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Post by rikita on Nov 7, 2021 18:12:08 GMT -5
My mom (who has studied German) phoned yesterday and pero answered the phone, and I was able to say "ich möchte mit meine Mütter sprechen!" which made her laugh and made me very pleased. hope i don't spoil that with a tiny correction, it's still very good - "mit meiner Mutter" (dative) (and Mütter is plural) - but it's something more visible when written, when you speak then the difference is barely noticeable ... |
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Post by rikita on Nov 7, 2021 18:15:59 GMT -5
I once had a book that came with records called Wir lernen polnisch sprechen. There was a long explanation about how to pronounce the Polish ł, along the lines of: "Say 'Moskau ist,' and the sound you make just before the i of 'ist' is the ł sound." I worked on it for a while before I realized they were just describing an English w sound. i found this explanation online - maybe they said the same thing, but with Moskau rather than Auto?
though i must say, reading that without knowing the sound would just confuse me - saying it is like an english w (which they do right after, on that website) is much easier ...
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Post by Liiisa on Nov 7, 2021 18:32:44 GMT -5
My mom (who has studied German) phoned yesterday and pero answered the phone, and I was able to say "ich möchte mit meine Mütter sprechen!" which made her laugh and made me very pleased. hope i don't spoil that with a tiny correction, it's still very good - "mit meiner Mutter" (dative) (and Mütter is plural) - but it's something more visible when written, when you speak then the difference is barely noticeable ... D'oh! Thank you rikita <3 |
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Post by lillielangtry on Nov 8, 2021 2:01:51 GMT -5
My Farsi teacher said right off the bat he was going to use the "official" Finglish transliteration of Farsi, which Iranians themselves use when they can't or don't want to use their own script, and not one of the various versions that people sometimes try to use to approximate the sounds for a German speaker.
But 10 minutes later he wrote on the board the word for "and" as "wa". It's pronounced with an English "v" sound.
I put up my hand and asked why he hadn't written "va". Oh, that would be really confusing for the Germans, he said.
So it's a bit confusing for me either way.
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Post by snowwhite on Nov 8, 2021 5:43:12 GMT -5
vinnyd just put an @ there like on Twitter Like I said earlier, I have no idea if Duolingo is genuinely helping me with language acquisition, but as video games go at least it's more constructive than shooting aliens or driving cars around. Ah, interesting point. We have a radio series here (on BBC Radio 4 - I have no idea if you can access anything via their Sounds app?) called 'Just One Thing' presented by Dr Michael Mosley, a medical doctor who has worked in medical / science journalism for a long time and who also usually tries all this stuff himself (he's on Twitter too). Two of the 'things' he talked about in the latest series, which has just finished, were learning a new language (much more useful for your brain than just brushing up an existing rusty one) and also active video games. I forget what the benefit was of the latter, might have been about memory and concentration. He's also talked about standing in the sun for 15 minutes a day, drinking a glass of water with every meal and singing among many other things. It's a very encouraging series. |
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Post by Liiisa on Nov 8, 2021 6:01:04 GMT -5
Huh snow, I'll look for him on Twitter and see what he has to say, that's interesting.
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Post by sprite on Nov 8, 2021 6:37:49 GMT -5
Yes, I like his series, and each one is only 15 minutes long. The active video game thing had mental and physical benefits--apparently it's actually quite good for your eyesight, which goes counter to everything I ever heard about sitting in front of a screen.  |
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Post by lillielangtry on Nov 8, 2021 7:52:53 GMT -5
Just one thing can also be accessed on Spotify - lots of the BBC podcasts can.
Thanks for the recommendation, I've followed!
Looks like Farsi today is going to be cancelled due to a second World War bomb. It's a British bomb (the media always lets you know that!).
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Post by snowwhite on Nov 8, 2021 7:58:04 GMT -5
Huh snow, I'll look for him on Twitter and see what he has to say, that's interesting. There's a lot of recent stuff about a series he's been doing in Australia (reversing T2 diabetes). |
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Post by riverhorse on Nov 8, 2021 9:32:10 GMT -5
Just one thing can also be accessed on Spotify - lots of the BBC podcasts can. Thanks for the recommendation, I've followed! Looks like Farsi today is going to be cancelled due to a second World War bomb. It's a British bomb (the media always lets you know that!). Yes, my co-worker had to race off out of school at midday to pick up her daughter from nursery as it was being evacuated. Fun times! |
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Post by Liiisa on Nov 8, 2021 18:26:54 GMT -5
Oh wow! I hope everyone is ok.
I sometimes have to deal with unexploded ordinance alerts at the refuge where I look for dragonflies (which used to be an Army installation), but that's just us testing our own bombs, not dropping them on other folks.
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Post by lillielangtry on Nov 9, 2021 2:34:02 GMT -5
Oh yes. 5000 people were evacuated, a major road and a tram line closed, but it's standard procedure and happens every few weeks somewhere or other in the city. There is a team based in Düsseldorf that does nothing but deal with unexploded ordinance and the local authorities have a strict routine. It is hugely labour-intensive of course - they decide on the evacuation area and every single apartment or house within that area has its doorbell rung twice to check no one is there. They keep public transport running until shortly before the final closure. Right before the bomb is made safe they close the airspace above it. It's the actual evacuation that takes the time, dealing with the bomb usually goes pretty fast. Then they give the all-clear and people head back to their places.
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Post by Liiisa on Nov 9, 2021 6:09:39 GMT -5
Wow, that's a lot.
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Post by lillielangtry on Dec 1, 2021 2:07:20 GMT -5
We are just over halfway through the first Farsi course, we still don't know all the alphabet but we do know quite a few verbs - in the simple past. I was surprised to learn the past before the present, but apparently it makes sense because it's completely regular in Farsi, even for "be" and "have".
I am better at writing than I am speaking, which doesn't surprise me because I am a translator in my day job and I spend a lot of time reading and writing other languages. I also know a lot of translators and it's quite common for there to be a big gap between their writing and speaking. You meet people who can understand an incredibly difficult legal, medical or technical text but get inhibited chatting about their day. And it is often inhibition - we tend to be introvert types (generalising, obviously). I didn't realise it would be so obvious after just a few weeks learning a new language though.
Anyway, I am really enjoying it so far.
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Post by rikita on Dec 1, 2021 17:03:50 GMT -5
well, a. recently declared she wants to learn 30 languages before she grows up. afterwards she went down a bit, saying she wants to mainly learn english, japanese, turkish and polish. oh, but also vietnamese and chinese and arabic and swedish. now the more difficult part is the actual studying, i suppose ... that and, while i found an affordable and interestingly done english course for kids her age (sam and mel english - they have some samples on youtube), it's much more difficult for the japanese ... somehow, the people creating courses seem to think that all children need to know is the names for animals and colors and such things ...
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Post by tzarine on Dec 1, 2021 20:33:05 GMT -5
riki
kids' language classes can be a bit of a scam.
try watching anime w subtitles.
it was amazing for tzarevich. he picked up a lot of vocabulary & phrases.
so did i!
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 2, 2021 4:23:44 GMT -5
We are just over halfway through the first Farsi course, we still don't know all the alphabet but we do know quite a few verbs - in the simple past. I was surprised to learn the past before the present, but apparently it makes sense because it's completely regular in Farsi, even for "be" and "have". I am better at writing than I am speaking, which doesn't surprise me because I am a translator in my day job and I spend a lot of time reading and writing other languages. I also know a lot of translators and it's quite common for there to be a big gap between their writing and speaking. You meet people who can understand an incredibly difficult legal, medical or technical text but get inhibited chatting about their day. And it is often inhibition - we tend to be introvert types (generalising, obviously). I didn't realise it would be so obvious after just a few weeks learning a new language though. Anyway, I am really enjoying it so far. I totally get you, Lillie. I am very inhibited talking anything other than English, but can read and understand French and Pijin quite well. Maybe it comes from learning Latin, which these days is mostly a written language, although when I was about 17, my Latin teacher entered me in a Latin speaking competition. |
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Post by lillielangtry on Dec 2, 2021 4:40:01 GMT -5
Oh, also I was telling the teacher that in English, we use "Farsi" to describe the language of Iran - and not, as in German, "Persian" (persisch).
He basically didn't believe me. He said "well, maybe you do, but you're obviously highly educated...". I assured him that maybe some people don't know what language is spoken in Iran, but they are certainly not calling it Persian. But I could by his facial expression he was unconvinced.
I have never visited the region and knew almost nothing about Iran before meeting my partner, but I still said Farsi.
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Post by psw on Dec 2, 2021 9:21:27 GMT -5
lillie - in Hebrew the letter P is modified, with a dot, to become F, likewise B/V. Gotta be some historical thing going on around here. I trust vinnyd to show up and clarify. |
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 2, 2021 18:14:50 GMT -5
Re conversing - I think it's like being in a play or taking an exam; if you practice and do it frequently enough, you can do it more easily. (I should probably stop skipping Spanish conversation group, shouldn't I....)
Re the Persian/Farsi/P/F/B/V thing: huh, that's really interesting. lillie here in the US we call it Farsi too!
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Post by psw on Dec 2, 2021 20:13:03 GMT -5
In Spanish there's sort of a B/V float - the spelling doesn't change but the pronunciation varies.
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Post by tzarine on Dec 2, 2021 21:54:30 GMT -5
yes, psw
oh & some argentinian words are just not so nice
don't get me started w the castillian lisp, which i acquired after living in burgos
i still like cali spanish slang
also to learn accents, watch telenovelas
this comes from tzarevich's teacher when he was prepping for his ap exam
& an argentinian teacher.
casa de las flores is great. i can speak like paulina, real slow
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Post by lillielangtry on Dec 3, 2021 0:36:30 GMT -5
lillie - in Hebrew the letter P is modified, with a dot, to become F, likewise B/V. Gotta be some historical thing going on around here. I trust vinnyd to show up and clarify. Yes, see also the Indian community of Parsis/Parsees, who are Zoroastrian. Their name means Persian too. Also peaches- Latin name prunus persica. It's more obvious in German: Pfirsich/persisch |
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Post by lillielangtry on Dec 3, 2021 0:54:03 GMT -5
Also I like the Argentinean accent ;-)
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Dec 3, 2021 2:04:57 GMT -5
I would have thought Persian was the old fashioned way of saying Farsi.
Certainly Farsi is what is used here when talking about the language.
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Post by vinnyd on Dec 3, 2021 7:05:24 GMT -5
The internet tells me that the Greeks got "Persia" from Old Persian Pārsa, which evolves into Fārs in modern Persian/Farsi. And, not quite consistently, that the Persian word Fârs is the Arabized form of the earlier form Pârs.
There is no p in Arabic, so I can see why the Arabs would have make Parsa into Fars. But I don't know if that Arab form was then borrowed back into Persian and replaced the older Persian form, or if initial p's in old Persian all became f's, or what. There is a p in modern Persian, written as a modified form of Arabic b.
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Post by psw on Dec 3, 2021 9:10:59 GMT -5
Thanks, vinnyd. The P/B makes more sense to me as a voiced/unvoiced pair. |
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Post by vinnyd on Dec 3, 2021 11:06:58 GMT -5
B is what modern Arabs turn P's into. Baris = the capital of France, etc. But F and P are pretty close phonologically. Greek phi used to be an aspirated p (like an initial p in English) but has become an f sound. Initial p's in German became pf, like the Pfirsich lillie mentioned above, or Pfeffer/pepper or Pfund/pound. Indo-European p's became f's in Germanic, one of the Grimm's Law changes. Greek penta > German fünf, English five; Greek pod-, Latin ped- > English foot.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Dec 3, 2021 21:15:49 GMT -5
Even in Solomon Islands, the name Joseph, which we pronounce Josef, is often pronounced Josep.
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Post by tzarine on Dec 3, 2021 22:48:13 GMT -5
i met a joseph today
lovely fellow
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