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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 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 153 of 541 03 July 2012 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | ||
Nem rossz. Jancsika nem "Harry" angolul, hanem "Johnny". Kend is an archaic folksy form of "you (singular)" while kendő is a shawl. Therefore the singer is basically stating that he/she will not lie close to someone else even though it's windy (and if you're mind's in the gutter, there's probable innuendo i.e. Nem fekszem én kend mellé, Mert túl rövid a kendé "I won't lie down beside you because yours is too short") 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 154 of 541 03 July 2012 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have added another language to my profile (even if it's not available on the forum's list): Meadow Mari.
More information about Mari (in general) can be found on Wikipedia. I will treat this like last summer's foray into Inari Saami and learn just some of the basic features of the language (cf. here for that study of Inari Saami). I will be using the course “Оҥай марий йылме: A Comprehensive Introduction to the Mari Language” which is adapted from a textbook in Russian from 1990-91 by Emma Yakimova and Galina Krylova. This modified course contains 20 lessons and is the first volume of a set of two textbooks on Meadow Mari with English as the intermediary language. The second volume is expected to be released in 2014 at the earliest. I had been thinking of taking up the call for a 6-week challenge starting on August 1 using Meadow Mari but have decided to study outside the challenge because of time constraints. The primary goal is to acquaint myself with the language while the secondary goal is to satisfy a strong philological interest in Uralic languages. I am not expecting to gain anything more than passive limited/survival-level knowledge of this language. If my foray into the language goes well enough, I may continue my studies beyond the first 5 lessons. The book itself is about 350 pages and designed for self-study with answer keys for the exercises and recordings in .mp3 of the dialogues. As I complete each lesson, I plan to summarize what I've learned and will post general observations including ones that touch on comparisons with other Uralic languages that I've studied. *** I haven't studied anything over the last few weeks because of a short trip but I did get a chance to practice my Finnish, Latvian and Polish. While in Latvia I visited a few bookstores and picked up a short textbook of lessons in Latvian and a couple of dictionaries. However I'm not sure if I'll spend too much time on Latvian for the rest of the year as I'll have my hands full again with Finnish and Polish, not to mention Meadow Mari and Ukrainian (the latter in preparation for my planned attendance of a course for false beginners). Hungarian, Northern Saami and Slovak will likely be in a "maintenance phase" combined with occasional discovery of more songs in these languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5347 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 155 of 541 03 July 2012 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | ||
I've heard of Mari, but the Meadow part makes it sound like some sort of conlang. I've read through the wikipaedia article though quickly, so I see it that it basically means West (or was it East?). I suppose the Meadow dialect is for people who live in the lowlands and the 'Hill' dialect is for those who live in and around the Ural mountains. From what I can see, the grammar is reasonably similar to Hungarian. I know it's a Uralic language so it should be but it is more similar than I expected. The lack of articles and thus definite and indefinite verb forms is a notable difference. Anyway I'll be following your notes on the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 156 of 541 03 July 2012 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Mari encompasses two standard variants (languages?) and a few nonstandard forms ("dialects"): Eastern or "Meadow" and Western or "Hill" being geographically determined. From what I've read on Wikipedia and my reference book on Uralic languages, both are quite similar but there are a few differences which can lead to a borderline case of considering them as separate dialects/languages as caused by a certain loss in mutual intelligibility. Apparently the western part of the native Mari speech community is at a slightly higher elevation than the eastern part leading to "Hill Mari" for "Western Mari" and "Meadow Mari" for "Eastern Mari" and has nothing to do with the Urals.
Meadow Mari has more speakers and is what my textbook presents per its introduction. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 157 of 541 17 July 2012 at 6:48am | IP Logged | ||
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FINNISH
I've just started Chapter 17 of "Kuulostaa hyvältä". The chapter's dialogue is a conversation between Jutta and an academic advisor about a course in Finnish literature for the upcoming semester. The grammatical focus is the declension for plural cases. There's also an introduction to the relative pronoun joka. *** HUNGARIAN I've been tempted lately to get back to studying Hungarian and have been browsing through DLI Hungarian Basic Course to see how I could fit in my plans. The nice things about the course is that everything is divided in short chapters and after the first couple of volumes, the amount of vocabulary suitable for soldiers becomes nicely complemented by items suitable for civilians. I've also been browsing the FSI Hungarian Graded Reader and my copy of a Hungarian translation for one of the books in the series "Le Petit Nicolas" to see if I could fit it in my plan as a way to raise my passive vocabulary. *** MEADOW MARI I've finished the introductory unit in the textbook "Оҥай марий йылме: A Comprehensive Introduction to the Mari Language" where I got acquainted with the Cyrillic script and pronunciation. My first impression of Meadow Mari is that it sounds a bit like Russian and Turkish and judging by how I fared with the dictation exercises in the unit (i.e. not that well), I'll have my hands full. This is the first Finno-Ugric language that I've studied where I will deal with non-fixed stress and vowel reduction leading to the related problems of difficulty in reading aloud unfamiliar words correctly and non-phonemic orthography respectively. Stress in Mari usually falls on the word's last full vowel, and in practice this means that the stress can fall on any syllable. The vowel is not full (i.e. undergoes reduction) when it's e, o or ö in the word's final position, or ы (schwa) in any position. Therefore, the stress falls on the syllable immediately preceding the syllable with the reduced vowel. For words consisting of only reduced vowels, then the stress is on the first syllable. For more detail, see here. There are also some consonant alternations (but not consonant gradation as in the Finno-Saamic languages) which will take practice ranging from the fairly simple devoicing of certain final consonants to less obvious alternations involving з (z) and voiceless stops in compounds. For more detail here. However even at this stage I'm reminded of what makes it Finno-Ugric and so far this involves vowel harmony where a suffix's vowel quality matches the quality of the uninflected word's stressed vowel. The cognates that I detected in the introductory unit and then verified were: (for this entry only I'll show a Roman transcription beside the Cyrillic original. N.B. transcribed i sounds like English ee) - вуй (vuy) "head" [cf. oim "temple" (Estonian), oiva "excellent, first-rate" (Finnish), oaivi "head" (Northern Saami)] - вÿд (vüd) "water" [cf. vesi (Estonian, Finnish), víz (Hungarian)] -ep (yer) "lake" [cf. järv (Estonian), järvi (Finnish), jávri (Northern Saami)] (N.B. I keep thinking that this was supposed to be a loanword from a Baltic language cf. jūra "sea" (Latvian)) - изи (izi) "small" [cf. üsa: ei üsagi "not at all" (Estonian - dialectal), (???) ici: ici-pici "itsty-bitsy" (Hungarian)] - кече (keče) "day; sun" [cf. keha "body" (Estonian), kehä "circle, ring" (Finnish)] - кид (kid) "hand" [cf. käsi (Estonian, Finnish), kéz (Hungarian), giehta (Northern Saami)] - лу (lu) "bone" [cf. luu (Estonian, Finnish)] - лыве (ləve) "butterfly" [cf. liblikas (Estonian), lepke (Hungarian)] - омыю (oməyu) "doze" [cf. álom "dream" (Hungarian)] (N.B. apparently these are reflexes of a derivative whose root is *oδa which gave reflexes such as aludni (Hungarian) and oađđit (Northern Saami) "to sleep") - поро (poro) "good" [cf. parem "better" (Estonian), paras "best" (Finnish), buorre "good" (Northern Saami)] - пылыш (pələš) "ear" [cf. fül (Hungarian), beallji (Northern Saami)] - толаш (tolaš) "to come" [cf. tulema (Estonian), tulla (Finnish), (?) találni "to find" (Hungarian)] - ур (ur) "squirrel" [cf. orav (Estonian), orava (Finnish), oar'ri (Northern Saami)] - шыже (səže) "autumn" [cf. sügis (Estonian), syksy (Finnish), ősz (Hungarian), čakča (Northern Saami)] - юмо (yumo) "God" [cf. jumal (Estonian), jumala (Finnish)] - кÿчык (küčək) "short" [Cf. kis "small" (Hungarian)] (N.B. this word is often ascribed as a borrowing from a Turkic language. Cf. küçük "small" (Turkish)) - oлма (olma) "apple" [cf. alma (Hungarian)] (N.B. this word is often ascribed as a borrowing from a Turkic language. Cf. elma (Turkish)) *** UKRAINIAN I completed Unit 1 of "Teach Yourself Ukrainian" in preparation for taking that class which I had talked about earlier. The chapter's material was fairly basic teaching a few greetings and ways to identify objects or people (e.g. "Who's that? - That's...", "What's your name? - My name is..."). Because of constraints on time, I'm planning to devote what little time I have for Ukrainian by relying on "Teach Yourself Ukrainian". Unfortunately, "Beginner's Ukrainian" will continue to tempt me from its place on my bookshelf. *** MISCELLANEA I also confess that my exploration of NOX has been gently getting me to think about Hungarian. Here's a music video (with lyrics) of the group performing the folk-like song, Forogj, világ! (composed by Szabolcs Harmath, lyrics by Attila Valla). Catchy song and good enough to get Hungary into the finals of Eurovision 2005. :-) As mentioned in the last entry, here's a new set of expressions. It was a bit tough this time around for me to choose an suitable set of expressions since I've already introduced several non-vulgar but negative or neutral expressions. However I got inspired after reviewing this post by BiaHuda on a couple of gems from Vietnamese.
I can't help but laugh at Hay Bà Cố. It's absurd but it must work. :-D - Approval, happiness Mahtava! / Mahti! "Awesome!"; Siisti! "Cool!" (Finnish) Tök király! "Awesome!"; Zseniális! "Nice! Brilliant! Genius!" (Hungarian) Ekstra! "Cool! Great!"; Luz! "Nice!"; Zajebiście! "(Freakin') awesome!"* (Polish) Paráda! "Cool!", (To je) husté! "Awesome! Sick! Wicked!" (Slovak) * Depending on whom you talk to, this may be vulgar. For the next entry, I'm not sure if I'll list another set of expressions or interjections as I'm running out of ones which I think would be suitable for the forum (but I can unleash a few, um, more "colorful" ones). ______ 
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| a3 Triglot Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5254 days ago 273 posts - 370 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English, Russian Studies: Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish | Message 158 of 541 17 July 2012 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I've just now noticed you're learning Latvian - is it easy for you? And is it more archaic of the two baltic languages? Wikipedia doesnt seem to have one opinion on this.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 159 of 541 17 July 2012 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Latvian on its own isn't that easy for me but it's not inordinately difficult either. The grammar that I've learned so far shows some similarity to Slavonic languages and German. Vocabulary can be a bit trickier for me to retain because words can seem unconnected to what I already know from other languages - even from "basic" words.
- zivs "fish" (vs. kala (Finnish), ryba (Polish)) (Apparently this noun is cognate with Armenian ձուկ (dzuk) but I would never have guessed that without looking in an etymological dictionary) - koks "tree" (vs. muorra (Northern Saami), arbre (French)) (Apparently this noun is cognate with "high" but I would never have guessed that without looking in an etymological dictionary) - dzert "to drink" (vs. inni (Hungarian), пити (Ukrainian)) (Apparently this noun is cognate with Polish żreć but I would never have guessed that without looking in an etymological dictionary) - nākt "to come" (vs. tulema (Estonian), doći (BCMS/SC)) (Apparently this verb is cognate with "-nough" in "enough" and "-nug" in German "genug" but I would never have guessed that without looking in an etymological dictionary) The toughest part for me is a relative lack of motivation even though I recently came back from a pleasant trip in Latvia (even got there a couple of dictionaries and a beginners' textbook for Latvian). I just get a lot more pleasure from studying my Finno-Ugric languages, and a handful of Slavonic ones. Studying Latvian tends to feel more like a chore, unfortunately. Comparative linguists have gathered that Latvian is less conservative compared to Lithuanian. Encyclopedia Britannica goes into more detail on how Lithuanian is more conservative (I eschew the word "archaic" here since both languages are active at the time of this post!) than Latvian in its article "Baltic Languages". In case it won't work, here're the relevant passages:
Keep in mind also, that we have attestations of Old Prussian and this is treated as having been more conservative than Latvian and Lithuanian. See here in Britannica's article for more details. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 160 of 541 22 July 2012 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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FINNISH
I've just finished Chapter 17 of "Kuulostaa hyvältä". I've also been reading some of the dialogues and notes in "Kato Hei!" to get a bit of passive exposure to colloquial Finnish. *** HUNGARIAN I did half of Chapter 11 in DLI Hungarian Basic Course (basically listened and did the exercises on side A of the corresponding tape). It's nice to have an "easy" Finno-Ugric language in the rotation. :-) *** MEADOW MARI I've finished Lesson 1 in the textbook "Оҥай марий йылме: A Comprehensive Introduction to the Mari Language" where I got acquainted with the cardinal numerals to 50, inessive case and a few phrases used to describe oneself. A few similarities between Mari and Hungarian jumped out at me as I worked through the lesson. The first similarity is that attrubtive adjectives in Mari do not agree gramatically with the modified nouns. E.g. "beautiful city" - "in (a/the) beautiful city" - мотор ола - мотор олаште (Mari) - szép város - szép városban (Hungarian) [Cf. kaunis kaupunki - kauniissa kaupungissa (Finnish)] The second (albeit vague) similarity is that cardinal numbers excepting tens in Mari have two forms with the short form used attributively. In Hungarian, "2" is represented in full by két and kettő. In addition, a third similarity is that substantives in Mari and Hungarian that follow the numerals remain in nominative singular unlike in Finnish where substantives modified by quantities greater than 1 are in partitive singular) E.g. "In (the) city there's one university" - "In the city there're two universities" - "In the city there're three universities" - Олаште ик университет - Олаште кoк университет - Олаште кум университет (Mari) - A városban van egy egyetem - A városban van két egyetem - A városban van három egyetem (Hungarian) [Cf. Kaupungissa on yksi yliopisto - Kaupungissa on kaksi yliopistoa - Kaupungissa on kolme yliopistoa (Finnish)] "one and two is three" (1 + 2 = 3) - икте да кокыт кумыт (Mari - not *ик да кок кум) - egy meg kettő az három (Hungarian - not *egy meg két az három) [Cf. yksi plus kaksi on kolme (Finnish)] A fourth similarity to Hungarian is that Mari does not use the copula for third person singular in present tense in equative sentences. Mari extends this principle to existential sentences (i.e. "there is ~ there are...") unlike Hungarian (and Finnish). "Who's this? - This is Chung." - Tиде кö? - Тиде Chung. (Mari) - Ki ez? - Ez Chung. (Hungarian) [Cf. Kuka tämä on? - Se on Chung (Finnish)] "There's a journalist in the house." - Пöртыштö журналист. (Mari - literally "house-in journalist") [Cf. Talossa on toimittaja (Finnish); A házban van újságíró (Hungarian)] A final similarity is that Hungarian and Mari (and Estonian for that matter) subsume "he", "she" and "it" under one personal pronoun. "He is Ivan Ivanov / She is Elu Ivanovna / It is a horse - Тудо Иван Иванов / Тудо Елу Ивановна / Тудо инше (Mari) - Ő Iván Ivanov / Ő Elu Ivanovna / Ő ló (Hungarian) - T(em)a on Ivan Ivanov / T(em)a on Elu Ivanovna / T(em)a on hobune (Estonian) [Cf. Hän on Ivan Ivanov / Hän on Elu Ivanovna / Se on hevonen (Finnish); Son lea Ivan Ivanov / Son lea Elu Ivanovna / Dat lea heabuš (Northern Saami)] The cognates that I detected in the introductory unit and then verified were: - ий "year" [cf. iga "age" (Estonian); ikä "age" (Finnish); év (Hungarian); jahki (Northern Saami)] - илаш "to live" [cf. elama (Estonian), elää(Finnish), élni (Hungarian); eallit (Northern Saami)] - кö "who" [cf. kes (Estonian); ken (Finnish - poetic); ki (Hungarian); gii (Northern Saami)] - кyштo "where" [cf. ku: kui "how" (Estonian); ku: kuinka "how" (Finnish); ho: hol "where" (Hungarian); go: gos "where" (Northern Saami)] - лÿм "name" [cf. nimi (Estonian, Finnish); név (Hungarian); namma (Northern Saami)] - мo "what" [cf. mi: mis (Estonian); mi: mikä (Finnish); mi (Hungarian); mii (Northern Saami)] - тиде "this" [cf. te: tema "he, she, it" (Estonian); tä: tämä (Finnish); te(g): tegnap "yesterday" (Hungarian); da: dat "it" (Northern Saami)] - тудо "he, she, it; that" [cf. too "that (over there)" (Estonian); tuo "that (over there)" (Finnish); to: tova "away" (Hungarian); duo "over there" (Northern Saami)] - туныктышо "teacher" (derivative) [cf. tan: tanár (Hungarian - derivative)] Numbers 1-10 with the second form being the "long" form for numbers excepting 10s. The comparison to numerals in the other Finno-Ugric languages does not necessarily demonstrate or confirm proof of their being cognates. ик / икте [Cf. yksi (Finnish); egy (Hungarian); okta (Northern Saami)] кок / кокыт [Cf. kaksi (Finnish); két / kettő (Hungarian); guokte (Northern Saami)] ким / кумыт [Cf. kolme (Finnish); három (Hungarian); golbma (Northern Saami)] ныл / нылыт [Cf. neljä (Finnish); négy (Hungarian); njeallje (Northern Saami)] вич / визыт [Cf. viisi (Finnish); öt (Hungarian); vihtta (Northern Saami)] куд / кудыт [Cf. kuusi (Finnish); hat (Hungarian); guhtta (Northern Saami)] шым / шымыт [Cf. seitsemän (Finnish); hét (Hungarian); čieža (Northern Saami)] кандаш / кандаше [Cf. kahdeksan (Finnish); nyolc (Hungarian); gávcci (Northern Saami)] индеш / индеше [Cf. yhdeksän (Finnish); kilenc (Hungarian); ovcci (Northern Saami)] лу [Cf. kymmenen (Finnish); tíz (Hungarian); logi (Northern Saami)] *** UKRAINIAN I completed Unit 2 of "Teach Yourself Ukrainian" in preparation for taking that class which I had talked about earlier. The chapter's material included more information on pleasantries, an introduction to the present tense, and formation of nominative plural. *** MISCELLANEA As mentioned in the last entry, here's a new set of expressions. Since the last set was for usually positive circumstances, here's a set for raising toasts. - Cheers! (or something with that connotation) - Kippis! (Finnish) - Egészségünkre! (Hungarian) - Priekā! (Latvian) - Jugis! (Northern Saami) - Na zdrowie! (Polish) - Na zdravie! (Slovak) - Будьмо! (Ukrainian) (Sorry, I can't find out what is used among the Mari) For the next entry, I'm again not sure if I'll list another set of expressions or interjections as I'm running out of ones which I think would be suitable for the forum (but I can unleash a few, um, more "colorful" ones). ______
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