Sol's Log -- Spanish/Russian/Korean!

[Willow]

Still going through the Russian cases and making cheat sheets. Today I discovered something which I found really weird but interesting:

If your age ends with:
- 1: you say “год”
- 2, 3 or 4: you say “года”
- any other number (0, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9): you say “лет”

e.g:
- Ребенку 1 год – A child is 1 year old
- Мне двадцать три года - I am 23 years old
- Мне восемнадцать лет - I am 18 years old

I wonder why this is! In Bulgarian we only use година (s) and години (pl).

As for me, this Russian "лет" is very similar to Polish "lat" (years). Compare:
Мне восемнадцать лет.
Mam osiemnaście lat.
Probably this is a paradox of slavic languages (and any other language family), you never know which of these ones are really close to another, and from what side exactly that closeness is going to surprise you
_______________________________
And yes, Hi! Wouldn't you mind if I'll follow your log? I'm Russian, and I also learn another slavic language, so it may appear interesting to compare our experience and also I can help with some problematic cases

[Sol]

Still going through the Russian cases and making cheat sheets. Today I discovered something which I found really weird but interesting:

If your age ends with:
- 1: you say “год”
- 2, 3 or 4: you say “года”
- any other number (0, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9): you say “лет”

e.g:
- Ребенку 1 год – A child is 1 year old
- Мне двадцать три года - I am 23 years old
- Мне восемнадцать лет - I am 18 years old

I wonder why this is! In Bulgarian we only use година (s) and години (pl).

As for me, this Russian "лет" is very similar to Polish "lat" (years). Compare:
Мне восемнадцать лет.
Mam osiemnaście lat.
Probably this is a paradox of slavic languages (and any other language family), you never know which of these ones are really close to another, and from what side exactly that closeness is going to surprise you
_______________________________
And yes, Hi! Wouldn't you mind if I'll follow your log? I'm Russian, and I also learn another slavic language, so it may appear interesting to compare our experience and also I can help with some problematic cases

Polish is so interesting. It looks completely different to Bulgarian or Russian, but when my Polish friend and I start comparing vocab there are a ton of similarities. Some words were just like Bulgarian but with the stress placed differently. If it used the Cyrillic alphabet those similarities would be much more obvious. Something like:

Мам осемнасце лат. (excuse misinterpretations of the Polish alphabet)

And yes please do stick around I'm sure I'll run into a lot of problems with the cases! On a side note, I find it so interesting how there are remnants of cases left in Bulgarian (though there are no cases now). Like the word нощем which means "at/by night" and reminds me of the Russian ем/ом instrumental case.

Do you have a log too? I want to get around to Polish one day so it'd be really interesting to see a Russian-speaker learn it. Also I'm curious, what made you pick Polish? I've noticed it becoming a really popular language to learn.

[Willow]

Polish is so interesting. It looks completely different to Bulgarian or Russian, but when my Polish friend and I start comparing vocab there are a ton of similarities.

Actually, I see more common things, than differencies. Maybe it's because both Bulgarian and Polish are historicaly connected to Russian, but there is no historical connection between Polish and Bulgarian?

If it used the Cyrillic alphabet those similarities would be much more obvious.

Definitely

Мам осемнасце лат. (excuse misinterpretations of the Polish alphabet)

It's rather: Мам ощемнащче лат. But you were close

And yes please do stick around I'm sure I'll run into a lot of problems with the cases! On a side note, I find it so interesting how there are remnants of cases left in Bulgarian (though there are no cases now). Like the word нощем which means "at/by night" and reminds me of the Russian ем/ом instrumental case.

Oh, Thank you, and I will And I had no idea that there are no cases in contemporary Bulgarian. It's really interesting!

Do you have a log too? I want to get around to Polish one day so it'd be really interesting to see a Russian-speaker learn it. Also I'm curious, what made you pick Polish? I've noticed it becoming a really popular language to learn.

Yes, I do: it's somewhere here among the other's. I didn't come up an original name - it's just Willow's log. And I decided to choose Polish mainly because I live in Poland and I'm married to Pole But I always was fascinated with Polish language and culture

PS: And happy New Year!

[Sol]

Hey everyone!

So I haven't posted in quite some time again. I started a new job a month ago and have a horrific commute time and working hours. I haven't been able to study languages in a month.

It makes me really sad that I don't have the time anymore, but I am currently working towards attaining a job which will open up much more time for my hobbies. Hopefully I can achieve this within a few months.

This means that my updates may be very scarce. I just wanted to write it here that I definitely have not quit studying languages!! They are my one true love and I can't wait to get back to a regular schedule again.

See y'all soon, hopefully!!

[druckfehler]

I started a new job a month ago and have a horrific commute time and working hours. I haven't been able to study languages in a month.

I feel your pain. When I started my job I was rather frustrated about not being able to study much anymore as well. I also had a commute of over an hour each way for a couple of months, but that was actually a good thing for my language studies. If I hadn't been reading Korean books and been listening to Podcasts for Persian during the morning commute, I think I wouldn't have looked at those languages for months... Is studying during the commute an option? I actually thought it made commuting a lot less stressful/frustrating as well, because I was at least able to use the time to do something I liked.

[Sol]

So I thought I was too busy for languages. But I went into a massive foreign languages bookstore today and proceeded to die from happiness.

I bought this.

Go hard or go home right? I'm gonna start reading and annotating. I've also been listening to Russian podcasts too and noticed that after listening for 10-20 minutes, my brain "adjusts" or something, and I start understanding.

And I'm faced with yet another conflict. The Chinese section of the bookstore is ENORMOUS, which made me kinda want to learn Mandarin... though I know I should just stop right there. CHINESE, the mother of crazy-languages-that-will-take-you-a-lifetime-to-learn, is not a good idea to pick up along with Korean and Russian.

[Willow]

Hi

bought this.

Go hard or go home right?

Dostoyevsky doesn't write in this picturesque and lively Russian like, for example, Nabokov, but it definitely worth giving a try

I'm gonna start reading and annotating. I've also been listening to Russian podcasts too and noticed that after listening for 10-20 minutes, my brain "adjusts" or something, and I start understanding.

Sounds familiar, I was only A2 in Polish when I could already watch films in polish and understood about 70% of the dialogs. The same was about reading books, but you Russian is supposedly much better now than my polish 3 years ago