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Tarvos - TAC 2015 Pushkin/Scan

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tarvos
Super Polyglot
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China
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 Message 393 of 1511
20 December 2012 at 12:39am | IP Logged 
I am not the team leader. But there is a Russian team open; mine is full, you can sign up
for team 2 if you wish. Go to the sticky thread and post your wishes. You will soon enter
the mighty world of TAC.
1 person has voted this message useful



Solfrid Cristin
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Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
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 Message 394 of 1511
20 December 2012 at 7:50am | IP Logged 
Beaky48273 wrote:
Hi! I'm a beginner learning Russian, can I join this team?


Hi!

I just saw that they have opened a thread for the second Russian team now, so if you first sign up in the sign
up thread, and then go the thread of Russian team 2 and introduce yourself, you are in. Welcome to the
forum! Be active here, and you will have a fantastic time, and learn a lot!
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
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China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
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Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 395 of 1511
20 December 2012 at 11:34pm | IP Logged 
Le Breton sans peine (until lesson 49)

Exam is over, I am tired, and tomorrow we start on the second wave of Assimil Le Breton
sans peine. A second wave can never be a bad thing, because I notice I miss a word here
and there that I have picked up - and it can only be good that you review things. I
also learned apparently that you are supposed to do the translation wave back aloud; I
never do them aloud. I always translate them in writing instead (which according to
Assimil is facultative, but I write a lot more often than I speak in general). We'll
have to find a solution for that but I am going to write down the translations in any
case. I prefer writing things down. It is how I work.

Another annoying thing this book does is introduce new words in the revision lessons.
There's a reason it says Révision at the top of the lesson, bozos. No need to introduce
words you DON'T know in the translation exercises, because no, they are not always
obvious from the context, and no, there is no bilingual text to translate, the point of
the revision dialogue is to translate it yourself (also, the revision dialogues for
some reason are three times as long as the regular dialogues. 19 lines for this one.
That is a lot, even for Breton which forms quite compact sentences). I had to look them
up and rack my brain to figure out where I had seen that word. Turns out I hadn't, they
were new, and were to be introduced later. That's annoying and this is not the first
time that has happened to me. Fix it.


Breton Grammar Notes

So. Breton has two features that I have not yet got the hang of (well, that is to say,
three; but speaking Breton is somewhat enigmatic anyway) One of those is mutations; and
it seems to be like the Rubik's Cube of Breton. Instead of merrily changing the ending
of words (which happens...for...verbs...and...plurals, which are 99% regular), they
change the beginning. This has two important consequences:

1) I always have to check which mutation it is (there are four plus an exception), what
words cause what mutation (and also whether they cause adjectives to mutate along), and
although the mutations follow a fairly logical sound pattern of voiced/voiceless most
of the time, it's kind of hard to hear that initially when you don't know the words.
When you know that 80% of words mutate (sigh), that kind of makes translating from the
audio quite hard (and I have had to revert to listening and keeping the text alongside
to make sure I do not miss a word in the translation, and even then I miss a bit).

But overall the rules for mutations are fairly logical, although they are kind of
random regarding what triggers which mutation. The most common one is the softening
mutation, which happens after articles, some prepositions (da, war among others), the
verbal particle a, and also to adjectives modifying feminine nouns (you know it's
feminine because it mutates after the article, as I have explained before here). It
also occurs after the possessive da (ton/ta/tes) and a shitload of other places. But I
don't know them yet.

The mixed mutation is easy; it only occurs after the verbal particles e and o, and the
word ma (if). It thus only ever inflects a verb. O marks the progressive form and is
always recognisable; e is used in some instances when the word leading the sentence is
not a subject, a verb, an object, or an "objet anticipé". Basically if you are
emphasing something through a dative construction, place/time, etc, you use "e".

The "mutation renforçante" hardens up consonants. This one occurs after ho (votre), and
a few other cases which we have not seen yet (but I checked it in the grammar index of
Assimil and it looks like this one is not very interesting either to learn; a few
simple rules).   

The spirant mutation also looks like it will be a nightmare to deal with. We'll see.

Thing number two that is annoying:

Declined prepositions! I have never seen this in my entire life, this is actually (just
like mutations are) a totally alien concept to me. Only one thing saves this; it is
very similar to verb conjugation, and thus most forms sound logical after a while (they
tend to use the endings from the être verb, bezañ). There are two types based on two
different prepositions. Knowing the ones for a, da, evit and gant is pretty useful
since those prepositions are pretty much everywhere.

But I know the one for "da" pretty well now.

Din
Dit
Dezhañ
Dezhi
Dimp
deoc'h
dezho

You cannot just thunk a personal pronoun after a preposition, you have to conjugate it
according to person.

I have not learned so much about anything else except that -ez makes a word feminine
and also that the real hang of it is gotten by just getting the prepositions and
mutations right.

We still have to learn some verb forms (future, past, conditional) but they are pretty
much all super-regular and "no big deal". The question is how to use them, of course.
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liammcg
Senior Member
Ireland
Joined 4593 days ago

269 posts - 397 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 396 of 1511
20 December 2012 at 11:48pm | IP Logged 
Re. mutations, they can be a tricky bugger! Can you give some quick examples if you
don't mind, tarvos? The Irish and Scottish writing systems cater well for mutations in
that they simply add the new consonant onto the noun so that although you pronounce the
new consonant, you still know what the original noun was, making it easy to look up in
a dictionary


E.g.

table=bord(Irish)
on the table= ar an mbord NOT ar an mord

In the phrase, "ar an mbord" the b is no longer pronounced, but it is still there to
highlight what the noun is in its nominative form. I've heard that in Welsh this isn't
the case, what about Breton?
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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
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China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
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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 397 of 1511
21 December 2012 at 12:25am | IP Logged 
Nope. An example is

war ar gador (on the chair),

chair is kador. The k mutates to a g because kador is feminine and after an article
feminine nouns mutate (softening from k to g. Breton does not have a case system for
nouns. Nouns are either singular, plural, or mutated forms of singular/plural.

Edited by tarvos on 21 December 2012 at 12:27am

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Josquin
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Germany
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 Message 398 of 1511
22 December 2012 at 12:17am | IP Logged 
In Scottish Gaelic, inflected prepositions can be explained by a combination of the preposition and the personal pronoun, so "aig" ("by") and "mi" ("I") become "agam". This helped me a lot understanding the concept. Does this work in Breton, too, or are the inflected forms of prepositions so strange that they are not recognizable as a combination of preposition and personal pronoun?
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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4696 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 399 of 1511
22 December 2012 at 10:06am | IP Logged 
They are not really derived from the personal pronouns, but rather more from the verb
endings of the verb bezañ in the present tense (like the forms based on the root ema-).
To give you the declension of da (to, I guess - it's a pronoun that marks movement or a
dative)

din
dit
dezhañ
dezhi
dimp
deoc'h
dezho.

And now the declension of the verb

Emaon
Emaout
Emañ
Emaomp
Emaoc'h
Emaint.

The -o for the 3rd person plural is actually also the marker of the possessive pronoun
for 3rd person plural (which is just o).
1 person has voted this message useful



Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5323 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 400 of 1511
22 December 2012 at 10:16am | IP Logged 
I'd love to chip in with an encouraging remark, but you are way over my head right now, so I think I'll simply
go with a "keep up the good work".!


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