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TAC14 : Euskara eta txinera -- 汉语和巴斯克语 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5650 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 9 of 98 27 January 2014 at 5:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Today was another killer. I spent about an hour on it before i decided it just wasn't going to come to me. I'm really missing the FSI courses which just drill structure into your head until it just sounds right.
On a lighter note, an interesting thing i noticed today was a surprising similarity between Basque and Mandarin. They covered relative clauses (The man THAT went to your house, the dog THAT ate the shoe, etc.), and though relative clauses were covered in Gorka's course i didn't really have a solid grasp on it. Not that i do now, but at least if someone points out "yeah, that's a relative clause" i can see it and understand it. In Basque, what you're saying is something like "To the store went-that man". In Mandarin it'd be something like "Went to the store-that man". Either way, the clause precedes the subject (unlike English) and has a marker. In Mandarin, you would use 的 to turn the phrase into something of an adjective (The went-to-the-store man). In Basque, you add -(e)n to the verb. Dendara joan den gizona -- To-the-store gone has-that man-the: ie The man that went (has gone) to the store. The sentences in the lesson were a lot more complex, but i'm glad to say i can at least understand them and pick them apart. We also covered another case (norengatik), which i'll need to do some outside work with as i don't really understand how it differs from some other cases, and did some more work with the past tense of IZAN (to be, used for intransitive/NOR verbs) and UKAN (to have, used for intransitive verbs). I'll try to shorten my posts from now on, it's just that there's so much i'd like to say about Basque. It's a really fun language, though i'm starting to wonder how to get out of the beginner level as the books i have don't seem like they'll be taking me too far. The more comprehensive books seem to be way too technical with linguist-lingo, i downloaded an English grammar online and, while comprehensive, i can't see myself doing much more than stare at it... The Aurrera and Bakarka series seem good, i was tempted to pick up the first couple Bakarka volumes when i was in Spain last, but that was while i was still on the limbo between Basque and about ten other languages. Alright, that's enough for today :D Here's to hoping i can one day say "Euskalduna naiz eta harro nago!" Edited by Crush on 27 January 2014 at 5:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4424 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 10 of 98 27 January 2014 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Please don't shorten your posts as long as you have interesting things to share. You might even convert me to taking up basque in the end!
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| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5650 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 11 of 98 27 January 2014 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Nik ez dut euskaraz hitz egin (oraindik!), baina hizkuntza eder hau benetan ikasi nahi dut. Oso interesgarria da, baina oso zaila ere bai.
I don't speak Euskara (yet!), but i really want to learn this beautiful language. It's really interesting, but also really complex. My first attempt at writing in Euskara! :) A few quick remarks before i do my Assimil lesson: -The definite article -a (-ak in plural) is only added to the last item of a group. However, in "hizkuntza eder hau", hau is the demonstrative "this" which automatically makes it definite, since you can't have "a this language". If "hau" weren't there, eder would've been "ederra". Many words ending in an "r" double the r when you add endings to them. -Some words already end in an a, which can be confusing. Hizkuntza is the word for language. When a word ends in an "a", you don't need to add another "a" to make it definite. -Quite a few verbs are made with the construction "egin + noun". In my short text above, you see "hitz egin". This literally means "word-do". To make words is to speak. Another example is "igeri egin", to swim. Literally it means "swimming-do". This is also a bit confusing since "egin" can be put behind other verbs to stress them. The part in front of a verb is called the Galdegaia, it's used essentially to stress the important parts of a sentence, see for example: What did ze buy? APPLES bought ze. (important info is WHAT) Who bought apples? ZE bought apples. (important info is WHO) ... Since the verb can't precede itself, they add another verb after it (egin) to stress the verb. I still don't quite get how and what to stress, but that's the main idea. @Ogrim: i hope you do eventually decide to take it up, though it looks like you already have a really interesting studylist and i'd hate to see one of those languages get bumped out. I'd be happy to have some company, though! Ok, enough procrastinating! Ikasteko denbora da! (Time to study?) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5650 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 12 of 98 28 January 2014 at 4:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Some Spanish words taken from Euskara:
1. Izquierda! Yes, izquierda comes from the Basque word for left, "ezkerra" 2. Aquelarre, perhaps not the most common word but i was surprised to see the word "akelarre" in my lesson the other day. Essentially it refers to the place where witches held their meetings at night, though i've seen it used more in reference to wild, noisy parties. 3. Órdago (also in "de órdago", excellent, incredible). This word apparently comes from the Basque phrase "hor dago", literally "there it is". In Spanish, an órdago is a huge bet, going all in. In Euskara, it's used in a card game called Mus as a sort of huge final bet to end the game. So now when someone talks about "lanzando un órdago" you've got a better idea where the phrase came from (or at least i do :D) Today's lesson was actually not that bad. It was a nice break from the last week or two of lessons. Today's lesson and the one before it were pretty interesting, talking about witches (hence the akelarreak) and today some... pagans? (Jentil: wild man inhabiting mountains and forests; there are various mythical themes of diverse origin centered around this figure) that saw a horrifying looking cloud that an old wise man said announced the birth of christ and their doom. So he had the other pagans throw him off a cliff, after which they all hid under rocks and never came out again. I guess it's part of Basque mythology, i'd really like to read some more about it. Yesterday's lesson is much more "real" in that in the 17th century during the Spanish inquisition accused witches (and other non-Catholics) were persecuted to the point of extinction. I'd never heard of it before, but apparently the place discussed in yesterday's lesson, Zugarramurdi, is somewhat famous for the witches that met there. There are lots of interesting stories floating around. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5650 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 13 of 98 29 January 2014 at 2:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Today was another relatively simple day (phew). Not a whole lot new, or if it is new i've just recognized it from Gorka's course. Today was "Berrogeigarren Ikaskaia", lesson 40 (the 40th lesson). There are a couple things i'm not quite sure about, one of them maybe the coming review lesson (42) will discuss in more detail.
1. There was a new verb suffix -arren. They describe it as meaning, more or less, "in order to". However, there's already another suffix -ko that has the same translation. While trying to find the difference between the two i stumbled across the Wikipedia entry on Basque grammar and Basque verbs. While i'm still not clear on the difference (there was no mention of the -arren suffix in either of the articles) they do seem comprehensive with clear explanations and lots of examples. I'll definitely be reading through it more thoroughly later. 2. Antzerki and antzoki. In the text, they used both these words to mean "theater", as in "Let's go to the theater!" I'm not sure if there's any difference between the two, i checked the Elhuyar hiztegia and it says that antzerki can mean "theater" or "play", though the word for play is "antzezlan" (lan means work). Antzoki is the actual building, so i wonder if antzerki is theater as an art and antzoki is the actual theater building? Or maybe i'm thinking it through too much. I guess i'm not a huge theater-goer, so maybe just recognizing it as "theater" for now will be fine.. (Actually, i just looked at the next page and there's a note explaining the difference between the two, so i should have this all straightened out tomorrow). Chinese: I haven't mentioned anything about my Chinese, yet! I'm currently working through 高级口语: Advanced Spoken Chinese. There's nothing "advanced" about my Chinese, i think the Chinese just enjoy making others feel better about themselves (or think we're too dumb to actually learn Mandarin well :P). I remember reading that the HSK 6 (the highest certification you can get for Chinese) corresponds roughly to the B2 level, though they claim it is advanced/native-level proficiency. I'm currently probably sitting around HSK 3-5, depending on what skill it is. My listening's not bad, i can hold my weight in a conversation online, but as far as actually reading books or speaking i just suck. So where i'm at now is: -高级口语 lesson 4. I'm taking my time with this course, writing out all the exercises by hand and typing them up later and posting them mostly to italki for corrections. I'm also adding the new words to Pleco's SRS. I want to really soak this stuff in and i feel like a lot of the vocab here really is useful. -HSK 5 flashcards. I'm currently wading through the HSK 5 cards in Pleco, adding 25 new cards a day (when i remember to do my reviews, at least). I'd say i review at least 4-5 times a week, some days i'm just too tired or lazy to go through 200 flashcards... -I've finished the FSI Mandarin course which, while teaching me lots of useless things and being super boring a lot of the time, gave me a decent pronunciation and helped me to start opening my mouth. I always want to compare FSI courses to Platiquemos, but none of the ones i've done (French, German, Mandarin) come even close... -I've also done NPCR 1-4. I've heard mixed reviews about NPCR 5 and have been reluctant to buy it. I enjoyed the 发展汉语 books i used in China, the vocab was interesting and often so were the stories/dialogs. Unfortunately the advanced books i bought got left in China. Maybe i can find them online somewhere. I think that's it. I'd like to read through Harry Potter in Chinese, i've got the text file loaded into Pleco to go through, i just haven't made the decision to actually start. As it is, i've read through the first chapter a couple times, but always end up quitting. Catalan: Ah and a quick note about Catalan. I did Assimil's course and it was great. Afterwards i just started reading books and enjoying the language. It's getting a bit rusty now, though i recently read two books about the Maquis (one about Caracremada and the other about Marcel·lí Massana) in Catalan. I also sometimes watch movies or TV shows online in Catalan. But the main reason i wanted to talk about Catalan was to mention a really great resource called Parla.cat. There is TONS of audio, exercises, explanations etc. I've only done the upper intermediate stuff (which is all in Català) as that's where the placement test put me, but there's stuff for all levels. And tons of it! I definitely recommend this to anyone wanting to supplement their Catalan studies, it's seriously an incredible website (and free!). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5650 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 14 of 98 30 January 2014 at 7:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Euskara:
Sure enough, today's lesson, 41/berrogeita bat(garren), cleared up the difference. It looks like i had it right, antzerki is theater as an art form and antzoki is the actual building where plays take place. Apart from just the normal lesson, and inspired by sfuqua's Spanish log, i've put the last three lessons (38-41) into Anki, sentence by sentence, or at least the more difficult ones (which generally is all of them). I'm not sure if/how it will help in the long run, but for the most part the sentences ARE really good and good at showing different parts of Basque grammar. Today, the main stumbling block for me was turning a verb into a noun (nominalization) and then using it as... yep! a verb! Here's the sentence: Hobe dugu zuzenean sarrerak erostea. Assimil's translation is "We'd better by the tickets directly/right away." Hobe dugu is a little phrase which literally means "We have better", aka "we'd better", zuzenean means "directly", sarrerak means "the tickets" and erostea means "the buying". So: "We'd better directly the buying of the tickets." Assimil just says the line between a verb and noun isn't quite as clear in Basque, and that you'll just "get used to it in time". I found a promisingly named article online named [url=https://addi.ehu.es/bitstream/10810/10854/1/Duguine%202012.Basque%20nominalizations.pdf]Basque nominalizations[/pdf], and despite being full of fancy words and technical jargon that just confused me ("infinitival adjuncts", "whose interpretation is dependent on a local c-commanding antecedent"), there were some examples that did help me understand nominalization a little better:
And a quick breakdown of one of those sentences: Haurrek liburuak irakurtzeak pozten gaitu. haur = child. Haurrek is the plural ergative, ie subject of a transitive verb liburu = book. -ak is the plural ending, like Spanish los/las irakurri = to read. Nominalized, it turns into irakurtze. The -ak ending here is the ergative singular, so the reading is the subject of the verb (gaitu), and the children are the subject of irakurri (even though it's nominalized). poztu = to make happy (alegrar). Pozten is the present participle (poztu gaitu = (has) made us happy) gaitu = remember the NOR-NORK verbs from before? Probably not, but this is the form that means he/she/it did an action to us. GAITU is the NOR (direct object), and with the 3rd person singular there is no NORK part. Some other forms are: pozten gaituzu = you make us happy pozten gaituzue = you (pl) make us happy pozten gaitute = they make us happy I thought today i'd be able to write a shorter entry. Guess not :/ Edited by Crush on 30 January 2014 at 7:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4417 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 15 of 98 31 January 2014 at 2:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Now that's just not nice. Because of the website you gave for Catalan, I ended up
starting it again! Thanks! Really good website!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5650 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 16 of 98 31 January 2014 at 3:41am | IP Logged | ||
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Molt bé! M'alegra que t'hagi agradat! La veritat és que aquest lloc web és molt bo (i completament gratis!). També es pot pedir l'ajuda d'un tutor (un professor particular), bé que per això sí que cal pagar.
Espero que continuïs amb el català :) EDIT: Un altre lloc web interessant és El català com cal. És un lloc web per ajudar els catalaparlants a parlar "correctement" el català, evitant l'ús de castellanismes i aclarant punts de gramàtica diversos. Edited by Crush on 31 January 2014 at 3:47am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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