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Neurotip
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Re: Morgana's Swedish & Icelandic log

Postby Neurotip » Wed Oct 10, 2018 9:27 pm

Morgana wrote:What I've been up to recently is ... going into incredible detail in analyzing the last reading of unit 6 of Colloquial.

Great idea!

Morgana wrote:I got tripped up on the fifth sentence:
Aðalfréttirnar á báðum rásum eru hádegisfréttir kl. 12.20 og kvöldfréttir kl. 6, og njóta þær mestu vinsælda í útvarpinu.

Well, lucky I didn't have anything else to do this evening :) So I thought I'd google 'mestu' and then the strong form which I had to look up, obviously, but turns out to be 'mestra'. Results as follows:

mestra
Öflugir jeppar til mestra vandræða. -- 'for the most trouble'
sunnan við Alicante virðast njóta hvað mestra vinsælda hjá Íslendingum -- 'enjoying the most popularity'
hvaða vísindi gætu leitt til hvað mestra hagsbóta fyrir mannkynið -- 'to the greatest benefit of mankind'
og sú sem notið hefur mestra vinsælda hér á landi. -- 'and the one which has enjoyed the most popularity in Iceland.'
Sjávarútvegurinn aflar þjóðarbúinu mestra gjaldeyristekna -- 'The-fishing-industry earns for-the-national-economy [the] greatest foreign-earnings'

mestu
Hvað skiptir þig mestu máli í vinnunni? -- What matters to you most (changes you the most matter[dative]) at work?
Hvar eru mestu úrkomusvæði jarðar og hvar er úrkoman minnst? -- Where are [the] most rainy-areas of-the-world and where is rain least?
Ísland skipar sér í hóp mestu vaxtaokursþjóða veraldar. -- Iceland is in [the] group [of-the]-most high-interest-nations of-the-world.
sagði ákvörðun WADA vera „mestu svik sögunnar... -- said that the WADA decision was '[the] greatest fraud of-history...
Lífslíkur á Íslandi með þeim mestu í Evrópu. -- Life-expectancy in Iceland [is] with the greatest in Europe.

Well, if you can spot a systematic difference between these two groups I'd be very interested to hear it. It's very interesting that, of the four where 'mestu' modifies a noun, none of the four nouns have a definite article or demonstrative. (Also note 'mestra vinsælda'!) There's a lot of discussion online about situations where a strong-form adjective can be used in situations where you'd expect a weak one (mostly involving red noses), but I can't find any about the opposite.

Not sure that helped much. Sorry. :lol: Maybe one day a native Icelander will happen across this topic and enlighten us, if we haven't completely broken our brains on this so-called language...
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tiia
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Re: Morgana's Swedish & Icelandic log

Postby tiia » Sat Oct 13, 2018 9:20 am

Morgana wrote:Finnish: I learned that nominative forms are not "default" forms. (This detail was mentioned by Henkkles in the Finnisch mit extra Mühe thread, which I did spend a lot of time reading at some point this past summer, but it doesn't sink in until you see it in action.) Every word has a stem, I guess, or at least the words that decline do (maybe that's all of them, I don't know yet). The case endings get added onto this stem, not onto the nominative form. The stem is not always intuitive, from a beginner learner's perspective. As if that's not bad enough, some words have two stems! Because of limits on how many consonants can cluster together and what case ending is being added.

As alluded to above, I'm not likely continuing with Finnish, but I reserve the right to continue, or to stop, and I also reserve the right to bring it back at any time and stop again at any time 8-)

Takeaways: I had completed the first three units of Teach Yourself Complete Finnish, as well as eight lessons from FinnishPod101's Absolute Beginner level. The "discovery method" in the newer Teach Yourself books is torture to me. Finnish grammar is quite different to English and TY makes it more difficult than it needs to be. The dialogues are way too short and repetitive throughout the first few units, possibly because they don't explain the grammar to you in a clear way and thus can't give you lots of interesting stuff to work with. Not having interesting stuff up front, you'd better really want to learn this language or you're likely not to keep with it. FinnishPod101 was alright but suffers from the boringness factor. I find the lessons to be awkward to listen to. Might be best to just read the transcript+notes and only listen to the dialogue clips.


The thing with the stems is not that bad and in most cases you can determine it just by looking at the word. Yes, it might not be completely intuitive from a beginners perspective, but once you know the main rules, there are only a few words that behave differently. (Just as usual in Finnish.)

How to determine the word groups? Look at the words' ending!
The following is only including relevant word groups for a beginner. (You don't know all the cases yet, so e.g. I don't include plural forms here, because that would be an absolute overkill. So there might be subgroups etc, when it comes to determining the right case ending. - only relevant for genitive, partitive and illative! The other cases behave pretty consistent.)

You may already know the following, but now I already wrote it down, so..
Declinated word forms that are not specified are in genitive singular.

Words ending with vowels
1. words ending with a vowel but not e or i are usually easy. Examples: talo, päivä, viikko etc (house, day, week). There's consonant gradiation, but otherwise no significant changes to track down the stem as it is basically just the same as the nominative form. There is a subgroup for words ending in two vowels, when it comes to determining case endings: radio, syy, pää, puu (radio, reason, head/main-, tree).
2. words ending with e. Example: vene.
3. words ending with i. They are a bit mor tricky, as the word can be "new" or "old".
Example for a new word: banaani -> banaanin (part. banaania).
Examples for old words: kieli (tongue, language) becomes kielen (part. kieltä), talvi (winter) becomes talven (part. talvea). Here one can see the difference of the long and short stem. While kieltä is easy to pronounce, talvta would lead to too many consonants and an uncomfortable pronounciation (Finns don't like too many consonants in a row).
4. words ending with -si. The most important examples are: vuosi, kuukausi, käsi, vesi (year, month, hand, water). As there is a historic connection between s and t and t becomes d in consonant graduation, the stem is: -de, so in genitive the words become: vuoden, kuukauden, käden and veden. (Part. vuotta, kuukautta, kättä, vettä.)

Words ending in consontants:
5. words ending with -nen. The stem is -s/-se depending on the case. So nainen (woman) becomes nai+se+n in genitive but nai+s+ta in partitive. This word group is very common.
6. words ending in -in. Stem builds with -ime, so: puhelin -> puhelimen (telephone), avain -> avaimen (key). However partitive is added directely to the -in, so puhelinta and avainta. Not too many words for a beginner. They mostly have the meaning of "a tool to do X".
7. These are actually four different groups ending with s. And I think this is the hardest part for a beginner. There are separate groups for words ending in -as, -is, us/uus/ys/yys, and -s. the words ending in -as and -is are easy to find. Examples: kangas -> kankaan, kaunis -> kauniin.
Words with -s such as leivos, have a stem, where the s becomse ks, so leivos -> leivoksen.
But the -(u)us/-(y)ys group has two subgroups. One mainly for concrete things, such as keskus (center), which behaves just as the words ending in -s. So it becomes keskuksen in genitive.
The other subgroup tends to describe more abstract things, such as rakkaus (love), which becomes rakkauden (part. raukautta).
But distinguishing abstract and concrete things is only a rule of thumb.
Now for the positive side: you don't really need those more abstract words as a beginner
8. words ending with -l. Not many words ands you won't need them in the beginner stage. Examples: sammal, taival.
9. adjectives (!) ending with -ton. Meaning ....-free, such as rasvaton (fatfree).

I probably forgot something. Note, that ths is not an official list and that the numbers are for this post only. The only purpose is to explain what to look for in order to determine the stem. Maybe this looks like a lot, but I think it's more consistent than learning the gender of Spanish nouns. Someone might think, "but Spanish has only two genders". But typical for Finnish is exactly this: a lot of rules, but only a few exceptions.

The long/short stem thing I think is mainly an additional e or the dropping of it. As you already know, some consonants become just very difficult to pronounce without an additional vowel. I think it mostly affects the words/groups that might have an e at the end of the stem.

For verbs there are only 6 groups, plus a few extra rules for the past tenses. The sixth verb group you might actually never see at all.

A good book should introduce words (substantives) of the various word groups gradually, so that you learn them step by step, when you need them, without overloading the student with too much stuff to remember at the same time. Same goes for the different cases.
But I understand that this can lead to a very slow speed in the beginning, that is maybe not understandable at first and therefore may also lead to frustration. (Btw. I don't know TY's method myself, so I have no idea how well it is made.)
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tiia
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Re: Morgana's Swedish & Icelandic log

Postby tiia » Sun Oct 14, 2018 10:09 am

Morgana wrote:
tiia wrote:The thing with the stems is not that bad and in most cases you can determine it just by looking at the word. Yes, it might not be completely intuitive from a beginners perspective, but once you know the main rules, there are only a few words that behave differently. (Just as usual in Finnish.)
I figured as much. I oscillate back and forth between being irritated with the lack of explanations about these finer details upfront, and not blaming the courses for not overwhelming the learner with everything all at once. If they did share all the nitty gritty details from the beginning, I'd likely be complaining about that instead of the lack of details I feel I have now :P

This post was amazing though, tiia, and it does settle some nerves about the stems (among other things). Thank you!

Unfortunately, I've already decided I'm not continuing with Finnish at this time, but whenever I do come back around to it, I'll feel less intimidated by this aspect of the grammar.


I think this summarises pretty much the dilemma of creating good course material. How much can you already tell the student to not feel overwhelmed and how much do you have to tell them to make learning easier?
In addition, every student is different. Not only has everyone different experiences in language learning beforehand, but also every student has their own preferences how much they want to know at what stage.

Regarding those word groups I recall that one teacher told us every now and then that "a small group of words" behaves like this or that. Then we said "so it's an exception", because for us it felt like one. The teacher, however, always claimed it being a "small group of words" and pretty much never used the word exception herself. (Only for the real exceptions.)
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Re: Morgana's Swedish & Icelandic log

Postby koolawant » Sun Oct 14, 2018 11:06 am

good luck on these next 100 days, I'm rooting for you!
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Re: Morgana's Swedish & Icelandic log

Postby Daniel N. » Sun Oct 14, 2018 1:55 pm

tiia wrote:I think this summarises pretty much the dilemma of creating good course material. How much can you already tell the student to not feel overwhelmed and how much do you have to tell them to make learning easier?
In addition, every student is different. Not only has everyone different experiences in language learning beforehand, but also every student has their own preferences how much they want to know at what stage.

This is exactly what I have experienced with my course materials. These were comments from various people:

- can you just provide tables with all forms?
- it's awesome you introduce case by case
- can you just tell me all cases and how to use them?
- but how to put nouns that don't end in -a into the accusative? (a comment below the chapter that explains just one type of nouns)
- you always give infinitive and the present tense of verbs, but I had an impression I'll need only present tense forms, so I memorized only them, and now I see infinitives are also used
- can you give just short explanations, without so many examples (this comment was from a linguist)
- it's great you give so many real life examples
- the possessive adjectives are too hard, is there another option in the grammar (you need to add -in to feminine names, and -ov/-ev to masculine ones)
- this is the greatest material ever
- to be honest, this doesn't help me

Sometimes I think we should all give up and just switch to English...
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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Morgana's Swedish & Icelandic log

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sun Oct 14, 2018 9:10 pm

Morgana wrote:Nobbar de även Löfven riskerar den här regeringsbildningen att bli en utdragen historia.

My translation: If they also reject Löfven, this government (formation) risks becoming a lengthy affair.


It works for me.
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tiia
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Re: Morgana's Swedish & Icelandic log

Postby tiia » Thu Oct 18, 2018 8:06 pm

Morgana wrote:I think I'm going to blame tiia for laying out the logic one page back ;)

I think I can handle being blamed for that. :D
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Re: Morgana's Swedish & Icelandic log

Postby Izabela » Sat Oct 20, 2018 12:26 pm

Morgana wrote:I think there is value in working on what you want to work on right now, instead of some day. I also know there are only 24 hours in a day and maybe I want too much. (I want it all and I want it now.)


I like to think I've learned patience over time, but I know that feeling. I've tried as much as possible to take enjoyment in the process of getting along the way to what you want and console myself that now is going to be later, so make this now a step along the way to the end goal.
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Re: Morgana's Swedish & Icelandic log

Postby StringerBell » Sun Oct 21, 2018 8:58 pm

Morgana wrote: I still have moments (more like days/weeks :oops: ) where I am living in the future or loading too much "enjoyment" onto my plate as if I'm racing to some end. It is a process.


This reminds me of something I heard on an Italiano Automatico podcast. Alberto was discussing that language learning is like hiking to the top of a really high mountain, in that we tend to be hyper focused on the goal - reaching the top with the beautiful vista - so we don't really enjoy the hike on the way up. But after we get to the top, it's cool for a few minutes, but then that's it. It's done. So instead, it's better to take our time while we're hiking up (i.e. while learning a language) and enjoy the process of getting there, rather than seeing it as work to get through. When I start getting frustrated that I'm not reaching that summit quick enough, I remind myself to slow down and just enjoy where I am.

Morgana wrote:Not much to say about Swedish. Reading, listening, Anki. Didn't have time for chorusing today. I've been thinking about time tracking especially since putting the pressure on with Swedish, and how I don't really like to track my hours. I need some kind of accountability system, because without it I slack right off, start doing bare minimums each day like only doing Anki reviews, or do nothing at all. Weeks pass, I wonder why the heck I feel so stuck. But maybe once these 1000 Swedish hours are done I can switch to a system that holds me accountable but doesn’t demand every last minute be tracked and logged on a spreadsheet. Tracking as I do has and does prevent(ed) me from doing things spontaneously. It creates this artificial division between my Swedish (or any TL) time and the rest of my time. It'd be nice to feel free to turn to Swedish when I have only a few minutes to spare, or when I'm distracted by something else but want to have something going in the background, etc.

So my current idea is come January first I'm going to hang one of those big year-long calendars up on my wall above my desk and do the Seinfeld calendar thing (a bit more info here too), regardless of where I’m at with those 1000 hours (hopefully nearly done). No more spreadsheet. Just an X on the calendar if I get X minutes done each day.

I don't know. It's an idea.


This sounds like a great idea! I use the timer on my phone and start/stop it to track Polish. I don't reset the timer at all until I've reached my goal for the day, so it's easy to do 10-20 minutes here and there if needed.

I don't track time with Italian at all, but I do find that having some kind of goal (now it's my speaking and reading articles challenges) is really important for me in terms of being accountable. I keep a calendar on the fridge where everyday I write down how much time I spent speaking Italian. Many days, I really didn't want to do it, but knowing I'd have to write a big, fat zero for that day made me motivated to speak even though it might have been 9pm and the last thing I really wanted to do. So I think your calendar has a great chance of success!
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MamaPata
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Re: Morgana's Swedish & Icelandic log

Postby MamaPata » Wed Oct 24, 2018 6:24 am

Morgana wrote:Chorusing, meh. I'm so done with trying to make myself speak because other people think that's something people should do when they learn a language. Why do I keep losing sight of the things I want? Why do I let other people's ideas about language learning make me feel like I'm doing it wrong....


All of this! It's so easy to look at other people's choices and try and force yourself to do something unnatural for you, because people with experience recommend it.

This forum often puts a big emphasis on pronunciation, which is obviously great and has many benefits. So I keep thinking that maybe I ought to iron out my errors, do some focused work etc. But I hate pronunciation work and I have no interest in having a "perfect" accent. And so the circle goes round!
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