocolate basically chocolate and is coffee basically coffee? I think that these are the only two words which are transparent in all languages, as Taxi was long kicked off my list.... Are there any Georgian words in Enlish: I will be researching this myself but just wondering if you had come across any... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5463 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 127 of 431 07 July 2010 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't know the percentage of gairaigo in Georgian, but it seems to be quite small. There are a few Russian words like ტრამვაი (tramvai) and პარიკმახერი (parikmakheri, which I'm pleased about as this was always one of my favourite words in Russian) and of course new English words like კომპიუტერი (kompiuteri) and ინტერნეტი (interneti), and apparently there's quite a few words from old Persian which I wouldn't recognize anyway since I don't know any Persian old or new, but on the whole the language seems to have developed its own vocabulary without much outside interference. Names are quite regular - first name first, family name second. Apparently people rarely use their family names so you end up with constructions like Mr. Giorgi and Mrs. Nino. Phone numbers I have no idea. I'll let you know the minute a Georgian person gives me his/her phone number! I expect it doesn't occur to natives that their numbering system is particularly long- winded. Yes, it's the first time I've learned a vigesimal counting system, unless you include French with quatre-vingts and so on. I like the Georgian numbering system as it is so transparent. In სამოცდათერთმეტი (71), for example, სამ is 3, ოც is 20, და is "and", თ is 10, ერთ is 1, and მეტი is "more", so the word itself basically means "three twenties and ten plus one more". Chocolate is შოკოლადი (shokoladi), which seems to have come from Russian, and coffee is ყავა (q'ava), which may be a little difficult to recognize with the weird glottalized consonant ყ at the beginning but isn't far removed from all other languages. As for Georgian words in English, great question! Don't know the answer but I'm curious to find out so let me know what you find. Edited by TixhiiDon on 07 July 2010 at 1:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5463 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 128 of 431 07 July 2010 at 1:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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In other news, I am continuing to plough through the Reading Grammar. Naturally the
pace has slowed due to steadily increasing difficulty, but I'm just about to finish Chapter 7, after which I will finally be onto the perfect series and participles. The sentences for translation in the Aronson book are utterly hilarious. I keep thinking he must have been writing them on purpose to give his students a laugh. A couple of gems from today are "I cannot see you all without glasses, dear friends!" and "I shall stop this young man on the street. Perhaps he might define this Georgian word for me. But he is a foreigner and can't define the word". My bilingual reading project is a bit meh - not quite as fantastically effective as I'd hoped. I get through a couple of paragraphs fine and then start getting completely lost. I'm picking up some vocab though, and getting to grips with the verb "say", which must surely be the most irregular verb of all irregular verbs on this good Earth. And the most exciting news (you'd all better sit down now) is that I took the plunge and sent an email to my teacher asking if he or his Georgian wife would give me private lessons. He didn't reply for ages and I thought I'd put my foot in it and caused all sorts of embarrassment, but then today he replied saying either he or his wife would be happy to teach me privately. I'm well chuffed, as we say in the North of England (where I haven't lived for about 20 years, but that's by the by). It looks like I'll be starting next month, which means I'll be doing my group class and my private lesson side by side until the end of September, but that's OK. Depending on the content of the private lesson (and its cost, of course), I might even continue with both. We're having another party at a different Georgian restaurant in Tokyo with my classmates on Saturday after school (where else in the world are there two Georgian restaurants? Apart from Georgia, of course, and probably Moscow. Good old Tokyo). I will report back depending on the degree of my hangover. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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