Chove's Log

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chove
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Re: Chove's Log

Postby chove » Sat Dec 08, 2018 6:18 am

StringerBell wrote:What kinds of things were you able to talk about with the vocabulary you know? Did your tutor speak only in Polish? Were you able to understand her?


Well it was mostly working out my level this lesson, so we conjugated some verbs (some -ać ones) and did pronouns and some "hello, how are you"-level conversation. The tutor spoke English mostly, but more Polish towards the end as she ascertained how much I might be able to understand. It was quite basic stuff though, I'm not exactly an advanced learner :) I could mostly understand her and she'd repeat and/or rephrase more simply or switch to English if I said "nie rozumiem."

I don't know what my Polish vocabulary is at the moment, but it's small. I can conjugate verbs at least in theory, I've seen the past tense enough to probably recognise it, and I *think* I can do the accusative case and sometimes the instrumental. The tutor said not to worry too much about cases, but I do think I need to know them so I can move on to constructing my own sentences more accurately.
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Re: Chove's Log

Postby SGP » Sat Dec 08, 2018 6:52 am

chove wrote:I don't know what my Polish vocabulary is at the moment, but it's small. I can conjugate verbs at least in theory, I've seen the past tense enough to probably recognise it, and I *think* I can do the accusative case and sometimes the instrumental. The tutor said not to worry too much about cases, but I do think I need to know them so I can move on to constructing my own sentences more accurately.
There is something that helped me establishing a deeper connection to (foreign language's) cases. Maybe it would be of some use to you, too, especially because of already having made some progress with German. (However, having done so isn't a requirement at all).

As for the case endings, I simply treat them as something that conveys the meaning of one or more additional words. Nouns of languages with this Changing Cases System (Polish, Russian and many others) consist of their stem and their case ending.

(Although the stem wouldn't be always exactly the same, and the ending would sometimes be omitted. Generally speaking. Not referring to PL or RU in particular).

The meanings of these nouns can also be expressed by rephrasing them. Instead of "das Verhalten der Katze" (the cat's behavior), one also could say, for example, "das Verhalten, welches die Katze zeigt" (the behavior which is shown by the cat). And there are many other possible ways of Case Ending Replacing Noun Rephrasing.

Also, there are other languages with a different Case Changing System. Like those with non-changing nouns, but the Grammar Based Idea of changing cases still is there. (Some could disagree because of themselves using different words to speak about the same grammar-related aspect.)
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chove
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Re: Chove's Log

Postby chove » Sat Dec 08, 2018 7:33 am

SGP wrote:As for the case endings, I simply treat them as something that conveys the meaning of one or more additional words. Nouns of languages with this Changing Cases System (Polish, Russian and many others) consist of their stem and their case ending.


I learned the genetive as "of the" in German. And the dative as "to/for the." (What really helped me learn the dative, for some reason, was finding out that it comes from the Latin for "to give.")
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Re: Chove's Log

Postby SGP » Sat Dec 08, 2018 8:16 am

chove wrote:[I learned the genetive as "of the" in German. And the dative as "to/for the." (What really helped me learn the dative, for some reason, was finding out that it comes from the Latin for "to give.")
Really liking this kind of observations. A bit inspiring, too. Don't recall having thought of the Dativ that way, not even as someone who learned Latin for a few years.

Also, I am among those who cannot explain the difference between Dativ and Akkusativ too well without looking it up first. This applies to "too many of us" ;). But we apply it intuitively.
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Re: Chove's Log

Postby chove » Wed Dec 12, 2018 9:21 pm

Just had my second Polish lesson, we did the basics of (nominative case) adjectives. It was harder this time because it was mostly in (simple) Polish but I understood most of it between what I know and what I could work out from context.

Another thing is I have a question about German: how common is the "ish" for "ich" pronunciation in Germany? I am going through the GermanPod101 beginners lessons and the man in them is American and says "sh" for all his "ch"s and it's distracting me a bit. Not sure if it's really the best example for beginners? But they do speak like that in Bavaria, is it?
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Re: Chove's Log

Postby SGP » Wed Dec 12, 2018 9:44 pm

chove wrote:Another thing is I have a question about German: how common is the "ish" for "ich" pronunciation in Germany? I am going through the GermanPod101 beginners lessons and the man in them is American and says "sh" for all his "ch"s and it's distracting me a bit. Not sure if it's really the best example for beginners? But they do speak like that in Bavaria, is it?


If it is really about "ich" being pronounced as "isch" (or "ish" with an English spelling), there is a single case I know about.

This is a variant of German spoken by some (not all) foreigners, which is rather close to Standard German, but contains some simplifications. Also, some natives speak like this for various purposes and because of various motivations. Example: "Isch sag es dir!".

Edit: The above applies to this particular word. But as for substituting some/many/all CHs (those that aren't pronounced as [k] anyway) by SCHs, it is much more common. Like "Schina" instead of "China".

(But in the south of Germany, one can hear "Kina", too).

I cannot restrict this "CH" -> "SCH" thing it to any particular Bundesland, but still, it is something entirely different from the case of "isch". Because that word has a special role. So even if someone would tend to say "isch" because of his dialect (as in, reportedly, Rheinisch), he still could decide against doing so.

Because of this word's "special character" and another reason (related to not all dialects/variants of pronunciation being the same):
Those who say "Schina" etc. still wouldn't necessarily say "isch", but "ich", or "ik" in some dialects.

Also, it can happen rather often that a few dialect words are mixed with what otherwise is plain Standard German.
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Re: Chove's Log

Postby chove » Wed Dec 12, 2018 10:24 pm

I suppose it might be that there's no "ch" sound in English. I'm okay though because we have it in Scots/Scots English :)
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Re: Chove's Log

Postby rdearman » Wed Dec 12, 2018 11:05 pm

chove wrote:I suppose it might be that there's no "ch" sound in English. I'm okay though because we have it in Scots/Scots English :)

How do we manage to say the word "Cheese" or "Chove" for that matter, if we don't have a ch sound? Or am I missing something here?
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Re: Chove's Log

Postby chove » Wed Dec 12, 2018 11:07 pm

rdearman wrote:
chove wrote:I suppose it might be that there's no "ch" sound in English. I'm okay though because we have it in Scots/Scots English :)

How do we manage to say the word "Cheese" or "Chove" for that matter, if we don't have a ch sound? Or am I missing something here?


Like the "ch" in loch, but I don't know the IPA or anything like that. Alas.
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Re: Chove's Log

Postby rdearman » Wed Dec 12, 2018 11:10 pm

chove wrote:
rdearman wrote:
chove wrote:I suppose it might be that there's no "ch" sound in English. I'm okay though because we have it in Scots/Scots English :)

How do we manage to say the word "Cheese" or "Chove" for that matter, if we don't have a ch sound? Or am I missing something here?


Like the "ch" in loch, but I don't know the IPA or anything like that. Alas.

Ahh... you mean the voiceless velar fricative...
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