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tarvos
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 Message 321 of 541
23 May 2013 at 8:50am | IP Logged 
I am really loving the BCMS information. Keep it up.
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Chung
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 Message 322 of 541
23 May 2013 at 5:32pm | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
I am really loving the BCMS information. Keep it up.


Drago mi je da ti se sviđa moja komparativna analiza.
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Chung
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 Message 323 of 541
26 May 2013 at 9:49pm | IP Logged 
BCMS/SC

I finished working through Chapter 6 of “Spoken World Croatian” and Chapter 9 of “Teach Yourself Serbian”. The dialogue in the Croatian textbook was about someone trying to get directions to his friend’s place while driving to her place. The grammar introduced included the numbers 1 – 10 and their case governance, ordinal numbers, the imperative, and prepositions pertaining to location. The dialogues in the Serbian textbook were short ones involving checking into a hotel and exchanging money. The grammar introduced include the simple past tense, verbal aspect, the possessive pronoun/adjective svoj “one’s own” and how to tell the time.



(From Strip Vesti – internet nedeljnik (Cane))

1) “What’s with the crocodile tears? It’s only soccer… This isn’t the first or last time that they’ve lost a game.”
2) “We’re not crying because of the result but because of the tear gas.”

- suzavac (suzavca) “tear gas” (сузавац (сузавцa))
- utakmica (utakmice) “game, match” (утакмица (утакмицe))

Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) (this will be put in both scripts partially to accommodate those unused to Serbian Cyrillic and also so that I get at least a little bit of practice using the keyboard layout for Serbian Cyrillic).

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

See here for the rationale of the excursus devoted to comparing Croatian and Serbian using the dialogues of “Beginner’s Croatian” and “Beginner’s Serbian” published by Hippocrene Books.

Resources include descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian based on the work of Anić et al., Benson’s SerboCroatian-English Dictionary, Alexander’s Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary and discussions on usage in BCMS/SC from Unilang and WordReference.

Chapter 8

1) Cr: Bok! | Sr: Ćao! “Hi!”

This is an uncontroversial difference with each greeting associated with the respective ethnic group. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the national/regional distinction between “Hiya” and “Wassup” in British and American English respectively or “Servus” and “Moin” in Austrian and (Northern) German respectively.

2) Cr: otiđu | Sr: odu “they leave”

Despite each book’s dialogue using a different conjugation, this is not indicative of an ethnically-definable distinction. Otići“to leave” has two conjugational patterns in present tense and aorist with the choice left to the user.

otići “to leave”

- Present tense

ja odem / otiđem, ti odeš / otiđeš, on/ona/ono ode / otiđe
mi odemo / otiđemo, vi odete / otiđete, oni/one/ona odu / otiđu


- Aorist (describes completed actions in the recent past and sometimes with a certain emotional edge on the part of the user – often replaced by perfective verb in compound past tense (sometimes called “perfect”))

ja odoh / otiđoh, ti ode / otiđe, on/ona/ono ode / otiđe
mi odosmo / otiđosmo, vi odoste / otiđoste, oni/one/ona odoše / otiđoše


3) Cr: dođem k tebi | Sr: dođem kod tebe “I’ll come to your place” (literally “I’ll come to(ward) you”)

This difference in prepositional usage is from one approach ethnically definable, yet from another is not. According to Ronelle Alexander on p. 121 of “Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar. With Sociolinguistic Commentary”, k(a) preceding a person’s name or a personal pronoun is how a Croat indicates going to that person’s home. In contrast the Bosnian or Serb would use kod in place of k(a). On the other hand, commentary by a Serb and Croat from WordReference on this very description shows that the phrase with kod is used by all native speakers of BCMS/SC (and is usual for Croats) with the only noteworthy point being that this use of k(a) still has some currency among Croats compared to non-Croats.

My conclusion is that using k tebi and similar in this fashion is infrequent and would probably be viewed now as a Croatianism whenever it turns up while kod tebe and similar in this fashion is frequent and doesn’t carry any ethnic “baggage”.

4) Cr: bez brige! | Sr: ne brini! “Don’t worry!”

These are interchangeable and I think that the authors of “Beginner’s Croatian” and “Beginner’s Serbian” used different phrases here just for variety’s sake. It’s a bit like the difference between “No worries!” and “Don’t worry!”.
5) Cr: traperice | Sr: farmerke “jeans”

Traperice is a colloquial Croatianism whereas to a Croat farmerke is a regionalism and Serbianism meaning the same (interestingly, the descriptive dictionary doesn’t mark the similar farmerice as a Serbianism but only as a colloquialism). Benson’s Serbo-Croatian > English dictionary notes similarly for traperice by marking it as a Croatianism.

Here are some ways that I found for how Croats and Serbs can refer to jeans.

Cr: blu džins, džins, jeans, jeans hlače, farmerice, farmerke, rebatinke, traperice, trapke
Sr: džins, farmerice, farmerke

(Blu) džins and jeans don’t seem that frequent and in any case are relatively recent adoptions from English when the lexicon already had farmerke, traperice etc.

6) Cr: Dobra večer! | Sr: Dobro veče! “Good evening!”

This is an example of differences between the standards stemming from the gender of certain words. The Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics prescribes “Dobra večer” and marks anything else as incorrect (e.g. *Dobar večer, *Dobro veče). For one reason or another, večer in standard Croatian is feminine despite appearing to be masculine by ending in a consonant whereas veče in standard Serbian is neuter in line with other such nouns ending in –e in singular (e.g. d(ij)ete “child”, jaj(c)e “egg”, sunce “sun”). Despite that Croatian prescription, that institute acknowledges that the word has been attested in Croatian usage as neuter (as it still is among Serbs) and the descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian marks veče as a literary and colloquial form of večer but not as a Serbianism.

7) Cr: razgovara s nekim | Sr: razgovara sa nekim “he/she talks with someone”

This difference in the preposition is usefully analyzed as a difference in frequency rather than a binary one aligned to ethnic consciousness as potentially deductible by comparing these phrases. According to Ronelle Alexander on p. 54 of “Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar. With Sociolinguistic Commentary”, Serbs are more likely to use sa than s whereas a Croat uses sa only when it precedes a word beginning with s, š, z and ž (in addition to the instrumental of ja “I” i.e. sa mnom rather than *s mnom which is difficult to pronounce), otherwise he/she will use s. The Bosnian’s use of sa over s is greater than that of a Croat but less than of a Serb. These differences in frequency aside, the Croat’s guidelines for using sa over s is grammatical to a Serb (and almost certainly the Bosnian too). According to “Beginner’s Serbian”:

Vidan, Aida & Niebuhr, Robert. “Beginner’s Serbian”. New York: Hippocrene Books Inc., 2009. p. 146 wrote:
1.2. Use of the instrumental
The most common preposition used with the instrumental is s or sa meaning with. The longer form, sa, has to be used before words that start with s, š, z, ž, and also before the first person singular personal pronoun in the instrumental, mnom me […] In other situations, you can freely choose between the two.


The only detectable difference then is that the Serbian standard is less rigid on the use of s and sa than in the Croatian one apart from the common rule on the first letter (or consonant cluster) of the following word.

8) Cr: glazba | Sr: muzika “music”

The truth behind the divergence (and its use by those advocating separation of Croatian and Serbian) is that it’s not as stark as it seems overall even though glazba is a Croatianism. Muzika is marked in the descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian as a synonym for glazba without a colloquial, regional or Serbian association and is common to all native speakers of BCMS/SC.

9) Cr: organizirati | Sr: organizovati “to organize”

This difference is somewhat akin to the one concerning the use of s(a) as it’s a matter of frequency rather than of some implied mutual exclusivity classifiable by the variants. It’s also less clear than implied by a simple fixation of -irati versus -ovati even though there is a strong tendency in standard Croatian for verbs borrowed from other European languages to bear the suffix -irati of German origin (cf. organisieren) rather than -ovati of Slavonic origin (cf. Polish organizować). In contrast, the non-Croatian counterpart can use either suffix (in addition to -isati) but I do suspect that the perception of -irati being a Croatianism tends to make those keen to avoid association with the Croats to use the counterpart with -ovati whenever feasible. What I did find is that what I had learned as it relates to suffixation supposedly letting me distinguish reliably between a “Croatian” and “Serbian” version of an “international” verb became questionable especially on seeing the number of loanwords in standard Serbian that end in -irati and/or lack an alternate ending in -ovati.

i) Examples where the Croatian loanword ends in -irati whereas the Serbian counterpart ends in -ovati.

“to modernize”, “to synchronize”
Cr: modernizirati, sinkronizirati*
Sr: modernizovati, sinhronizovati

*sinhronizirati also exists but is marked by Croats as a colloquialism and Serbianism likely because of sinhron- despite its supposedly “Croatian” formation using -irati)

ii) Examples where the Croatian loanword ends in -irati whereas Serbian allows for counterparts ending in -irati and -ovati.

“to engage”, “to discuss”, “to glorify”, “to criticize”, “to neutralize”, “to organize”
Cr: angažirati, diskutirati, glorificirati, kritizirati, neutralizirati, organizirati*

Sr: angažirati / angažovati, diskutirati / diskutovati, glorificirati / glorifikovati, kritizirati / kritikovati, neutralizirati / neutralizovati, organizirati / organizovati*

* Yes, even the distinction between organizirati and organizovati now seems a little forced at least in that Serbian dialogue given that the “Croatian” form shows up as an alternative to organizovati in a Serbian dictionary.

iii) Examples of loanwords ending only in -irati and used by all speakers of BCMS/SC

analizirati “to analyze”, aplaudirati “to applaud”, eksplodirati “to explode”, insistirati “to insist”, investirati “to invest”, marširati “to march”, telefonirati “to telephone”, urbanizirati “to urbanize”

iv) Examples of loanwords ending only in -ovati and used by all speakers of BCMS/SC

rimovati “to rhyme”, školovati “to educate, school”

v) Example of a Croatian loanword that ends in -irati or -ovati but the Serbian counterpart ends only in -ovati

Cr: pakirati / pakovati | Sr: pakovati “to pack”

Based on my examination, I’m left to conclude that verbs in standard Croatian of Romance or Germanic origin often bear the suffix -irati, whereas those in standard Serbian can bear the suffix -irati or -ovati (in addition to -isati which I didn’t consider here to keep the focus on the pair organizirati / organizovati). However it seems unwise to extend the conclusion such that one can stereotype that every borrowed verb ending in -irati in Croatian corresponds only to a Serbian verb ending in -ovati.

10) Cr: blagdan | Sr: praznik “holiday”

The use of different words isn't misleading when judged on semantic overlap and are interchangeable. Blagdan formally refers to a day devoted to commemorating a religious event, but colloquially refers to a non-working day. It’s akin to how “holiday” now also refers to special time off for secular reasons despite deriving from “holy day” and its inherently religious or spiritual nature. Praznik normally refers to a day in observance of any societal event (religious or not) and/or a day off from work/school, but it does have a secondary sense where it can refer to a day in observance of a religious event (cf. formal meaning of blagdan).

11) Cr: sretan | Sr: srećan “happy”

I’ve seen this pair of words also bandied about for differentiating Croatian and Serbian, but this seems to be a difference traceable to birthplace rather than ethnicity based on what I’ve observed in a Serbian friend who comes from Montenegro, this observation by a Croat on WordReference and a Serb’s explanation on a forum for spelling questions in Serbian. Based on the preceding, sretan has a longer attestation but began to be supplanted in what is now Serbia by srećan. The result of this innovation is that srećan came to be associated with Serbs whereas sretan came to be associated with non-Serbs even though Serbs who were born and grew up outside Serbia still use sretan natively just like their non-Serb neighbours.

A funny but perhaps fitting anecdote: In the mid-1990s the nationalist Croatian president, Franjo Tuđman once wished everyone at Christmas on state media using the marked Serbianism Srećan Božić rather than Sretan Božić. The opposition delighted in the strongman’s flub and subsequent broadcasts of his announcement were edited with the “proper” Croatian term in place of the “improper” Serbian one.

12) Cr: dar | Sr: poklon “gift”

Both words are usable by all speakers of BCMS/SC, but at least for Croats poklon is a colloquial alternative to dar in addition to being a rare synonym for naklon “bow, curtsey”.

13) Cr: CD | Sr: disk “compact disc”

Both terms are usable by all speakers of BCMS/SC, although disk would sometimes need a modifier for clarification (e.g. tvrdi disk “hard disk”, kompaktni disk “CD”) and if Serbian Wikipedia is a guide, the formal term is kompakt-disk rather than just disk.

***

FINNISH

I finished Chapter 39 of "Kuulostaa hyvältä". The chapter’s dialogue was between Jutta and Anssi as they visit Helsinki’s open-air museum, Seurasaari. No new points of grammar were introduced.

It only took me about a year and a half but this was the last chapter of the textbook (here’s the entry for Chapter 1). I can say that I’ve noticed some improvement in my Finnish especially when it comes my passive vocabulary since I’ve found that I’ve very recently been able to grasp more of what I hear or see compared to when I started the book (and after having already studied Finnish for about two years). On the other hand, my ability to speak Finnish hasn’t improved much in my view but I admit that to do so I need to hang out with Finns more and be forced to speak or even make small talk rather than shadow, do listening-reading or watch reruns of Finnish shows in the comfort of my living room.

For the next little while, I’ll be using FSI Conversational Finnish (especially the workbook) as my main course and take advantage of its copious audio. While this is not ideal since I wish that I had a circle of Finnish friends here (as opposed to in Finland) to practice speaking, I’m hoping that doing the exercises in the audio (drills, dictations, repetition) will bring some improvement in the way that doing all of those drills with “Beginner’s Slovak” did long ago in getting my speaking abilities in Slovak at a sufficiently high level to the point where I could hold basic conversations with my Slovak friends, and then go beyond what the drills had taught me just by refining my abilities by speaking with them.



(From Oswald - Sarjakuva)

1) “How did the exam go? – Awesome! I got everything!”
2) “I will be really surprised if I don’t get a 10!”*
3) “Life is full of surprises…”

* The Finnish grading system in comprehensive school (corresponds more or less to elementary school, middle school and junior high in the USA as it’s attended by children aged 7 to 16) runs from 4 to 10 with 4 meaning failure and 10 being the highest grade (in the past the scale ran from 0 to 10). It’s similar to the scale in Moldova and Romania.

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

***

UKRAINIAN

I’ve done the exercises for Chapter 6 on pgs. 105-7 in “Modern Ukrainian”. The exercises dealt with the past tense, aspectual pairs, and accentuation. This last point is a particular problem for me to get right since Ukrainian has that accursed mobile stress unlike Czech, Polish and Slovak which I know better but have fixed (i.e. predictable) stress.



(From Комікси/меми по-українські)

1) Kids before: [literally: earlier] “Game Boy? Thank you, Mom. I love you so much!”
2) Kids now: “PS3? I was asking for a PS3? And what to do with this şћïŧ?”

- дітлахи (дітлахів) “children” (plural-only)
- лайно (лайна) “crap, şћïŧ” (colloquial)
- обожнювати > обожнити (обожнюю, обожнюють > обожню, обожнять) “to adore, worship”

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

***

OTHER LANGUAGES

Next update will probably include a summary of Chapter 5 in “Davvin 3”.
______



Edited by Chung on 17 June 2013 at 4:28am

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hribecek
Triglot
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Czech Republic
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 Message 324 of 541
27 May 2013 at 8:02pm | IP Logged 
How is your Northern Saami these days? Do you do much, other than the exercises you report here?
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Chung
Diglot
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Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 325 of 541
27 May 2013 at 9:51pm | IP Logged 
hribecek wrote:
How is your Northern Saami these days? Do you do much, other than the exercises you report here?


It's pretty much been a passive thing for a while and confined to what I do with Davvin (but I do watch a bit of a news broadcast with Finnish subtitles on stream from YLE about once a week, and have loaded some Saamic songs on my MP3 player for everyday use).

My focus remains Finnish, but I have turned it up a bit recently on BCMS/SC and Ukrainian, let alone kept working with the other languages apart from Northern Saami. Studying Northern Saami just satisfies my philological interest since I know that I have practically no opportunities to use it actively and don't plan to return to Sápmi in the foreseeable future since I now have a few other travel destinations of higher priority.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
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Joined 7174 days ago

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 Message 326 of 541
05 June 2013 at 7:00am | IP Logged 
BCMS/SC

I finished working through Chapter 9 of “Beginner’s Serbian”. The dialogue was between Milan and Gordana and the latter’s reaction to her boyfriend’s email. The grammar introduced was the simple past tense, word order with clitics, use of tenses in reported speech and declension of pronouns ending in –av (e.g. sav “all”, ovakav “this kind of”).



(From UPPS • Pogledaj temu – Hogar Strašni-promocija, Plato plus, 23.12, u 12h)

Stonehenge will be built on this space “I hate progress.”

- podignut (podignutog) “will be built” [adjective taken from passive past participle (masculine singular) of podignuti - see below]
- podizati > podignuti* (podižem, podižu > podignem, podignu) “to lift, raise; build; carry out” (подизати > подигнути* (подижем, подижу > подигнем, подигну))

Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) (this will be put in both scripts partially to accommodate those unused to Serbian Cyrillic and also so that I get at least a little bit of practice using the keyboard layout for Serbian Cyrillic).

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

See here for the rationale of the excursus devoted to comparing Croatian and Serbian using the dialogues of “Beginner’s Croatian” and “Beginner’s Serbian” published by Hippocrene Books.

Resources include descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian based on the work of Anić et al., Benson’s SerboCroatian-English Dictionary, Alexander’s Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary and discussions on usage in BCMS/SC from Unilang and WordReference.

Chapter 9

1) Cr: dogoditi se | Sr: desiti se “to happen”

This is a somewhat tricky pair to evaluate since the ethnic association isn’t all that clear. One one hand, I gather from a Croatian forum that dogoditi se is a valid choice while desiti se is typically viewed as incorrect or a Serbianism by virtue of being used more often by Serbs. Ronelle Alexander’s “Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian. A Textbook” also indicates that desiti se is used by Bosnians and Serbs while dogoditi se is used by all native speakers of BCMS/SC. However things are murkier when seeing that the descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian shows desiti se as a synonym for dogoditi se and not a Serbianism as suggested in the comments of the Croatian forum. In addition, there’s another post in the aforementioned Croatian forum noting that the descriptive dictionary by Anić et al. indeed includes desiti se as a valid synonym for dogoditi se, the prescriptive dictionary by Babić et al. proscribes it. For those who are unaware, those of nationalist leanings similar to Babić et al. deride the descriptivism of Anić and his colleagues claiming that Croats won’t be able to spell properly or use “their” language properly because the descriptive reference works show too many doublets, synonyms or alternative spellings (i.e. they allow too many Serbianisms, or what are perceived as Serbianisms) even though the descriptive dictionary by definition is compiled from attestations among Croats.

My conclusion is that desiti se has become a marked non-Croatianism despite its inclusion and lack of ethnic marking in the descriptive Croatian dictionary, and the attitude seems reinforced by nationalist prescriptivism. On the other hand, dogoditi se is not likely to raise anyone’s nationalist hackles, and perhaps ironically is preferred by Croatian prescriptivists even though there’s nothing particularly Croatian about it with Bosnians and Serbs using it too.

2) Cr: napraviti | Sr: uraditi “to create, do, make” (perfective)

I've seen this pair of verbs in discussions on differentiating Croatian and Serbian but as far as I can tell they’re synonyms here with each term usable and understood identically by all native speakers of BCMS/SC. The descriptive dictionary of Croatian has both napraviti and uraditi with the latter not being marked as a Serbianism but synonymous with napraviti. According to this discussion in Word Reference, using napraviti over uraditi as the perfective counterpart of raditi seems to have emerged from subdialects in northern Croatia where uraditi is unknown, and over time the use of napraviti spread to other Croats. Despite this development, napraviti is also the perfective counterpart of praviti which is used by all speakers of BCMS/SC.

I’ve learned to use uraditi as the perfective counterpart to raditi as initially acquired when using “Introduction to the Croatian and Serbian Language” and “Teach Yourself Croatian”. Moreover, this usage reminds me of the Czech and Slovak pairs of the same meaning which are dělat > udělat and robiť > urobiť respectively. Using napraviti is out of the ordinary for me.

3) Cr: računalo | Sr: računar “computer”

There seems to be an ethnic division of these words but the descriptive dictionary of Croatian does not indicate such a distinction. Based on the article in Croatian Wikipedia, računalo and other terms excepting računar mean “computer” whereas the article in Serbian Wikipedia uses računar and kompjuter but not računalo. Benson’s Serbo-Croatian > English dictionary suggests similarly by marking računalo as a Croatianism for “computer” in addition to being an unmarked (Serbian?) term meaning “slide-rule”. The Croatian descriptive dictionary shows računar as a synonym for računalo in addition to meaning any sort of calculatory device or being an obsolete term for a person working with a computer. For none of these meanings is there a marking of its being a Serbianism.

In summary, I’m left to gather that each term is often associated with its respective ethnic group, but at least per the descriptive dictionary, such an association is absent.

4) Cr: dojam | Sr: utisak “impression”

As with the preceding pairs, the Croatian descriptive dictionary does not indicate ethnic distinction unlike other sources. Benson’s Serbo-Croatian > English dictionary marks dojam as a Croatianism and refers the user to utisak while Alexander’s textbook marks dojam as being used by Bosnians and Croats, while utisak is used by Bosnians and Serbs. In contrast, the Croatian descriptive dictionary’s entry for utisak is not marked as a Serbianism and links to dojam implying the terms to be synonymous.

My final impression (or dojam – or should it be utisak? ;-)) is similar to that of the suggested ethnic demarcation between računalo and računar.

5) Cr: kino | Sr: bioskop “movie theater”

This pair is a common example in lists that illustrate the differences between Croatian and Serbian, and is uncontroversial. The descriptive dictionary of Croatian defines bioskop as an early type of camera in addition being a regionalism, archaism and/or Serbianism referring to a movie theater.

***

FINNISH

I’ve been working with Units 1 and 2 of FSI Conversational Finnish including completing the exercises in the workbook (this has gone more quickly than expected), and shadowing the Unit’s audio in the textbook and reading the notes. None of the grammar taught here is new, but it’s good to do some speaking drills over the last few days and get myself used to uttering phrases in Finnish even to the point of substituting my friends’ names in the drills for the workbook’s stock choices during my daily commute without the books. For example I did a drill recently involving changing questions into a less direct form (e.g. Oletteko te uusi oppilas? > Tehän olette uusi oppilas, eikö niin?) but a day after doing the drill I was thinking about a couple of my friends and imagined asking them Tehän asutte nyt Hämeenlinnassa, eikö niin? from a hypothetical Asutteko nyt Hämeenlinnassa? all on the model of that drill. I’ll be starting to work through the exercises for Unit 3 on the weekend.



(From Kapinatyöläinen 15 # - Mitä koulussa oikeastaan oppii)

1) “Yes, Calvin? – May I be excused? [literally: Can I leave?]”
2) “Again? - I gotta go. I really gotta.”
3) “All right. - Thank you.”
4) “What are you doing at home? – I really had to go.”

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

***

NORTHERN SAAMI

I finished Unit 5 of Davvin 3 which introduced the action essive and quasi-possessive use of the locative..

Here is my understanding of the chapter’s “new” main points (any misunderstandings of the material are mine alone).

1) Adding –me to a verb’s stem is used with the present tense of “to be” to indicate action occuring at the moment of its use. In eastern dialects, the suffix is -men or -min depending on whether the stem is parisyllabic or not. These suffixes are cognate with the suffix -min in Inari Saami which also expresses an action occuring at the moment of utternace (see here for examples in Inari Saami)

E.g.

Mun lean vuovttaid bassame. “I am washing my hair [as we speak]”
Mun basan vuovttaid. “I wash my hair [as a rule]”.

For verbs whose stems are parisyllablic or “contracting” (i.e. two stems), the suffix is added to a stem formed by removing the –t from the infinitive.

boahtit “to come” mun lean boahtime “I am coming”
riŋget “to telephone” mun lean riŋgeme “I am telephoning”

For verbs whose stems are imparisyllablic, the suffix is added to a stem formed by replacing -it of the infinitive with –ea–.

basadit “to wash oneself” mun lean basadeame “I am washing myself”

2) A phrase consisting of a personal pronoun in locative preceding a noun can signify possession in concordance with that personal pronoun

Gea dus daid julggiid! “Look at your legs / feet!” (literally: “look on-you these legs/feet!”)

This use of the personal pronoun rather than a possessive suffix or possessive adjective reminds me of a possessive structure in BCMS/SC which is vaguely similar with its personal pronoun in the dative.

Moja majka je iz Hrvatske. “My mother is from Croatia.”
Majka mi je iz Hrvatske. “My mother is from Croatia.” (literally: “Mother to-me is from Croatia”)

Vocabulary of Unit 5

basadit – “to wash oneself”
bávččas (attr. and pred.), – “aching, sore”
čáhci – “water”
čiekčat – “to kick”
čohkun – “comb”
čuohppat – “to cut”
dohkket – “to suffice”
duolva (attr.) duolvvas (pred.) – “dirty”
gákti – “coat”
guhkes (attr.), guhkki (pred.) – long
njunni – “nose”
nuollat – “to take off, undress”
ráinnas (attr. and pred.) – “clean”
sáibu – “soap”
sihkaldat – “towel”
skárrit (skár'rit) – “scissors”
spábba – “ball”
speajal – “mirror“
šámpu – “shampoo”
vuovttat – “hair” (plural)

***

OTHER LANGUAGES

Let’s see if I can squeeze in a report on languages other than BCMS/SC and Finnish in the next couple of weeks.
______



Edited by Chung on 06 June 2013 at 4:58pm

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tarvos
Super Polyglot
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Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
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 Message 327 of 541
05 June 2013 at 9:16am | IP Logged 
Yes, Chung, when are you going to post about Romanian? :P
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sans-serif
Tetraglot
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Finland
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Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish
Studies: Danish

 
 Message 328 of 541
05 June 2013 at 12:31pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
(From Oswald - Sarjakuva)

1) “What are you doing? – I’m carving a smiley face onto the trunk.”
2) “If people start to smile while looking at this, (then) I’ve made the world a slightly better place to live.”
3) “Someone has scribbled over the tree trunk. – This is what liberal parenting does.”*

* I suspect that this is an idiom or fixed expression. The arrangement of the words and relatively wide semantic range of vapaa and kasvatus made it tough for me to figure out without a lot of checking of my dictionaries.

"Sitä se XYZ teettää" is indeed an idiom meaning approximately "That's what you get, when ... XYZ". Note that teettää (of tehdä) is the same verb form, I believe, as nukuttaa (of nukkua). And since we're on that topic...
Chung wrote:

Mä itken. “I’m crying”
Minua itkettää “I feel like crying”
Heidän kirjeensä itkettää minua. “Their letter is making me cry.”

I'd definitely say "Heidän kirjeensä itketyttää minua." myself, but I suppose itkettää might be just as correct, if not more so. Note that itketyttää is to itkettää, as itkettää is to itkeä; in other words, itkeä < itkettää < itketyttää.


Chung wrote:
- töhriä (töhrin, töhri, töhrinyt) “to smear, smudge; scribble over”

This is a good translation. One more connotation, in case you missed it, is that of painting graffiti or tags, which the verb töhriä has become almost synonomous with in public debates in the past decade.

Chung wrote:
Kävin Suomessa tyttöystävineni. or Kävin Suomessa tyttöystäväni kanssa. “I visited Finland with my girlfriend”.

Or "with my girlfriends". :-)

Chung wrote:

Enkä minä ole mitenkään huomioinut...
2) “I didn’t notice [it] in any way either.”

Huomioida actually means "to remember someone (on their birthday/etc.)", here. Likewise, a good host huomioi (or "takes into consideration") his/her guests by making sure that no one feels out of place at the party. The verb can also appear in contexts like:
"Myös painovoiman vaikutus on huomioitu laskelmissa."
"Also the effect of gravity has been accounted for in the calculations."


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