Overscore's log: srpski

[overscore]

I don't understand why pitati and upitati both exist.
the word nestrpljiv is pretty hard to pronounce. who decided to invent that?

In a srpski grammar, look up perfective vs. imperfective verbs. Or here on the Interwebs look up imperfective vs. perfective aspect. This is a huge part of Slavic grammar.

yea.. i have a feeling that's not going to be too helpful; i'll get it eventually through context while doing sentences.
i have a rather negative view of using grammars for learning a foreign language. I know I can't start using one, because this language is so grammatically complex that I will lose all hope after a while and torpedo the whole project. Too many people try to approach language like it's math, and that fails miserably.

i had the same kind of issue when i googled what the heck an "aorist" is. the explanation is about 800 words long and makes no sense to me right now, but through exposure it will fall in place eventually.

[IronMike]

I don't understand why pitati and upitati both exist.
the word nestrpljiv is pretty hard to pronounce. who decided to invent that?

In a srpski grammar, look up perfective vs. imperfective verbs. Or here on the Interwebs look up imperfective vs. perfective aspect. This is a huge part of Slavic grammar.

yea.. i have a feeling that's not going to be too helpful; i'll get it eventually through context while doing sentences.
i have a rather negative view of using grammars for learning a foreign language. I know I can't start using one, because this language is so grammatically complex that I will lose all hope after a while and torpedo the whole project. Too many people try to approach language like it's math, and that fails miserably.

i had the same kind of issue when i googled what the heck an "aorist" is. the explanation is about 800 words long and makes no sense to me right now, but through exposure it will fall in place eventually.

Think of it like this:

Imperfective aspect verbs, at least in Slavic languages, can be in past, present, and future tense. It shows an action in process (present), or an action where it is not clear if it was completed or will be completed, or you're not emphasizing completeness. (I'm not explaining this well.) Here you go from Wikibooks:

Very roughly, the difference is that the imperfective aspect is used when the action is incomplete, while the perfective aspect is used when the action is complete.

So, for example, ja читао књигу "I was reading a book" vs. ja прочитао књигу "I read a book" with the meaning that you finished.

[overscore]

I don't understand why pitati and upitati both exist.
the word nestrpljiv is pretty hard to pronounce. who decided to invent that?

In a srpski grammar, look up perfective vs. imperfective verbs. Or here on the Interwebs look up imperfective vs. perfective aspect. This is a huge part of Slavic grammar.

yea.. i have a feeling that's not going to be too helpful; i'll get it eventually through context while doing sentences.
i have a rather negative view of using grammars for learning a foreign language. I know I can't start using one, because this language is so grammatically complex that I will lose all hope after a while and torpedo the whole project. Too many people try to approach language like it's math, and that fails miserably.

i had the same kind of issue when i googled what the heck an "aorist" is. the explanation is about 800 words long and makes no sense to me right now, but through exposure it will fall in place eventually.

Think of it like this:

Imperfective aspect verbs, at least in Slavic languages, can be in past, present, and future tense. It shows an action in process (present), or an action where it is not clear if it was completed or will be completed, or you're not emphasizing completeness. (I'm not explaining this well.) Here you go from Wikibooks:

Very roughly, the difference is that the imperfective aspect is used when the action is incomplete, while the perfective aspect is used when the action is complete.

So, for example, ja читао књигу "I was reading a book" vs. ja прочитао књигу "I read a book" with the meaning that you finished.

Okay, but that doesn't tell me more about my initial problem with `upitati`. Namely, how do you continually question someone, to question is a one time kinda deal, once the question is given, the event is complete. Furthermore, `upitati` is not `propitati`, like that should be according to your rule. But there's also `ispitati` and i also just found `preispitati` and ... what are all these?

Onwards!

---

srpski

530 cards. I'm back in Quebec at the moment and finding it hard to stay motivated today, like I can't just go and enjoy burek right now and walk around the streets of BG, so that sucks. Reading Wikipedia is fine and all but I've been doing that for a few months straight.
One of my fears is that I'll get really bored to death because there's not enough materials around to keep me interested. Serbia isn't exactly in a healthy financial state and isn't producing much.. none of the southern countries are.
There's only 5 languages in Europe with more than 50 million speakers: English, German, Italian, French, Russian.
So je I kinda envy the Japanese learners that have access to millions of shiny things to read and listen to. I can only bless the sky I'm not learning Basque or something.
That was a bit of a rant, but a needed one. Let's have some fun.

[IronMike]

Daniel N. from Easy Croatian can probably answer these questions more clearly than I can! His book Easy Croatian is a good intro to BCS and he covers perfective way better than I do here.

[overscore]

srpski

Pretty good. I've made so much progress this month and my understanding is picking up fast.

I needed to fix some subtitles, so here's a little guide.
* https://nlp.fi.muni.cz/projects/chared/.
Useful site for finding out the correct encoding of your text file.
* to fix the actual file I run

Code: Select all

iconv -f cp1250 -t utf-8 INPUTFILE.SUB -o OUTPUTFILE.SUB

.

[overscore]

srpski

Pretty good.
Word of the day: uhoda (~ špijun).

O! I found out Delfi has an ebook service! So I'm super excited about the idea of getting more interesting books in the coming months. I definitely do a lot of reading, and mining a lot of words, so I know that eventually I will have a problem with the spoken language, not to mention I can't say more than a few sentences mostly related to ordering food... But no worries!
Onwards!

I'm also slowly starting to lose the ability to correctly use articles in English

[overscore]

srpski

I reached 600 cards!

[Radioclare]

O! I found out Delfi has an ebook service!

Oooh, I didn't know this! Can you buy ebooks on their website? I've been looking for a legal source of ebooks for ages. Last time I thought I'd found one it turned out you couldn't access it without a Croatian phone number.

[overscore]

O! I found out Delfi has an ebook service!

Oooh, I didn't know this! Can you buy ebooks on their website? I've been looking for a legal source of ebooks for ages. Last time I thought I'd found one it turned out you couldn't access it without a Croatian phone number.

Yeah you can access it no problems. tho i haven't bought a book yet. get the Android application and you'll have access.

One I'm interested in right now Zatočenici Geografije

word of the day: podrška. ~ support.

[Daniel N.]

Daniel N. from Easy Croatian can probably answer these questions more clearly than I can! His book Easy Croatian is a good intro to BCS and he covers perfective way better than I do here.

Yes, thanks. The problem is, for many actions there's one verb which covers most meanings and it's used like 90% of time. Like pitati.

Then you have verbs which cover only specific sub-meanings or are used only in writing etc. For example, upitati.

Upitati is perfective, pitati imperfective. But I never use upitati. If I asked someone, I say "pitao sam ga..." and never "upitao sam ga...". Upitati is mostly used in writing, for perfective meaning.

Ispitivati ~ ispitati (as usual, I list pairs impf ~ perf) means question someone or something, have very detailed questions, like when you are questioned in a police station or before the court, but it's also used to measure things for quality, verify etc.

Preispitivati ~ preispitati is even rarer. It means doubt your beliefs or common knowledge by asking questions.

There's also the pair raspitivati se ~ raspitati se. It means ask around, ask different people if someone knows something, e.g. a cheap apartment to rent.

There's also zapitati se. It's perfective, and it means ask oneself, when in doubt.

(Edit) I found something much more important. You got an impression there's a rule that adding pro- to a verb makes it perfective. THERE'S NO SUCH RULE. Each verb pair must be learned separately. Sometimes there's a prefix, and it must be learned - you can't predict which prefix will be used for a verb. Sometimes it's other verb ending. Sometimes there's a different vowel in the verb. Each verb pair must be learned by heart!