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Chung at work / Chung pri práci | ||
Tags: Azerbaijani | Uzbek | Turkic languages | Uralic Languages | Slovak | Comic Strip/Cartoon | Serbian | Serbo-Croatian | Ukrainian | Croatian | Endangered Language | Linguistics | Hungarian | Finnish | Turkish | Polish | Korean | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 489 of 541 01 January 2015 at 12:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you, stelingo. It indeed took a lot of time and I sometimes dreaded doing updates for the log because it meant that I'd need to plow through some back-alleys of Czech and Slovak grammar and pore over descriptive dictionaries instead of practicing other target languages.
However I did think that it was important to use this many transcripts from the beginning, middle and end of the courses to show the relationship between Czech and Slovak and counter potential accusations of cherry-picking. For sure I could have saved myself some time by taking only examples from the dialogues that showed the most striking differences but... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5834 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 490 of 541 01 January 2015 at 2:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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Maybe at some point in the future you'll be able to do something similar
for the Turkic languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 491 of 541 18 January 2015 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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AZERI
I've been regularly shadowing the audio of the first 4 units (especially Unit 4 which has short dialogues) from the Peace Corps' primer “Introduction to the Azerbaijani Language” while riding the bus to work and have also worked through the first 4 units of “Essentials of Azerbaijani”. I’ve reread what I’ve seen so far a few times to give myself a chance to distinguish between and think about the corresponding Turkish structure/word. Up to now I’ve learned about adjectives, nouns and personal pronouns in Azeri as well as the copula. There are a few striking differences compared to Turkish despite the similarities everywhere else (e.g. Az: Mən ağıllıyam | Tk: Ben akıllıyım “I am clever”; Az: Biz ağıllıyıq | Tk: Biz akıllıyız “We are clever”). *** KOREAN I haven’t given up on Korean and have found some evening classes that I can attend. However I won’t start attending until the spring with everything else going on now (assuming that I get permission from the instructor). Since I’m a bit of a false beginner in Korean, I’ll sign up for the high-beginner class but to get the best chance of getting in (and passing the placement tests or getting the teacher’s permission), I’ll still be working slowly through “Korean from Zero!” and maybe Living Language’s “Complete Korean” this winter. Even though the presentation in the latter seems to improve after the first lesson (not to mention that the Romanization finally disappears after the 5th chapter), I’ve had a tough time getting comfortable with using it. I recently looked into Korean Made Easy for Beginners after seeing it mentioned on a blog. I am now strongly thinking about getting it to substitute “Complete Korean” after having browsed a couple of sample chapters. Its approach seems much more to my liking. POLISH I’ve done the exercises in part II of Unit 4 in “Kiedyś wrócisz tu... część 1: Gdzie nadwiślański brzeg”. These exercises focused on building vocabulary pertaining to food and dietary habits. For the next few months I've arranged to attend Polish classes for intermediate students two evenings per week at a nearby college as a non-degree student. After having talked to the instructor and seen the syllabus, the grammar to be covered won’t be all that challenging. However, my speaking and listening abilities need some work, and being forced to process information and react in Polish (the instructor made it clear that the language of instruction will be Polish) can only help me improve. 
(From Karalusza odporność via Głosy w mojej głowie) 1) “It is said that we’re able to survive a nuclear disaster.” 2) “I don’t believe it. Tobias was recently killed by an ordinary shoe.” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (nominative plural, genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (1st person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 2nd person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** RUSSIAN I've finished Chapters 20 to 23 in “New Penguin Russian Course” since Christmas and among other things worked on the time expressions, verbs of motion, and numerals. Seven more chapters to go, and the end is in sight. I can’t wait until it’ll be over. *** SLOVAK As noted here, I’m compiling a list of verbs that use prefixes in derivation or to indicate changes in aspect. 
(From Ako to je via S H O O T Y - SME (2002-)) - No, no politician will go to jail. Only criminals go there. - basa (basy) “contrabass; prison (colloquial); very (expressive)” (e.g. bláznivý ako basa ~ “crazy as hell”) Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (3rd person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 3rd person plural present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** TURKISH I finished working on Units 28 and 29 in “Turkish Self-Study Course”. I studied how to express a subset of a larger group (e.g. “two of the children”, “ten of the women”) and related adverbs of quantity (e.g. hepsi “all of...”, hiçbir(i) “any; none, not one of...”. A bit of deprogramming for me is that some of these adverbs or quantifiers follow the modified noun. E.g. - biletlerin dördü “four of the tickets” (literally “ticket-[plural suffix]-[genitive suffix] four-[3rd person singular possessive marker]”) - biletlerin hepsi “all of the tickets” (literally “ticket-[plural suffix]-[genitive suffix] all”. *** MISCELLANEOUS I’m in the final stages of putting together my impromptu survey of the oddities of Russian with my background in several Slavonic languages. Now I’m just tightening up a list of false friends, and will post everything after finishing “New Penguin Russian Course” in the next 3 weeks or so. Edited by Chung on 18 January 2015 at 6:49pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4653 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 492 of 541 18 January 2015 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
Err, who are you replying to? Neither me nor tarvos are German, while I can understand a bit of German :P 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 493 of 541 18 January 2015 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Obydwóm. Chociaż nie jesteście Niemcami, rozumiecie po niemecku :-)
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 494 of 541 21 February 2015 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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AZERI
I've been shadowing the audio of Units 4 to 8 in the Peace Corps' primer “Introduction to the Azerbaijani Language” while riding the bus to work and am now nearly halfway through “Essentials of Azerbaijani” by having just finished the 8th unit (out of 18) in the book. Since the last update I've learned about forming questions, using the existential phrases var and yoxdur and a few suffixes. Knowing some Turkish is definitely very helpful when trying to make sense of the explanations of grammar and remembering word order or just words, although as always there are few differences here and there. In addition to trying to keep the languages separate, it's been an increasing pain to know when to spell -ə- rather than -e-. I don't always hear the distinction in the dialogues, and Turkish interference makes it trickier than otherwise. For example, in one of my exercises I wrote qezet rather than qəzet and in another I initially wrote O stolda nedir? before correcting it to O stolda nədir?. *** FINNISH I've worked through units 6 and 7 in Ymmärrä suomea! over the past couple of days. I'm unhappy about how little I've studied the language this year so far but it seems that I'll be able to get back in the swing of things from now on as the demands on my time have gone down. 
(From Viivi & Wagner - Plaza) 1) “Come on! Let's go! - I still have to take a piss.” 2) (sounds of a toilet flushing) 3) “That took a while. - (It was a) big log.” - keppi (kepin, keppiä, keppejä) “cane, stick” - heittää kepillisen “to urinate” (of a man - vulgar) (heitän kepillisen, heitti kepillisen, heittänyt kepillisen) Convention for unfamiliar vocabulary in the comic strip (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular, partitive singular, partitive plural) VERBS: 1st infinitive (1st person singular present tense, 3rd person singular past simple tense, active past participle) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** KOREAN I've restarted my studies with Korean Made Easy for Beginners as my main course and have completed the introductory section on Hangul and Unit 1. Its presentation is a little akin to "Spoken World Korean" but at a gentler pace. A couple of points in the unit were new for me (e.g. 뭐 “what”, 어느 “which”) but I've felt a small sense of accomplishment in getting the hang of using the topic marker 은/ 는 and the polite copula ㅖ요 / 이ㅖ요 which I had seen in the other courses but had difficulty grasping. I've also found that working online with "Korean from Zero" is better for me than doing so offline since the former version presents the audio in male and female voices as well as in a slower version. I can follow the audio much more easily. It was driving me nuts to use the downloadable audio loaded on my .mp3 player while studying the .pdf since most tracks are little more than a second long as these are just recordings of every word in glossary expressed at normal speed. I had to do a lot of clicking and wheeling with the player to review recordings of phrases and dialogues. *** POLISH Since the start of the year, my Polish studies have been restricted to going to classes twice a week and doing homework. I haven't been learning any new grammar, but I've been forced to expand my vocabulary thanks to the material covered in class as our instructor uses handouts from various Polish books and assigns homework related to some aspect of Polish culture or history. I was hoping to continue working through “Kiedyś wrócisz tu... część 1: Gdzie nadwiślański brzeg” and have finished Unit 4 by now but I just haven't had the time and energy to do so. 
(From Komix # 690 via Tori Komix) 1) “Did you call me? - Yes, go take out the garbage. - I can’t! My leg hurts!” 2) “If Justyna Kowałczyk can win a gold medal with a broken leg, then you’ll also manage.” 3) “Dear Justyna, a medal is a medal but you’re making life miserable for children around the world with such behaviour.” - uprzykrzać > uprzykrzyć (uprzykrzam, uprzykrzasz > uprzykrzę, uprzykrzysz) “to make miserable, spol” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (nominative plural, genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (1st person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 2nd person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** RUSSIAN I've finished the remaining chapters in “New Penguin Russian Course” (24 to 30) and among other things worked on the participles, diminutives, negative adverbs and verbal adverbs. With that I have finished my formal study of the language, and feel good enough with the help of a medium-sized Russian-English dictionary to wade through a language textbook published in Russian. Until then, I'll probably read the occasional text in Russian to build up my passive vocabulary but I don't expect to do anything that involved since I have more than enough to deal with in a few other languages. *** SLOVAK As noted here, I’m compiling a list of verbs that use prefixes in derivation or to indicate changes in aspect. 
(From Grogy: Jeseň via S H O O T Y - ...som Grogy) 6) *Atchoo!*. 9) “Sometimes you look as if you like being at work.” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (3rd person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 3rd person plural present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** TURKISH I finished working on Units 30 and 31 in “Turkish Self-Study Course”. I got introduced with what the book calls “present simple” and "Turkish in Three Months" calls “aorist”. As I did some background reading on the subject in “Turkish in 3 Months” I had to shake my head and groan inwardly at the poor choice of terminology because the use of these suffixes for this "tense" goes beyond what the terms "present simple" or "aorist" (used to describe past or non-imperfective actions as seen in PIE, Sanskrit, Greek or BCMS/SC) suggests. E.g. - Oturma odasında uyumazlar. “They do not sleep in the living room.” (as a rule/habit)* - Hafta sonunda doktora giderim. “I'll go to the doctor's on the weekend.” (intention, desire i.e. I'm planning to go, but I haven’t necessarily made an appointment or even have a lingering doubt that I’ll end up going)** - Ne yersiniz? “What would you like to eat?”(~ “What will you have to eat?”) (polite request)***. * Oturma odasında uyumıyorlar. “They’re not sleeping in the living room.” (i.e. at the moment of utterance, they’re sleeping somewhere else or doing something else). However in colloquial Turkish, this particular form (canonically the present continuous) can also be translated as “They do not sleep in the living room” and thus supplant the function assigned to the "present simple"/"aorist". ** Hafta sonunda doktora gideceğim. “I'll go to the doctor's on the weekend.” (certainty or canonical "future tense" i.e. “I’ve booked an appointment and am practically certain that I’ll go there.” *** The nuance of intention or desire as shown in the second example comes through in this third example sentence which readily corresponds to a conditional form) In a nutshell, this "tense" signifies some action that is done because of something intrinsic to the subject, be it some kind of objective ability or subjective willingness. The timing of such action is not quite as important. The “present simple” descriptors fail to cover the last two sentences, while "aorist" with its connotations of completed actions in the past (recalls my experience with the concept in BCMS/SC) has no link to the senses given in the example. Indeed my frustration seems shared by what I found in a study by the linguist Gerd Jendraschek. He proposes a more accurate representation of this "tense" by linguists and instructors of Turkish and cut through the conflation of tense and aspect. Despite some overlap in the functions of the aorist in Greek and the Turkish "aorist"/"present simple" he concludes that it's unhelpful.
Amen, Prof. Jendraschek. This dubious cross-linguistic application reminds me of the problems when trying to teach the Finnish direct object as if it were like the accusative in Latin as noted in this thread. Although I do not share Stolan's sometimes rabid hostility at the state of contemporary linguistics, I'm no less irritated by attempts or conventions to unduly shoehorn one language's feature in terms of another found in another language (especially the elevation of a handful of Indo-European languages as the models/reference points). *** MISCELLANEOUS I’ve finished that impromptu survey of the oddities of Russian with my background in several Slavonic languages. It's divided in the subsequent posts. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 495 of 541 21 February 2015 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Here is the summary of my comparison of Russian with BCMS/SC, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian and Ukrainian. This is not meant as a scholarly or exhaustive study but rather a set of comparisons of certain aspects in Russian with my background in other Slavonic languages. The order of the examples follows the sequence as I encountered them in "Oxford Take Off in Russian" and "New Penguin Russian Course" and I tended to include items if the Russian word or form of expression was strikingly different from what I've learned in other Slavonic languages. Particularly interesting for me are instances where the Russian form stands in contrast to what I observe in the six other Slavonic languages. No doubt though that the comparison would be different if I also include knew at least some Bulgarian, Macedonian or Belorussian among others. Some of the Russian examples wouldn't appear so strange to me if I could draw on experience with those languages.
One point that I'd like to pass on after this study is that Russian can differ a quite a lot from other Slavonic languages, and so the "discount" when learning a second Slavonic language may not be as substantial as sometimes let on. A second point is that these lexical and structural differences combined with the uniqueness of Russian phonology and prosody (especially vowel reduction) show why I think of Russian as the "weirdest" Slavonic language. Anyone is free to dispute, but ultimately I don't believe that my analysis would dissuade anyone from studying Russian if that's what he/she genuinely wants. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 496 of 541 21 February 2015 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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1) Vocabulary - False friends and lexical oddities
Because these are so numerous, I think that it’s better that I restrict my list to ones that I found particularly funny or noteworthy as I encountered them. I’ve also included links at the end of this post to various lists of intra-Slavonic false friends which should provide some amusement to those who are familiar with at least one of the languages examined. Although it might seem that I’ve been disparaging Russian, the acknowledged strangeness in phonology and grammar that I’ve encountered (i.e. strong vowel reduction, divergence between spelling and current pronunciation, oddities in grammar) has encouraged me to dig deeper and to get a better understanding of how Russian compares with other Slavonic languages from a learner’s point of view. — Bugarsko-Hrvatski Lažni Prijatelji (Marija Roglić - bachelor’s thesis in BCMS/SC on false friends between Bulgarian and BCMS/SC including a lengthy list of pairs) — False Friends of the Slavist (Wikibook which also shows distribution of cognates and some false friends using maps) — Польско-русский словарик «ложных друзей переводчика» / Słowniczek polsko-rosyjski „falszywych przyjaciół” (small dictionary in Polish and Russian of false friends between Polish and Russian) — What are some false friends word wise between different Slavic languages (series of posts on Quora with examples) — Wordreference.com - All Slavic languages: False friends (rambling thread with lots of examples) — Lažni prijatelji (short lists of false friends in BCMS/SC comparing words in BCMS/SC with those in Polish and Russian) — Чешские слова - Ложные друзья переводчика (list in Russian of false friends between Russian and Czech in 12 parts) — Ложные друзья переводчика (list in Russian and Slovak of about 800 pairs of false friends between Russian and Slovak) — Slovensko-poľský zábavný slovník Programu Cezhraničnej Spolupráce Poľsko-Slovenská Republika 2007-2013 (small dictionary of Polish for Slovaks including a short list of false friends between Polish and Slovak) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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