Language practice thread 2

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Re: Language practice thread

Post by vo1dwalk3r »

Dormouse559 wrote: 09 Feb 2020 04:05 C'est une deuxième langue populaire.
It's a popular second language.

Perso, j'utilise le français parce que c'est la seule langue autre que l'anglais que je parle.
Personally, I use French because it's the only not-English language I speak.
Moi aussi. Avant de faire du français je voulais faire un langue un peu plus ésotérique, environ Quechua, que mon université offre.
Me too. Before taking French I wanted to take a little bit more esoteric of a language, like Quechua, which my university offers.

Mais quand j'ai commencé à étudier le français j'ai le trouvé agréable.
But when I started studying French I found it enjoyable :)

anyone have any idea what the 'of a' is doing in 'a little bit more esoteric of a language'? i definitely wouldn't put it there if it was just 'a more esoteric language'.
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Re: Language practice thread

Post by Dormouse559 »

vo1dwalk3r wrote: 09 Feb 2020 19:17Moi aussi. Avant de faire du français je voulais faire une langue un peu plus ésotérique, environ comme le quechua, que mon université offre.
Me too. Before taking French I wanted to take a little bit more esoteric of a language, like Quechua, which my university offers.

Mais quand j'ai commencé à étudier le français je l'ai le trouvé agréable.
But when I started studying French I found it enjoyable :)

anyone have any idea what the 'of a' is doing in 'a little bit more esoteric of a language'? i definitely wouldn't put it there if it was just 'a more esoteric language'.
For my money, it's part of "a little bit (of a)". For me, phrases like "a bit" and "a lot" don't sound as good modifying attributive adjectives without the "of".

She's a much nicer person. vs. She's a lot nicer of a person.
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Re: Language practice thread

Post by Dormouse559 »

J'ai une petite infestation de coccinelles dans ma salle de bain.
I have a little infestation of ladybugs in my bathroom.

Toutes les deux ou trois semaines, j'y trouve des coccinelles et pour moi c'est un mystère complet comment elles entrent.
Every few weeks, I find ladybugs there, and it's a complete mystery to me how they're getting in.

Je ne me plains pas, au contraire, si c'est inévitable que des insectes s'installent dans ma salle de bain, je préfère certainement les coccinelles aux alternatives.
I'm not complaining; in fact, if I have to have bugs in my bathroom, I certainly prefer ladybugs to the alternatives.
[:O]

C'est seulement un peu embrouillant.
It's just a bit confusing.
:wat:
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Re: Language practice thread

Post by All4Ɇn »

Dormouse559 wrote: 04 Mar 2020 07:37 J'ai une petite infestation de coccinelles dans ma salle de bain.
I have a little infestation of ladybugs in my bathroom.
Hast du immer noch diese Marienkäfer?
Do you still have these ladybugs?
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Re: Language practice thread

Post by Dormouse559 »

All4Ɇn wrote: 17 Mar 2020 03:20Hast du immer noch diese Marienkäfer?
Do you still have these ladybugs?
Non, pas depuis que j'ai posté ce message-là.
No, not since I made that post.

Mais j'en ai trouvé les premières … l'an dernier ?
But I found the first ones … last year?

Et après ça, des mois sont passés sans coccinelles, jusqu'à la réapparition récente.
And after that, months passed, until the recent re-emergence.

Tradition annuelle ?
Annual tradition?
[:P]
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All4Ɇn
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Re: Language practice thread

Post by All4Ɇn »

Dormouse559 wrote: 17 Mar 2020 17:47Tradition annuelle ?
Annual tradition?
[:P]
Vielleicht findet das Familientreffen von all den Marienkäfern und Josefkäfern dort statt.
Peut-être que la réunion de famille de toutes les coccinelles et tous les coccineaux y ait lieu.
Maybe the family reunion of all the ladybugs and gentlemanbugs is taking place there.
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Re: Language practice thread

Post by Salmoneus »

anyone have any idea what the 'of a' is doing in 'a little bit more esoteric of a language'? i definitely wouldn't put it there if it was just 'a more esoteric language'.
I have no idea what it's doing there.

Originally, you'd get adj+art+noun constructions simply due to the word order being more flexible early on, and this surviving as a relict construction. In particular, it tends to be when there's an adverb, which, as it were, pulls the adjective out to the left. So, "a nice man", but "much nicer a man"; "a loud parrot" > "somewhat too loud a parrot".

The some of the 'adverbs' had the overt form of a noun and preposition, with its own article, giving a double-article construction: "a great deal nicer a person", "a lot bigger a boat".

This then presumably got confused with double-article constructions where there is no adjective, but just a noun to which the main noun is a genitive: "a glimmer of a chance", "a whale of a time". [appositive cases like the latter themselves being an extension from cases like the former, which are genuinely genitive in meaing]. This confusion gives us the non-standard construction with two articles and 'of': *"a great deal nicer of a person", *"a lot bigger of a boat".

Then, in voidwalker's post, it seems there's another layer of confusion, in which this new double-article-and-genitive construction is confused with single-article constructions, giving them a second article (and a genitive) too, to give expressions like **!*"a more exotic of a language". (where Standard English has either "a more exotic language", or the somewhat archaic but still found in some syntactic contexts "more exotic a language").

void's construction may also be influenced by confusion with comparatives, which look similar but with definite articles : "the larger of the two".


Syntax is weird.

--------

Speaking of which, I would have written this post in Irish, to honour the intent of the thread... but I can't. Because a) I'm terrible at language-learning, and b) Irish is insane.
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Re: Language practice thread

Post by Salmoneus »

Speaking of which, I know this isn't really what the thread is for - as I'm writing about practicing a language, rather than actually doing so here - but I had to expostulate somewhere...

So, doing a duolingo lesson and finding it hard going, not because I don't get the ideas, but because Irish has so, so many ways to go wrong in every sentence, and when I fix one thing, I forget another. Here's three annoying sentences from one lesson (and yes, this is still fairly near the beginning of the course...)

Scríobhann an dalta an tuairisc faoi th1reoir an2 mh3úinteora4.
The pupil writes the report under the guidance of the teacher

So:
1 - this noun, 'guidance', does not take a definite article as it would in English. But it does have to agree with the preceding preposition. Normally, certain prepositions trigger lenition when they 'contain' a definite article, but 'faoi' actually triggers lenition even though it doesn't
2 - the singular article is 'an', easy. Except that if 'teacher' were feminine, it would instead take the plural article here (i.e. the feminine singular genitive is the same as the masculine/feminine nominative plural)
3 - oh, but of course a masculine noun in the genitive singular must lenite after the article as though it were a femine noun in the nominative singular!
4 - the genitive singular of 'múinteoir' is NOT the same as its nominative plural, as it typically the case, but is instead randomly velarisation plus -a. I think this is because it's a third declension noun. Helpfully, third declension nouns can be either masculine or feminine, and have one of two different plural suffixes.


An bhfuil1 tuairiscí2 sna3 nuachtáin4 faoin5 agallamh sin?
Are there reports about that interview in the newspapers?

1 - naturally, the interrogative of 'tá' is 'an bhfuil'...
2 - a plural, easy
3 - I keep forgetting that this preposition has to agree with the number, as well as definiteness, of the noun...
4 - a plural, easy. Except, of course, there's no easy way to tell which of half a dozen plurals each word will take! ['treoir', for instance, mentioned above, has the plural 'treoracha']
5 - again, I forget that this preposition has to be in the definite (because in Irish, 'that' is a circumposition including the definite article). Oh, and naturally English "about" translates to the same preposition as English "under"

Ní dh1éanann an t-2aisteoir sin agallaimh3 bh4eo.
That actor does not give live interviews

1 - the verb (which is actually make/do, not give, although give is used in very similar situations) has to agree with the negative particle, obviously [and incidentally, the verb for 'give' is 'tabhair', so naturally 'he does not give' is 'ní thugann sé']
2 - aargh, I keep forgeting that when a nominative singular masculine noun that begins with a vowel follows the definite article, it randomly has "t-" added to it!
3 - plural. It's one of those annoying palatalising plurals that are virtually impossible to hear in speech
4 - why does this adjective lenite as though agreeing with a nominative feminine noun, when 'agallamh' is actually masculine? Because you're forgetting that masculine plural nouns also trigger lenition of adjectives but only if they end in a palatalised consonant!


Conceptually, there's a lot of stuff (the syntax... ) in Irish more difficult than this. But as a monolingual speaker of a language with almost no agreement, the fact that everything can potentially have to agree, as it were, both forward and backward (nouns agree with prepositions, but prepositions also agree with nouns, etc) is soooo frustrating...
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Re: Language practice thread

Post by Sequor »

Je vais pas le nier : ça m'a bien fait mourir de rire, lire tout ça.
I'm not gonna deny it: reading all that made me crack up.

Ça semble être de la morphophonologie archaïque qui avait du sens autrefois mais qui aujourd'hui c'est que de la concordance morphologique. On peut supposer que ça est précisément le cas. Ça me rappelle aussi de choses similaires que j'ai lu autour de la morphologie du cachemiri, où les segments finaux du cachemiri moderne naissant se conservent aujourd'hui indirectement comme des voyelles irregulières du radical, comme de la palatalisation, etc.
It looks like archaic morphophonology that probably made sense in the old days but now is just bare morphological agreement. Presumably that's exactly what it is. It reminds me of similar things I've read about Kashmiri morphology, where the word-final segments of early modern Kashmiri are now indirectly retained as irregular stem vowels, word-final palatalization, etc.

Je crois qu'on pourrait bien imaginer un italien futur du genre de l'irlandais... Les prépositions déclinent déjà selon l'article suivant (al, nel, dal... avec [l]; alla, nella, dalla... avec [l:]; agli, negli, dagli... avec [ʎ:]), alors tout ce qui reste serait de devenir imaginatifs quant aux changements de ces consonantes latérales dans les propres mots et les mots suivants.
I think that we could easily imagine a Future Italian along the lines of Irish... The prepositions already decline for the following article (al, nel, dal... with [l]; alla, nella, dalla... with [l:]; agli, negli, dagli... with [ʎ:]), so all that remains is to get imaginative with regard to the changes of these lateral consonants inside the words themselves and the following words.

L'italien a déjà des mutations initiales, dont plusieurs ont du sens étymologique (remanēre ad lectum > rimanere a‿letto [alˈlɛtto], est cārum > è‿caro [ekˈka:ro]), mais autres en ont pas (possum facere > può‿fare [pwɔfˈfa:re], habet jam dictum > le second raddoppiamento dans ha‿già‿detto [addʒadˈdetto]). Donc il y a même plus de potentiel du maléfique là-bas.
Italian already has initial mutation, some of which makes sense etymologically (remanēre ad lectum > rimanere a‿letto [alˈlɛtto], est cārum > è‿caro [ekˈka:ro]), some of which doesn't (possum facere > può‿fare [pwɔfˈfa:re], habet jam dictum > the second raddoppiamento in ha‿già‿detto [addʒadˈdetto]). So there is even more potential for evil there.
hīc sunt linguificēs. hēr bēoþ tungemakeras.
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Re: Language practice thread 2

Post by Aevas »

Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait cette fin de semaine, vous autres? Moi, j'ai fait des changements au site, y compris la mise en ordre de ce forum. 🙂

What have you guys been doing this weekend? As for me, I've made changes to the board, including setting up this forum. 🙂
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Re: Language practice thread 2

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Aszev wrote: 26 Apr 2020 20:33 Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait cette fin de semaine, vous autres? Moi, j'ai fait des changements au site, y compris la mise en ordre de ce forum. 🙂

What have you guys been doing this weekend? As for me, I've made changes to the board, including setting up this forum. 🙂
ddu bido, ita beddu! Deo no appo practicadhu faeddare sa sardu ma tenia unas cumprobas trassintu s'última chida. App'a iscríbere maicantu di unu di meus "conlangs" oie

I see, how beautiful! I haven't practiced speaking Sardinian, but I had some tests over the last week. I will write something on one of my conlangs, [later] today
Spoiler:
My minicity is [http://zyphrazia.myminicity.com/xml]Zyphrazia and [http://novland.myminicity.com/xml]Novland.

Minicity has fallen :(
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Re: Language practice thread 2

Post by Dormouse559 »

Aszev wrote: 26 Apr 2020 20:33 Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait cette fin de semaine, vous autres? Moi, j'ai fait des changements au site, y compris la mise en ordre de ce forum. 🙂

What have you guys been doing this weekend? As for me, I've made changes to the board, including setting up this forum. 🙂
Cette nuit j'ai pas pu dormir parce que j'essayais de créer de nouveaux changements vocaliques pour le silvais. Maintenant je réalise une visualisation animée des changements dans Keynote (la version Apple de Powerpoint).
I couldn't sleep last night because I was trying to come up with new vowel shifts for Silvish. Now I'm animating a visualization of the changes in Keynote (Apple's answer to Powerpoint).

Les voyelles sont bien trop malléables. Où arrêter ?
Vowels are entirely too squishy. Where do I stop?
😠

Outre ça, j'ai pas fait grand-chose ce week-end.
Other than that, I haven't done much this weekend.
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Re: Language practice thread 2

Post by qwed117 »

Iscríbia unu bete di sa conlimba, ma no dd'afiscio. Dd'app'a aumentare cras antes de dd'afisciare
I wrote a post about the conlang, but I didn't post it. I'll add to it tomorrow before I post it
Spoiler:
My minicity is [http://zyphrazia.myminicity.com/xml]Zyphrazia and [http://novland.myminicity.com/xml]Novland.

Minicity has fallen :(
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Re: Language practice thread 2

Post by Birdlang »

Aszev wrote: 26 Apr 2020 20:33 Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait cette fin de semaine, vous autres? Moi, j'ai fait des changements au site, y compris la mise en ordre de ce forum. 🙂

What have you guys been doing this weekend? As for me, I've made changes to the board, including setting up this forum. 🙂
Mendengar lagu2. Dan merekam lagu2 daerah Indonesia,

Listening to songs. And recording Indonesian regional folk songs.

Terima kasih Aszev & Ossicone!

Thank you Aszev & Ossicone.
(Was trying to write thank you for helping keep this forum a nice safe place and being great admins but couldn’t come up with what to say).
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Re: Language practice thread 2

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Dormouse559 wrote: 26 Apr 2020 21:06Cette nuit j'ai pas pu dormir parce que j'essayais de créer de nouveaux changements vocaliques pour le silvais. Maintenant je réalise une visualisation animée des changements dans Keynote (la version Apple de Powerpoint).
I couldn't sleep last night because I was trying to come up with new vowel shifts for Silvish. Now I'm animating a visualization of the changes in Keynote (Apple's answer to Powerpoint).

Les voyelles sont bien trop malléables. Où arrêter ?
Vowels are entirely too squishy. Where do I stop?
😠
Gelang es dir schießlich zu entscheiden?
Did you manage to decide in the end?
qwed117 wrote: 27 Apr 2020 08:10 Iscríbia unu bete di sa conlimba, ma no dd'afiscio. Dd'app'a aumentare cras antes de dd'afisciare
I wrote a post about the conlang, but I didn't post it. I'll add to it tomorrow before I post it
Er det eit kunstspråk som du har posta om her før?
Is it a conlang that you have posted about here before?
Birdlang wrote: 28 Apr 2020 19:33Terima kasih Aszev & Ossicone!

Thank you Aszev & Ossicone.
(Was trying to write thank you for helping keep this forum a nice safe place and being great admins but couldn’t come up with what to say).
Merci beaucoup! Ça fait toujours plaisir d'entendre du monde qui apprécient nos efforts 🙂
Thank you very much! It's always nice to hear from people who appreciate our efforts 🙂
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Re: Language practice thread 2

Post by Dormouse559 »

Aszev wrote: 28 Apr 2020 22:27Gelang es dir schießlich zu entscheiden?
Did you manage to decide in the end?
Pas encore, j'ai un double sentiment d'aller trop loin et, à la fois, de ne pas aller assez loin.
Not yet. I have a dual feeling of going too far and, at the same time, not going far enough.

Des discussions récentes de la phonétique historique du français entretenues par certains membres de ce forum (hum, hum, Ser, Zekoslav) ne rendent pas les choses plus simples.
Recent discussions of French sound changes by certain members of this board (*cough* *cough* Ser, Zekoslav) aren't making things any simpler.
😉
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Re: Language practice thread 2

Post by qwed117 »

Aszev wrote: 28 Apr 2020 22:27
qwed117 wrote: 27 Apr 2020 08:10 Iscríbia unu bete di sa conlimba, ma no dd'afiscio. Dd'app'a aumentare cras antes de dd'afisciare
I wrote a post about the conlang, but I didn't post it. I'll add to it tomorrow before I post it
Er det eit kunstspråk som du har posta om her før?
Is it a conlang that you have posted about here before?
Unu pagu
A bit
Spoiler:
My minicity is [http://zyphrazia.myminicity.com/xml]Zyphrazia and [http://novland.myminicity.com/xml]Novland.

Minicity has fallen :(
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Re: Language practice thread 2

Post by qwed117 »

M'arrugesi sa conca mea, apetzendhe sa diferéntzia inter "bi" et "nche" in sa sarda.
I broke my head, piecing together the difference between "bi" and "nche" in Sardinian*.

*Apparently both words mean something like "there" (cf. b'at there is to nche sunt (there are), but apparently there's a complex deixis system that I cannot understand differentiating the two. Goddammit. I think it's roughly that you can only use "nche sunt" if if the "there" in "there is" would be something close to oneself
Spoiler:
My minicity is [http://zyphrazia.myminicity.com/xml]Zyphrazia and [http://novland.myminicity.com/xml]Novland.

Minicity has fallen :(
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Re: Language practice thread 2

Post by Dormouse559 »

qwed117 wrote: 30 Jun 2020 05:20 M'arrugesi sa conca mea, apetzendhe sa diferéntzia inter "bi" et "nche" in sa sarda.
I broke my head, piecing together the difference between "bi" and "nche" in Sardinian*.

*Apparently both words mean something like "there" (cf. b'at there is to nche sunt (there are), but apparently there's a complex deixis system that I cannot understand differentiating the two. Goddammit. I think it's roughly that you can only use "nche sunt" if if the "there" in "there is" would be something close to oneself
Est-ce que tu as pu vérifier la différence entre bi et nche ?
Were you able to confirm the difference between bi and nche?

Et plus généralement, est-ce que le sarde a un système très fort de déixis ?
And more generally, does Sardinian have very strong deixis?
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Re: Language practice thread 2

Post by Khemehekis »

Dormouse559 wrote: 28 Apr 2020 23:20 Des discussions récentes de la phonétique historique du français entretenues par certains membres de ce forum (hum, hum, Ser, Zekoslav) ne rendent pas les choses plus simples.
Recent discussions of French sound changes by certain members of this board (*cough* *cough* Ser, Zekoslav) aren't making things any simpler.
Ist "hum, hum" das französische Äquivalent für "*cough*, *cough*"? Ich wusste das nie.
Is "hum, hum" the French equivalent of "cough, cough"? I never knew that.
♂♥♂♀

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