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Interesting / rare grammar experiences | ||
Tags: Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6431 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 17 of 21 03 November 2011 at 9:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I like the Japanese causative. This is a verb form that means "to make someone do something." What's funny is that it also means "to let someone do something." Wouldn't it be funny if we said, "Please make me...." when we wanted to do ask to do something fun?
Brun ugle 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6476 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 18 of 21 04 November 2011 at 12:29am | IP Logged | ||
That's maybe because many IE languages (which are the best known in this forum) have simplified morphology over time. New grammatical concepts can definitely be borrowed from other languages: Turkish borrowed the conjunctions from Persian: "ve" (and) comes from Persian "va" (via Arabic "wa"). Also, relative clauses with "ki" are a direct loan from Persian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rutabaga Bilingual Pentaglot Newbie Romania Joined 4738 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, Slovenian*, French, German, Russian Studies: Portuguese, Uzbek | Message 19 of 21 05 November 2011 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know how common this is, but in Malinke, spoken in Guinea, there are two ways of expressing possession. The first category is for things that will always belong to you - generally body parts and family members (including husbands and wives). Here, just the personal pronoun is used. For example, my hand is 'n bolo' and his wife would be 'a muso'. Everything else has an additional na/la inserted, depending on whether the pronoun is nasal, for example 'n na negeso' is my bicycle or 'a la fali' is his donkey.
Malinke also has words that can be added for emphasis. For example: dit: as in 'A ka jan, dit' (it's big) (often used in Guinean French as well) huhn: used when handing someone something, but also helps differentiate thank you(i ni ke, huhn) from hello (i ni ke). My personal favorite is 'ping-ping', as in 'n bara fa, ping-ping', which means 'I'm really full'. Very useful, when someone is trying to encourage you to eat even more. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6393 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 20 of 21 05 November 2011 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | ||
Mandarin has something similar, where you leave off the possessive marker when it's a really close connection, such as with friends and family members. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4984 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 21 of 21 07 November 2011 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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This isn't really grammar, but Swahili has the curious practice of always adding 6
hours to the local time. For example, midnight = saa sita usiku (6 o' clock at night). 7 in the morning = saa moja asubuhi (1 o' clock in the morning). Apparently, this is because East Africa is equatorial and the sun sets and rises at the same time every day. People wake up at 6 every day which effectively becomes their 00:00. They even have clocks where the numbers have switched positions. I really wanted such a clock when I first saw it in a restaurant. The waiter told me they would sell it for 30000 shillings. Too bad I didn't have 30000 shillings on me. The next time I returned they didn't want to sell it anymore. Swahili Clock (Picture does not belong to me. Hope owner doesn't mind that I've linked to her blog.) In Arabic, they have a rule which I find pretty nonsensical. (Actually, I find lots of Arabic rules to be nonsensical.) All non-human plurals are treated as feminine singulars unless the plurals are also duals. That means that whenever you're talking about tables or chairs or sandwiches you have to refer them as though they were feminine and singular. Edited by strikingstar on 07 November 2011 at 9:23pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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