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Chung
Diglot
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Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 249 of 541
14 January 2013 at 5:15am | IP Logged 
FINNISH

I've finished Chapter 28 of "Kuulostaa hyvältä". The chapter's dialogue involved Anna helping Jutta get to a clinic and pick up medicine on her behalf after Jutta had come down with a respiratory infection. The dialogues introduced the past conditional (called "conditional perfect" because of the structural analogy with "perfect" tenses of Romance and Germanic languages in conjugating the auxillary verb and placing it adjacent to the past participle), possessive structures to describe physical condition or state of mind (e.g. minulla ei ole jano cf. German Ich habe keinen Durst "I'm not thirsty") and using the 1st infinitive in translative to express result clauses (e.g. Mä lähden Inariin, jotta ostan uuden inarinsaamen kielen oppikirjan. ~ Mä lähden Inariin ostaakseni uuden inarinsaamen kielen oppikirjan. "I'm going to Inari to buy the new textbook of Inari Saami").

This last point is one of mild fascination for me since other languages that I'm familiar with use a conjugated verb or the infinitive which has little to no possibility of being inflected using case endings or possessive markers (even Hungarian infinitives are quite limited in comparison since the possibility to add possessive suffixes to them is limited to certain structures e.g. El kell mennem ~ "necessary to leave-my" ~ "I have to leave" (kell "[it] is necessary", elmenni "to go away", -m (1st person singular possessive suffix))



(From Oswald - Sarjakuva)

1) "There's something wrong in my brakes."
2) "Hmmm... The brake pads are worn out. Just get my toolbox and I'll change them for new ones."
3) "Do I look like some kind of servant? Why don't you get it yourself?"
4) "Modern parents are spoiled rotten bums."

- jarru (jarrun, jarrua, jarruja) "brake"
- jarrupala (-palan, -palaa, -paloja) "brake pad"
- kulua (kulun, kului, kulunut) "to wear out; be consumed"
- hemmotella (pilalle) (hemmotelen, hemmoteli, hemmotellut) "to spoil (rotten)*

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

*pilalle hemmoteltu is the passive past participle and can be reanalyzed as a noun understandable literally as "spoiled rotten person" - pilalle hemmoteltuja is the partitive plural of this noun derived from a participle. By luck this is a timely application of what I saw recently in Chapter 24 and Chapter 27 of "Kuulostaa hyvältä".

***

HUNGARIAN

I have finished Selection 2 of "FSI Hungarian Graded Reader". The text was an adapation of an ancedote by Mark Twain where a man one could be his own grandfather. This was the first that I had heard of it and it was tricky for me to follow in Hungarian. The accompanying exercises unsurprisingly tested my grasp of kinship terms and their sometimes irregular possessive forms. I recommend that anyone with at least a high-beginner's knowledge of Hungarian read it by clicking on the link above because it's entertaining in its own right. I also completed a few more exercises from “Magyarországon szeretnék dolgozni” in eMagyarul-2 which focused on the present participle suffix -ó / -ő.



(From SNOOPY és Charlie Brown "HIVATALOS" MAGYAR OLDALA)

1) "When you are unhappy, Charlie Brown, it's probably your dog's fault."
2) "Your dog ought to bring happiness."
3) "Maybe I could give a balloon to him."
4) "Sometimes I wonder if I myself know what would bring happiness."
5) "Get the ball!"
6) "With dogs it generally works."

Convention for unfamiliar vocabulary in the comic strip (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary)

- boldoggá tesz (boldoggá tenni) "to make [sb/sg] happy" (-vá/-vé suffix (-v assimilates here to stem's final consonant) is for translative and as the name suggests is used to denote change to a certain state)
- lufi (lufija) "(toy) balloon" (informal, "cute" way of referring to a balloon as when talking about it with a young child)
- tűnődik (tűnődni) "to ponder; wonder"
- bejön (bejönni) "to come in" (standard); "to succeed, work out" (colloquial)

NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (nouns only: nominative possessive for 3rd person singular)
VERBS: 3rd person singular present tense (infinitive)
ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given

***

TURKISH

I finished Unit 2 of "Teach Yourself Beginner's Turkish". The unit's dialogues and notes introduced colours, numbers from 10 to 100, common phrases for ordering drinks, and use of var "there is/are/exists" and yok "there is not/are not/do not exist".

***

OTHER LANGUAGES

The kinship terms in that Hungarian text made me add a list of kinship terms in the guide to Uralic languages. Even though I've learned the basic terms at one time or another in all of the languages invovled (I mentioned many of them here for Meadow Mari and Northern Saami), gathering them in the guide took longer than I had expected primarily because I had to look around on the internet to find out how to describe the cousins and some of the in-laws since my textbooks don't go into that much detail on the subject. This meant a fair amount of digging in Mari-Russian <> Russian-Mari dictionaries, and looking at family trees in Estonian and Finnish. Time well-spent... The former meant some "triangulation" for me to figure out the definitions in Russian using what I know from other Slavonic languages and a bit of practice in reading Cyrillic even though it wasn't Ukrainian Cyrillic. Since my next deadline for Hungarian is in February, I'm now free to study Northern Saami in its place and so am on track to finish Chapter 1 of Davvin 3 by the end of this month with reference/review of relevant lessons in Davvin 1 and 2 as needed.

I have also decided to start limited review of BCMS/SC with an eye to travelling again in the former Yugoslavia later this year. Because I know that I can't reliably please everyone outside myself and have long scorned nationalism, I'll be a bit impudent and puff up my profile by showing that I'm studying 3 more languages in Croatian, Serbo-Croatian and Serbian (I would have made it 5 if the forum's database had Bosnian and Montenegrin).

To minimize the risk of boring myself by reviewing things using the same dialogues and exercises from the "Croatian" courses that I was using a while ago, I'll be dipping into a fair bit of "Serbian" material this time. However I won't likely be doing much more than occasionally listening to dialogues in BCMS going to and from work and finishing a few pages of exercises from a textbook every two weeks. It's similar to how I'm working on Slovak but it'll be less intense since I already have quite a lot. For textbooks, I'm most likely to use "Beginner's Serbian" which is in a small but growing list of textbooks published by Hippocrene that are useful or even as good overall as the best examples from "Teach Yourself" or "Colloquial". "Beginner's Croatian" and "Spoken World Croatian" look good too as does "TY Serbian" even though I used it a bit during my studies of "Croatian" to get some practice with Serbian Cyrillic. I may end up working in small doses with all of these courses. Ronelle Alexander's textbook on BCS unfortunately will sit on my shelf largely unused since it's a bit more involved than what I'm planning to do for the next little while (although it still does look nice with the other books).

As for my log, there'll be occasional entries about my progress in BCMS/SC plus a comic strip or cartoons over the coming weeks at least since my passive ability is decent enough not to make understanding and including such cartoons an overly onerous task.
______



Edited by Chung on 14 January 2013 at 7:05am

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cathrynm
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 Message 250 of 541
14 January 2013 at 7:38am | IP Logged 
I like your comic strip method here. Also I enjoy your description of using infinitive + possessive form.   
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sans-serif
Tetraglot
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 Message 251 of 541
14 January 2013 at 8:36am | IP Logged 
"Mä lähden Inariin, jotta ostan uuden inarinsaamen kielen oppikirjan." doesn't sound grammatical to me. If I had to convey the same thought without ostaakseni, I'd go with "Mä lähden Inariin, jotta voisin ostaa..." or "Mä lähden Inariin, jotta saisin ostettua...", though neither sounds quite as natural as the original. It seems to me that 'jotta' (almost?) requires the the verb to be in the conditional mood.

I'm glad to see you're enjoying Oswald.
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Chung
Diglot
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Joined 6906 days ago

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Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 252 of 541
14 January 2013 at 8:57am | IP Logged 
sans-serif wrote:
"Mä lähden Inariin, jotta ostan uuden inarinsaamen kielen oppikirjan." doesn't sound grammatical to me. If I had to convey the same thought without ostaakseni, I'd go with "Mä lähden Inariin, jotta voisin ostaa..." or "Mä lähden Inariin, jotta saisin ostettua...", though neither sounds quite as natural as the original. It seems to me that 'jotta' (almost?) requires the the verb to be in the conditional mood.

I'm glad to see you're enjoying Oswald.


Hitto! Mä katsoin juuri oppikirjasta ja sä oot oikeassa.
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Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 6906 days ago

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20 sounds
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Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 253 of 541
18 January 2013 at 8:05am | IP Logged 
BCMS/SC

I've finished Chapter 1 of "Beginner's Serbian" and Chapter 2 of "Teach Yourself Serbian". I even got on enough of a roll that I did the supplementary speaking exercises of Unit 1 of "Spoken World Croatian". "Beginner's Serbian" covered a fair bit in that first chapter (e.g. interrogative sentences, negation, present tense) but for my purposes it's just fine for review. With my background from having finished "Teach Yourself Croatian" and the Croatian section of "Introduction to the Croatian and Serbian Language" what I reviewed was old hat. What I really enjoy about "Beginner's Serbian" and "Spoken World Croatian" is the slight bias toward colloquial expression or informal situations (but not loaded with slang). It's also nice to have another language in the rotation with Cyrillic even though Serbian Cyrillic differs from what I've used with Mari and Ukrainian. Even some of the cursive conventions for Serbian Cyrillic differ from that of the Cyrillic scripts of the other languages even though the grapheme (and phonetic representation) is the same when printed.

Since I am reviewing in the mindset that I'm dealing with a pluricentric language, I'm not bothered if what I practice would drive a purist nuts. In the latter's view, I'd be putting up "Croatianized Serbian" or "Serbianized Croatian" but I'm not interested in upholding linguistic stereotypes or overloading my mind with neologisms. If anyone can suggest good sites with comics in BCMS/SC, please share them. Fazla, imaš li kakav prijedlog?



(From LuDoMaNiJa Garfield stripovi)

2) "I am the genie of the cookie jar!"
3) "I will fulfill three wishes for you! - There are never cookies when you need them!"

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 (1st 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

***

POLISH

I finished Chapter 11 of "Polish in 4 weeks - II". The dialogue was about John's habit of listening to the news from the radio while the main topics for grammar were verbs for wanting that require direct objects in the genitive, and a few constructions or phrases typical of formal register as common in a news broadcast. (e.g. impersonal past constructions ending in -no/-to).



(From Tori Komix - Komix #576 – 01/09/2013)

1) "You could run out to the store for some beer. - Do you think that if I were to jump out the window that I could save a lot of time?"
2) "No! Don't do it! - What? Is it a dumb idea?"
3) "Dumb? No. I just don't have my camera on me. Hold on a sec."

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

*Question for Marya: When can I use genitive as a direct object of chcieć? The textbook's chapter reminded me that domagać się and żądać take genitive as a rule, but also led me to think that something like Czego chcesz? is OK even though I've grown used to seeing, hearing and using Co chcesz?

***

SLOVAK

I did my week's allotment of at least 3 pages from my course "Hovorme spolu po slovensky! B - Slovenčina ako cudzí jazyk" by working through pgs. 12-15 of the 1st textbook and pg. 10-11 in the accompanying workbook. The textbook had exercises in reading comprehension and listening comprehension with text and audio about living arrangements. The workbook's exercises reviewed nominative plural and use of some prepositions while also reinforcing my grasp of vocabulary for kinship and dwellings.



(From Shooty | Karikatúra | komentare.sme.sk)

"Komárno for the mosquitoes - Slovakia for the Slovaks!"

This is quite a biting cartoon, pardon the pun. There is a town divided by the Slovak-Hungarian border called Komárno in Slovak and Komárom in Hungarian. The mosquito's signs are typical for a Slovak town with a substantial number of Hungarians living in it (see here for the mosquito's double sign in real-life). However if the mosquito's signs are reanalyzed as Slovak, it can be understood as "Komárno [belongs] to the mosquitoes" since komárom is the dative plural of komár "mosquito" (Slovak ending for masculine dative plural is -om cf. Czech -ům). Therefore you have a punch line of a mosquito (Hungarian?) holding a sign about Komárno next to the Slovak nationalist thug with his sign about Slovakia being only for Slovaks. It's an obvious dig at the tension between some Slovaks and the Hungarian minority, or Hungarian domination of Slovaks and their unnamed Slavonic ancestors for about 1000 years.

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

***

UKRAINIAN

I finished Unit 18 of "Teach Yourself Ukrainian". The unit's dialogues and notes introduced formally the possessive suffixes for personal nouns which superficially resembles the Saxon genitive in English (i.e. 's), negated phrases that resemble visually negative pronouns/adverbs (e.g. ніколи "there's no time" vs. ніколи "never" - the difference is in the syllable which bears the stress), and gave more information about derivation using affixes.

Now that I have finished the textbook, I will work on Ukrainian similarly to how I'm doing so for Slovak by aiming to complete 3-5 pages worth of exercises from a textbook every week. I'll be using "Modern Ukrainian" for this purpose. In addition I will continue to attend Ukrainian classes to work on my speaking and listening capabilities more. Unfortunately I don't yet feel secure enough in my Ukrainian to be able to include a comic strip or cartoon in the language for my log's entries.

***

OTHER LANGUAGES

I've reheard all of the dialogues in Davvin 1 (Northern Saami) and browsed the notes in each chapter even though the first chapter of Davvin 3 reviews certain topics explored in the preceding volumes. I'll probably start working on the exercises in Davvin 3 on the weekend.

______


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stelingo
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 Message 254 of 541
18 January 2013 at 4:45pm | IP Logged 
I'm pleased to say I understood the Croatian cartoon with my knowledge of other Slavic languages and with help from the pictures. Chung, I'm still unsure what the Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip refers to. For example:

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 (1st 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


Is this an analysis of the grammar in the cartoon strip, the grammar you have studied, or didn't know?






Edited by stelingo on 18 January 2013 at 4:45pm

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Chung
Diglot
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 Message 255 of 541
18 January 2013 at 5:14pm | IP Logged 
stelingo wrote:
I'm pleased to say I understood the Croatian cartoon with my knowledge of other Slavic languages and with help from the pictures. Chung, I'm still unsure what the Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip refers to. For example:

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 (1st 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


Is this an analysis of the grammar in the cartoon strip, the grammar you have studied, or didn't know?


When there are words in the comic strip or cartoon that are so unfamiliar to me that I feel that I'm not getting what the characters say or the punch line, I then note those items in a way that I like. I like my vocabulary lists to have all relevant grammatical information where applicable rather than straight translations. As it happened in the latest set of cartoons, none of the words was so unfamiliar that I couldn't figure it out but I left the notes about the convention of my vocabulary lists anyway.

With the comics in Finnish, I'm much more likely to have a few words in the vocabulary list since my grasp of it is not as strong as it is for the Slavonic languages.
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Serpent
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 Message 256 of 541
18 January 2013 at 5:51pm | IP Logged 
Loool komárno komárom!
and i'm still not used to Slovaks pretending to be Slovenian :P

As for jotta, note also that että (or niin että) is maybe more common in the colloquial language.

Edited by Serpent on 18 January 2013 at 5:54pm



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