ALTVM VIDETVR

[Expugnator]

Wow, Avar! That has triggered some past wanderlust here too. I'd go for it if the resources were enough and if it were philologically related to Georgian as well, but looks like I've been healed from this one wanderlust episode.

[vonPeterhof]

This past week has been the exact opposite of the previous one in terms of weather, so conversely I hardly got any reading (in Russian and Japanese) done at all. Not only was I unable to sit outside and read due to the nearly constant rain and cold weather, my usual reading time during commutes has been swallowed up: by Assimil in the case of the morning one, and by checking Twitter and emails in the case of the evening one (it's a busy period at work, so I can't do it there any more; needless to say, reading books is also out of the question). However, this has been a productive week for my other language learning endeavours. I did manage to stick to the pace of one Ancient Greek lesson per day, so finishing the course in a little more than two months looks pretty doable. One thing about Ancient Greek grammar that struck me as interesting in these past two weeks is that, unlike in Modern Greek but similarly to Russian, it appears that the default construction for expressing possession is "dative + to be" rather than "to have" ("by me there is X" vs "I have X"). In Russian this is usually explained as a result of Uralic (Finno-Ugric) influence, so I wonder if there are any similar theories for Greek (the Pre-Greek substrate hypothesis appears to mostly deal with vocabulary rather than grammatical features).

With Avar I've finished the second lesson which introduced the three noun classes, which can roughly be termed "masculine", "feminine" and "neuter". The former two are pretty much exclusively animate, so the system is a lot simpler than in many European languages, but there are some seeming irregularities, like that the word for "child" is in the third, otherwise inanimate class. For most nouns class allegiance is purely semantic and isn't reflected morphologically, but most other words that either modify or refer to the nous get either suffixes or prefixes, depending on the class of the noun ([w] for the masculine, [j] for the feminine and [b] for the neuter; in the plural the prefix is [r-] and the suffix is [-l] regardless of class). Nothing particularly unusual so far. The grammatical and phonological explanations in the book are pretty clear and understandable, but vocabulary explanations could be better: some exercises require you to translate sentences containing words or word forms that not only hadn't been introduced in the lesson, but don't even appear in the glossary at the end of the book. There is an answer key, but it doesn't really do much to explain why the sentences are translated that way: I had to use an external source to confirm that yes, гІухьбу /ʕux'bu/ is in fact the (extremely irregular) plural of вехь /wex/ ("shepherd"). But then, the author does state that the book is meant as a basic introduction and that the readers would need other sources for serious study, and even provides a list of recommendations.

[Mista]

One thing about Ancient Greek grammar that struck me as interesting in these past two weeks is that, unlike in Modern Greek but similarly to Russian, it appears that the default construction for expressing possession is "dative + to be" rather than "to have" ("by me there is X" vs "I have X"). In Russian this is usually explained as a result of Uralic (Finno-Ugric) influence, so I wonder if there are any similar theories for Greek (the Pre-Greek substrate hypothesis appears to mostly deal with vocabulary rather than grammatical features).

Since Latin also has this construction, I've always assumed it was an Indo-European thing

[vonPeterhof]

@Mista interesting, I wasn't aware if that. Although it probably should be noted that unlike the analogous constructions in Ancient Greek, Latin and apparently also Irish, the one in Russian uses the genitive case rather than the dative (it's combined with a locative preposition, so it comes across more similarly to the Indo-European and Finno-Ugric "by me there is X" rather than the Turkic "my X exists"). Combined with the fact that most other Slavic languages use the verb "to have" a lot more liberally, a non-IE origin of the construction in Russian is still a possibility.

[Mista]

unlike the analogous constructions in Ancient Greek, Latin and apparently also Irish, the one in Russian uses the genitive case rather than the dative (it's combined with a locative preposition, so it comes across more similarly to the Indo-European and Finno-Ugric "by me there is X" rather than the Turkic "my X exists")

Thanks for pointing out Irish - I was wondering about that this morning, but didn't have time to check it out. I know just enough Russian to have noticed the construction, and I admit I automatically sorted it together with the Greek and Latin constructions, though noting that the construction isn't exactly parallel. I have now looked up the preposition у in the dictionary, and as I understand it, the literal meaning of the Russian construction would be something like "there is with [me]". The Latin and Greek ones, however, would more naturally be interpreted as meaning something like "there is for [my] benefit". So it turns out the parallel is weak on both levels. It is actually difficult to see how something like an IE equivalent of the GReek/Latin construction could evolve into the Russian one.

Combined with the fact that most other Slavic languages use the verb "to have" a lot more liberally, a non-IE origin of the construction in Russian is still a possibility.

There are probably good reasons for thinking so, and what I mentioned above could be part of it. One thing I'm really curious about now, is what you would find in old Russian texts (I have no idea how far back the history of the Russian language can be traced) or in Old Church Slavonic texts (which, as far as I know, is the oldest attested Slavonic language). The more you learn, the more you still have to learn...

[vonPeterhof]

This year marks the tenth anniversary of my graduation from high school, so starting this coming week I'm taking a holiday to meet up with the classmates in Almaty, Kazakhstan. I haven't visited the city I grew up in even once since the graduation, so I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like now. In addition to that, since I'll have eight days there I might be able to work in a short trip through southern Kazakhstan - and maybe even actually use my Kazakh. Unfortunately, the advanced course at til.gov.kz is down again, so I'm just practising passive skills by reading and listening to media.

As for my current language study, another change of plans has happened. I got my wanderlust somewhat under control and am now content with postponing Avar at least until I get to Arabic, but since my finishing off the Hakka book is happening much more slowly than I was hoping I've decided to start on Mandarin immediately. Here are the specifics: I'll be doing one Pimsleur lesson per week (possibly increasing the frequency after being done with Hakka) and adding the sentences from the companion book to Anki. I've given a lot of thought to the question of whether I'll be prioritizing Traditional or Simplified characters and in the end decided to go with the latter. My cards will still contain the sentences in Traditional characters on the reverse, but I'll only be testing myself on either the Simplified characters or the pinyin transcriptions. While there were good reasons to go with Traditional (my aesthetic preferences, having Taiwanese acquaintances I could practice with, the relative ease of converting T->S as opposed to vice versa, etc.) I chose Simplified because of both the preponderance of resources and media in Simplified (especially here in Russia, apparently the only learning materials in Traditional that can be found around here are the more academic intros to Classical or Middle Chinese and books on calligraphy) and also because I'm already getting exposure to Traditional characters through my studies of Classical Chinese and other East Asian languages. Anyway, I did the first lesson today, and there doesn't seem to be much trouble so far, except for the distinction between the second and third tones - while I understand it in theory it's often hard to hear in speech, not to mention reproducing it myself. Hopefully this will get better.

In other news, the Manchu converter is down again, so this time I went and wrote down a whole paragraph from the book. Behold, my horrible Manchu handwriting (the text direction is top-to-bottom, the lines are ordered left-to-right):

manchu_hw.jpg

The text as it appears in the book (the single dots are the equivalent of commas, while the double ones are full stops):

juwe biyai orin sunja de. horon be badarambure amba jiyanggiyūn. julergi be necihiyere wang šang jy sin. julergi be tuwakiyara jiyanggiyūn manggitu. giyangning ni jergi babe tuwakiyara jiyanggiyūn ecu. hebei amban gūsai ejen lebei. hife. meiren-i janggin ehene se yūn nan be gaime dosire jalin hebe acafi. tuweri dosimbi seme toktoho: bi morin be ulebume maikan enggemu. ahūra hajun be dasataha:

And the translation:

On the twenty-fifth of the second month, Field Marshal of the Second Rank, and Prince Pacifier of the South Shang Zhixin, Protector of the South General Manggitu, Protector of Jiangning and other places General Ecu, Councilors and Lieutenant-generals Lebei and Hife, and Major-general Ehene met in council to discuss strategies of how to enter and take Yunnan. They decided to launch the expedition in winter. I fed the horses and prepared my tent, saddle, and weapons.

I tried converting the text from the book into the Manchu script, looking at the rules on Wikipedia and Omniglot, but without consulting my cards in Anki. The bracket I drew with a pencil near the bottom of the fourth line from the right marks where I gave up and started checking with my existing sentences, while the circles mark where I found (and awkwardly tried to correct) mistakes after checking the whole text. Since not all of the words in the text are present in my Anki deck I can't be totally sure that there aren't more mistakes. However, this exercise actually seems to be helping in solidifying the rules in my memory, as well as "discovering" rules that weren't written out explicitly in Wikipedia or Omniglot (like the fact that writing the medial i as two strokes instead of one appears to be limited to cases where it's part of a diphthong preceding a consonant, like in "meiren" and "maikan". Maybe I should just keep doing it like this.

[Sizen]

there doesn't seem to be much trouble so far, except for the distinction between the second and third tones

Something that my friend told me before I went to Taiwan was to focus less on the contours and more on the pitch extrema of the tones. The third tone will always be the lowest and if you can internalize the relative difference in pitch between the low points of the two tones, you should have an easier time distinguishing between them. In theory... Although, it won't help with production.

[vonPeterhof]

I'm back from my trip to Kazakhstan. Catching up with classmates and seeing how much Almaty has changed in the past ten years was great. Language-wise the highlight of the trip was my one day in the ancient city of Turkistan, where Kazakh is the default language for both public and private discourse and the use of Russian is much more limited. I don't think I've ever spoken so much Kazakh in one day in my entire life. Naturally I've made a fool of myself on several occasions, but I've mostly managed to communicate without getting people to switch to Russian for me. Didn't really get to speak any Kazakh in Almaty, even though I did hear it on its streets more frequently than I used to back when I lived there (which probably says more about my sheltered upbringing than any actual demographic changes - until this year's trip I had never even used the city's public transport). Perhaps I should make speaking Kazakh to someone in Almaty my goal for the next time I go there - hopefully in less than ten years

My language learning has been more or less steady. In Ancient Greek I've completed lesson 50, which means that I'm supposed to be in Assimil's "active phase". While re-doing lesson 1 with a focus on production was easy, I'm really not sure how far I'll be able to take this, since with ancient languages I tend to neglect active skills even more than I usually do with other languages. I've barely applied any effort on the "fill in the blanks" exercises, learned things like inflected endings only as far as it takes to recognize them and didn't really bother memorizing things like accent placement. I'll still try to do things the way the book suggests for now, but I'll probably just get bored with it and focus on speeding through the later chapters to just cram vocabulary.

Initially I got so hooked on Mandarin I tried doing more than one Pimsleur lesson per week, but had to restrain myself due to getting increasingly swamped in Anki reviews. One innovation I've introduced to my Anki cards is I've replaced pinyin in the pronunciation field with Zhuyin fuhao aka Bopomofo. I've been more or less familiar with pinyin long before I formally started studying Mandarin, while Zhuyin seems like it could be useful for reading media from Taiwan, since I've noticed it being used there for pronunciation guidance. Plus, it's not like I need a good excuse to learn a new writing system

[zatris]

How good is Assimil's Ancient Greek course? I'm looking for something to use as a side resource when I just want to dabble in some Ancient Greek and I'm not in the mood for serious study with Athenaze. I'm thinking about using the Latin course this way too, parallel to Familia romana.

[vonPeterhof]

@zatris I'm not really in a position to compare Assimil to any other Ancient Greek learning materials, but I'm satisfied with it in terms of the pacing and the accessibility of grammar and vocabulary explanations (albeit somewhat limited by my less than perfect command of French). With its bite-sized chunks of lessons and relatively limited use of exercises, I'd say it does seem like an appropriate resource for leisurely dabbling and/or reinforcing points learned from elsewhere.