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Some nice words for Georgian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| joan.carles Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6333 days ago 332 posts - 342 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, EnglishC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Hungarian, Russian, Georgian | Message 9 of 22 10 August 2008 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I wouldn´t say it´s horrible, it´s just that, as FrancescoP puts, it´s not "been digested for didactical purposes".
Songs and texts are great, but when you need to know how all this works, Hewitt proves a good source of explanations. Ok, I read that example sentences could have been more authentic, more real life phrases and could have included some dialogues, but at least you´ll know how the language works. Edited by joan.carles on 10 August 2008 at 8:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Ham Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5989 days ago 21 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 10 of 22 11 August 2008 at 4:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I am also interested in Georgian as it seems very unusual and unique. I believe these resources have been posted somewhere on this website before but I feel they are relevant to the topic:
some audio and a grammar Hope they are useful! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| FrancescoP Octoglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5950 days ago 169 posts - 258 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, German, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Norwegian Studies: Georgian, Japanese, Croatian, Greek | Message 11 of 22 11 August 2008 at 5:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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No, really, Hewitt’s book isn’t really that bad. In some cases it’s lots of help. Let’s rather say it’s kind of wanton and unpredictable. The less crooked example you may expect to get is “Givi cut Mzia’s hair with a knife to decorate his bedroom”. Some also say there are mistakes and idiomatic inaccuracies, but a revised edition came out a couple of years ago so I guess most of them have been fixed. Compared to Aronson’s (by all means superb) manual, which is pretty theoretical and kind of abstract, Hewitt’s is closer to real life situations and spoken Georgian. Use with caution, but use it freely.
Thank you IbanezFire for the peace corps link. I had missed out on that one but it looks really well made! Now I would like to exemplify some of the things I said yesterday. I don’t have time to post real sentences, but here are some verbal forms broken down into basic components Here’s a simple one: 1) ga-v-ak’et-eb-t (we’ll do it) ga- is the prefix, that is the future/perfective marker. v-….-t is the 1st person plural circumfix ak’et is the root, meaning “to do” eb is the so-called present/future stem formant or postradical integrator, it completes the root for pres/fut tenses, otherwise it falls away 3rd person singolar object (it / him) is automatically implied when no other objects are stated 2) mo-m-z’er-e-t! (write me, folks!) mo- is the prefix, denoting movement towards the speaker (this way) m- is the indirect object marker for the 1st person (to me, for my benefit) z'er is the root, meaning “to write” e indicates that the verb is in aorist/imperative form -t is the plural marker 3) v-i-cxovr-eb-t (we are going to live) v-…-t is the 1st person plural circumfix, it marks the subject i- is a so-called versional vowel, it turns (lat. vertere) the action towards the subject. In this case it is a part of a future circumfix: -i-…-eb. It is used to create a future form for verbs that can’t take a prefix cxovr is the root, meaning “life / to live” eb this time is not a P/F stem formant, but a part of the above mentioned circumfix Form 3 – an alternative future for verbs that can’t take a prefix – comes in turn from a causative form: 4) v-a-cxovr-eb-t (we make him/ them live) The preradical vowel -a- implies that the subject is causing somebody else to do something By substituting the versional vowel -i- for -a- the causative action turns towards the subject itself, that’s why “vicxovrebt” (we are going to live) might be literally translated as “we are making ourselves live”. That’s how verbs that can’t take a prefix (the easiest way to create a future) may get a future form anyway And this is still surface-scratching… ;( P.s. Of course the dashes are only for clarity! Actual verb forms are unbroken, like "vacxovrebt", etc. You have to pulverize them in your head to get them right Edited by FrancescoP on 11 August 2008 at 5:48am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| zhiguli Senior Member Canada Joined 6441 days ago 176 posts - 221 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 12 of 22 11 August 2008 at 7:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
There's never a bad time to discuss a language but it's probably not a good idea to mix politics into it. Welcome to the forum, BTW.
Because most people's perception of foreign languages only extends so far and usually not to languages that are spoken by less than 5 million people or outside Europe. Besides, there are other lesser-known languages that are arguably more difficult (Salish languages, Navajo, Northwest Caucasian languages like Abkhazian or Kabardian). And basically, it's impossible to know what the hardest language is because it's a very subjective thing. The difficulty of a given language (say, Chinese) doesn't have to have anything to do with its grammar. I've long been interested in Georgian. It's actually one of the reasons I started learning Russian, because there's a lot more material in that language than there is in English. But while I've continued with Russian I haven't been able to get back into learning Georgian; it IS a difficult language, not very useful or popular, and the native speakers I've come across haven't been very encouraging...they just can't understand why anyone would want to learn such a "useless" language. So in that sense it appeals to a very small, "hardcore" group. I did manage to get to the point of being able to read with a dictionary, and while it's certainly difficult to generate sentences spontaneously (especially without any real practice) it's not so difficult to *understand* it passively, because its grammar is such that every little bit of information is explicitly stated. There are many, many rules to be sure, but if you know them you can easily "crack" the code.
I have this book and while it's good as a reading book it doesn't work as a textbook because it doesn't teach you how to actually apply the grammar and generate your own sentences.
The grammar parts are still useful, but Aronson does a better job of laying it out IMHO, and the crooked dialogues and examples (and the price) are enough to make me stay far away from it. Though even the dialogues (written by a native Georgian) in Aronson's continuing course were criticized by a Georgian friend as a bit artificial and old-fashioned. But that's to be expected with textbooks, none of them are perfect. Also see this thread for links to other resources. And I know this is a thread about Georgian but I have to ask - anybody ever tried learning a North Caucasian language (like Abkhazian, or Chechen, or Avar)? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| FrancescoP Octoglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5950 days ago 169 posts - 258 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, German, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Norwegian Studies: Georgian, Japanese, Croatian, Greek | Message 13 of 22 11 August 2008 at 9:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Well, of course there are obvious reasons why Georgian is and will remain a minor language. Mine was a rhetorical question, a figure of speech, it's not that I'm actually "wondering" why it's not widely known. I began in that key because some of the cactus-based difficulty ratings I accidentally found somewhere on this site looked a little strange to me. According to my personal experience, on that meter there are languages that might easily get seven or eight (you mentioned some). This said, I'm sorry that I ventured into this kind of fatuous comparisons because I stopped liking the "who's the strongest, who's the tallest?" sort of questions when I was 10. Just wanted to talk about a particularly extreme linguistic experience of mine.
Apart from that, yes I mean to study Abkhzian or Avar somewhere in the future. Before I come to that, however, I would like to get a taste of the other thee karvelian languages (Laz, Mingrelian, Svan) and to dig deeper into georgian regional dialects, some of which have literary relevance. In my case I found natives to be extremely collaborative, once they realize that you're serious about the language. I would never have made it over the cliff without them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| joan.carles Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6333 days ago 332 posts - 342 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, EnglishC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Hungarian, Russian, Georgian | Message 14 of 22 11 August 2008 at 10:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Well, I do. Of course not with the intensity with which I study other languages like Russian or Hungarian. But I have a special interest in Caucasic languages, not only North and South Caucasian, but also Indoeuropean (Ossetian and Armenian) and Turkic (Azeri). Some time ago I started Adygha with school books and methods that a friend from Maykop sent me, but like Georgian these are difficult languages, mostly as regards to phonetics and syntax. Like you, I've progressed with Russian mostly because there's way more resources and people to talk to, actually I have some Russian friends and colleagues here in Canada with whom I practice the language, than in any of the North Caucasian languages. Some weeks ago I came across this Chechen forum www.selard.com, where people write in Chechen and also Russian, which makes life easier than if it was just Chechen. In my wish (but not so realistic) list, I have the following target languages, which of course I don't expect to master,but just want to have at least a flavour of: Ossetian, Chechen, Avar, Azeri, Armenian, Georgian, Abkhazian, Adyghe. On Chechen/Ingush (actually Ingush), check out www.teptar.com as well, I found some songs which have the Ingush lyrics with Russian translation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| peterlin Tetraglot Groupie Poland peterlin.jzn.pl Joined 6415 days ago 54 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Polish*, Persian, English, Russian | Message 15 of 22 12 August 2008 at 7:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Thought it would be a good idea to drop by and say hello :) I've dabbled with a couple of NWC (various variants of Adyghe but mostly Kabardian) and NEC (Avar, Lezgi, Lak, various Lezgic languages) languages (and also, like joan.carlos with other languages of the Caucasus). Apart from Lezgi there isn't much to say about my abilities. This is the biggest Lezgi portal on the web: Sharvili 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| joan.carles Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6333 days ago 332 posts - 342 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, EnglishC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Hungarian, Russian, Georgian | Message 16 of 22 12 August 2008 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Didn´t know this one, thank you peterlin. By the way, good point regarding the naming Lezgi instead of Lezgian. Nobody says Swahilian, either. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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