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TAC14 : Euskara eta txinera -- 汉语和巴斯克语 | ||
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| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5049 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 17 of 98 31 January 2014 at 4:11am | IP Logged |
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Please stop inspiring me to learn yet another Iberian language- Basque, Galician or Catalan! :)
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| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5652 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 18 of 98 31 January 2014 at 4:42am | IP Logged |
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I'm hoping to inspire you to pick up all three, as all three are on my hitlist! While we're at it, perhaps i can interest you to a cup of Occitan while waiting for your Galician? And breaking out slightly from the Iberian peninsula, how about some Sardinian or Romanian? ;)
EDIT: Gaur 42-garren ikaskaia ikasi dut. Berrikuspena izan zen. Laster liburua amaituko dut, zazpi ikaskai bakarrik daude. Oso pozen dago! Liburua amaitu eta gero, ez dakit zer egin nahi dut. Gorkaren kurtsoa egingo dut berriro, beharbada... (corrections welcome!) Today i looked at lesson 42, the review lesson. Soon i'll be finished with the book, there are only 8 lessons left (the last lesson is 50). I'm excited to finish the course! I'm not sure what i want to do afterwards, however. Maybe i'll go through Gorka's course again? I guess it is a bummer that the course will be ending soon as there are still lots of things we haven't touched, like conditionals and the subjunctive. I am starting to feel pretty comfortable with the basic grammatical structures presented in the course, though vocabulary quickly comes and goes unless it's repeated several times. I wonder what more they could've crammed in had it been a standard 100-lesson course. While it is true that it can be a really frustrating at times, the course is much better than anything else i've found. I've heard really good things about Alan R. King's "The Basque Language: A Practical Introduction", unfortunately i can't find it anywhere. I may end up giving up on the bookshops here and just order it off Amazon. Colloquial Basque is also by Alan R. King, though i've heard it's a bit watered down. I'm about to finish Beginner's Basque (i'm on lesson nine of 12) and it's really a rather thin (in content) course. The dialogs are a bit stilted, in lesson 8 we had "Today is Monday. Monday is the first day of the week!" "Yes, that's right. There are seven days in a week." I don't really mind as it helps to show different grammar points, but the course is a bit dry. The explanations aren't always that clear, either, but it was nice to at least have them in English. If i can't find A Practical Introduction, i'll probably pick up the Colloquial course once i finish this. On a side note, even in this English course when doing the translation exercises or Anki reviews of the vocab, it's generally easier for me to translate it into Spanish than English. I don't know if this is due to Assimil or what, maybe i've just related Basque more with Spanish in my head. And today's contents: NOR-NORI-NORK in the past. Apparently this is what we'll be focusing on next week. I'm glad, 'cuz i've seen this in Gorka's course and it's a bit of a headache-causer. In the present tense, NOR-NORI-NORK is built in that order, the first part of the verb shows NOR (direct object), the second part shows NORI (indirect object/dative), and the last part shows NORK (subject of the verb). In the past, in addition to new forms, the order changes. It basically becomes NORK-NOR-NORI (NORK moves to the front). This actually seems like it would be easier to keep track of, but i've gotten used to (or started to, anyway) the other order. In addition, with a third person object (NOR) it's completely irregular. Fortunately i've already memorized these forms. Anyway, if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I know it's a bit of a pain to read these long posts, but honestly it's hard to keep them this short. Euskara is a really interesting language and i'm really enjoying watching it unfold. It's really cool making out words and entire phrases in Basque songs. Actually, i've found a lot of Urko's songs are spoken/sung pretty clearly and not too complicated. Someone's even translated a bunch of them into Spanish on Youtube! Perhaps you'd like your first Basque lesson? Check out Urko's Lehengo ikasgaia (literally, first lesson): Ni naiz. Hi haiz. Hura da. (I am, ou are, he/she/it is) Gu gara. Zu zara. Zuek zarete. (we are, you are, you (pl) are) Haiek dira... (They are) Hau da gure euskara garbia, (this is our .. clean? pure? .. Euskara) Hau da gure hizkuntza maitia, (this is our beloved language) Hau da gure lehengo ikasgaia. (this is our first lesson) Gu euskalduna gara. (we are Basque speakers) The last line reminds me of something i wanted to mention before, maybe i have already i can't remember. But apparently "Basque" identity is associated more with the language. If you go to the Basque Country as a Basque-speaking foreigner, you'll still be considered an "euskalduna". I don't much care for associating oneself with a particular country or any sort of nationalism, but this idea of associating more with your language than a geographical region/government is interesting to me. Edited by Crush on 31 January 2014 at 6:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4634 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 19 of 98 31 January 2014 at 6:24am | IP Logged |
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Catalan sounds really edgy to me. Maybe one day...
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| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4426 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 20 of 98 31 January 2014 at 3:14pm | IP Logged |
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Crush, I come here to read about Basque and I end up spending a lot of time looking at Catalan websites when I should have been studying Russian! That's mean:-)
Regarding your comment about Basque identity, I think you are right, but I guess you could say more or less the same about Catalan as well. In Spain, regional (or national) identity seems strongly linked to language, and I guess it is partly due to the attempt at "castellanización" during the Franco era. That being said, I guess there are plenty of people who identify as Basque but do speak the language, I seem to remember that about half of the population in the Basque country do not know euskara, although a fair number of them are probably migrants from elsewhere in Spain who have settled there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5049 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 21 of 98 31 January 2014 at 4:23pm | IP Logged |
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An advantage of having a twitter account is discovering things you wouldn't ordinarily know about in your TL or, another TL. I follow a Spanish/Catalan Comics writer on twitter Alex Roca. I got into his work because of a comic he co-wrote in Spanish called Como ser un guionista. He just tweeted the debut of a new comic in Catalan called De pelis i llibres.
If you're interested, a good way to discover people to follow in Euskara is to go to the indigenous tweets site. There you'll find a list of people with links and the percentage of their tweets in Euskara. Remember, you don't have to tweet yourself to follow. Edit, I just saw you're in China now. Never mind about twitter! For those outside China, indigenous tweets has links to tweets in many rare languages. Edited by iguanamon on 31 January 2014 at 8:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5652 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 22 of 98 31 January 2014 at 8:44pm | IP Logged |
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"gransíssimes" hehe.
Thanks for the links, the comics are pretty funny. I've looked at some of the Twitter (Tuiter :P) accounts and it's nice to see a lot of stuff i recognize. It's definitely much more digestible than news stories. (EDIT: i'm not in China now, but i just got back and am looking to go back soon :) ) @Ogrim: True, but if a person from the US or South America or Asia went to Catalunya speaking Catalan, would they be considered "Catalan"? I think language is an important part of identity for a lot of people who speak "regional" languages in Spain, but (from what i've read), even if you weren't born in the Basque country you'll still be seen as Basque just by speaking the language. I don't know if a Spanish person from Madrid who spoke Catalan would ever be considered Catalan, but i can't say. Like i said before, i don't much care to be considered Basque or Catalan or Spanish or anything, really, but i still think the connection with the language beyond geographical boundaries is interesting. I don't have any firsthand experience with it, so i can't really say to what extent it's true or how accurate the idea i've got of it is. The word the Basque people use to identify themselves, at least, means "Basque speaker". Edited by Crush on 31 January 2014 at 10:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5652 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 23 of 98 01 February 2014 at 6:00am | IP Logged |
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Ahh i'd written up my post today but some computer issues deleted it.
Anyway, a quick (perhaps) overview of today's lesson (43). Today we covered another "that"-form. Previously we learned about the -en suffix to synthetic verbs (verbs that can conjugate) to say things like "The dog THAT runs" or "The man THAT kissed me at the party yesterday". Today we learned two new forms for a different type of that-construction. One is for positive sentences and the other's for negative sentences. The positive form is -ela, the negative form is -nik. These forms are used when you say things like "I know THAT you are there" "I think THAT I am right" "I admit THAT I was wrong" etc. (modifying a verb, whereas the other seems to just modify nouns?) Here are a few sentences to compare: -en I have seen the Basque-speaking dog (the dog that speaks Basque) Nik euskaraz hitz egiten duen txakurra ikusi dut. Literally: I "speaks Basque"-en dog seen have. The -en ending of "du" marks that the phrase is a relative clause. Just to refresh, "du" is the auxiliary form (NOR-NORK) that accompanies egiten. Egiten is just the present participle of the verb egin, which itself is the past participle. Most verbs don't have their own conjugation, they rely on another auxiliary verb to show who is acting, the DO, and the IO. Hitz egin uses the auxiliary UKAN. In English, the thing being modified goes first (the dog that speaks). In Basque, it comes after (speaks-that the dog). -ela I told you that Euskara was really hard. Euskara oso zaila dela esan dizut. "Euskara very hard is-that told it-to you-i-have." You can see how it's backwards from English. I think you could also say "Esan dizut euskara oso zaila dela." Told you-i-have Euskara very hard is-that. It's still hard for me to really pick this up, though i can see it in phrases and understand it. The biggest challenge is catching it when i hear it. I understand very little when i listen to Basque... Also, look at the last sentence i gave you. They aren't any pronouns! "I told you" is taken care of by (esan) dizut. (Esan) dizkizut could be used to show "I told them (stories, lies, etc.) to you." The conjugated verb, here UKAN in NOR-NORI-NORK, makes clitics unnecessary. Edited by Crush on 01 February 2014 at 6:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5652 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 24 of 98 02 February 2014 at 2:21am | IP Logged |
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Today's lesson (44) had something i think i've seen a few times but just don't understand.
Normally, to form the past form of izan (to be) you would use izan as the auxiliary verb (the same verb) since it's intransitive. Intransitive verbs use izan, transitive verbs use ukan. However, in today's lesson we had "...oinez joan behar izan genuen". In English, "...we had to go on foot". Behar izan is a phrase that means "to need to". I think you can also say "behar ukan", but i figured since the verb used here was izan, instead of genuen (the past tense of ukan in NOR-NORK) that we would use "ginen" (the past tense of izan). If anyone has any information on this i would really appreciate it! EDIT: I'm not sure if i've figured it out, but it seems like "behar dut" would mean "I need" and "behar izan dut" would mean "I needed/have needed". I just looked another verb, uste (to think), up in the dictionary and the example sentences seem to use it that way. I was confused since in Assimil they call it "uste izan", but the sentence used ukan instead of izan. I think the izan is only added in compound tenses. I'm really missing FSI's drills, i feel like that's really the only way to get all these down. A few months ago i tried making some drills of my own and even recorded them. I might do that again once i finish Assimil to try to get all these verbs and structures down. A little note for later if i do decide to do this: NOR -past tense -present vs past NOR-NORI (apparently not covered in Assimil? I don't recall having seen it yet) -present -past NOR-NORI-NORK & NOR-NORK -present -past -present vs past EN -maybe some translation and substituion drills? ELA -same as for the -en suffix -some way to compare/contrast -en and -ela OTHER -maybe some stuff to contrast NOR and NOR-NORK -some tense work with the verbal suffixes (-era, -ko, -ten) -forming comparatives/superlatives I think i just need to hear and process these over and over. EDIT: And lastly, if someone could untangle this sentence from the exercises i would really appreciate it, too: "Zubia iragan bezain laster, ezkerreko errepidea hartzeko eta dena zuzen joateko esan digu gizon horrek, hori dela leizeetarako bidea" My attempt: "As soon as (you) cross the bridge, (you) will take the left path and go straight (all the way), that man told us, that that is the path to the caves." I think i've got it, but the sentence still looks really odd to me. Edited by Crush on 02 February 2014 at 3:44am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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