Swedish: Hejdå.

Before I even start this post, I just want to say wow! Swedish was a blast. And, according to the views from the last post, a lot of people agreed with me. I’m almost pained to leave, but not before I leave you with my deductions, which may surprise you.

SUMMARY: Swedish is spoken by about 10 million people, mostly in Sweden, some parts of Finland, and to a lesser extent, Denmark and Norway. The language evolved from Old Norse (like its relatives Norwegian and Danish) got the Latin alphabet when Christianity came in the 1000s and later became more modernized with the advent of a Swedish Bible from national hero Gustav Vasa in the 16th century. Swedish transformed into its contemporary state due to social reforms (like the creation of a public schooling system) and industrial revolution in the 1800s, making the language much less formal. Authors like Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, can also be credited with the language’s transition.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS: If you can read my mind, I can’t help but think this ultimately comes down to a Norwegian vs. Swedish showdown. Which language will win?

Some general facts about Swedish:

-It has a general spoken form called Standard Swedish or rikssvenska, spoken by most Swedes.

-It has a lot of false cognates with English (for example, barn=child and dog=died).

-The grammar is pretty similar to English. It’s SVO (Subject, Verb, Object) and doesn’t use cases all that much. Unlike English, it has two genders for words, common and neuter, which are signified by the articles en and ett. Nouns and adjectives also decline for definite forms (basically adding “the” to the noun), which is sort of complicated. Definite articles are usually added as a suffix. This can get complicated for English speakers; definiteness can be specified up to three times for a phrase.

Ok, now the hard part — Norsk vs. Svenska. Based on reading and listening to both languages, it was impossible for me not to compare Norwegian and Swedish.

Writing:
I prefer Norwegian, if only for a simple reason. The umlauts in Swedish throw me off (and remind me way too much of German – sorry!). I’m not able to tell any major differences in the vocabulary other than some words spelled differently (e.g., også in Norwegian and ocksa in Swedish, which both mean “also”).

Pronunciation:
Swedish wins this one, but by a tiny margin. While they both sounds the same, Swedish seems just a teeny bit clearer to me. I don’t know if it has to do with its intonation (which is not noted in written Swedish, by the way). Norwegian has tons of dialects but not a standard one, like Swedish, which could make learning it harder.

Grammar:
Draw! Both Norwegian and Swedish have systems that seem to mirror English’s and are easy to learn (verbs don’t conjugate, only the pronoun changes). Both are SVO and don’t use cases very much, if at all. One difference is that Norwegian has three genders for nouns and adjectives (at least in the written form Bokmål) while Swedish only has two, but this makes no difference to me; English doesn’t have grammatical gender, so I figure I would have to get used to using them either way.

However, both languages seem to put the verb before the noun in questions (switching to VSO order from SVO order). Both also appear to use a V2 form (putting the verb as the second part of a sentence, even if it comes before the subject) with adverbs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen V2 used in English.

I had several friends – two native Swedish speakers, a Norwegian and an American who speaks Swedish – who I owe a great deal of gratitude to for this post. My friend Daniel, who is from Sweden, said he’s able to understand Norwegian perfectly. My Norwegian friend Sissel also said the same thing. Both of them said that there were some vocabulary differences, but the mutual intelligibility was very, very high.

Ethan, my American friend who studied abroad in Sweden, said he was also familiar with Norwegian and that it has the most intelligibility with Swedish and Danish. My other Swedish friend, Katerina, agreed. Like Ethan, she said some of the sounds were difficult to learn, but Swedish was relatively easy for people who already speak Germanic languages, especially grammar-wise. Both Ethan and Sissel suggested that Swedish would be easier to learn; Ethan, because more people speak it and it has more authority, and Sissel, because of the complications of Norwegian dialects.

Katerina, however, thought Norwegian would be easier because of it being the “golden” middle of all the continental Scandinavian languages. And, as you’ll witness in a couple of paragraphs, she’s not the only one who thinks so.

(One thing that was resoundingly clear from everyone was that Danish was the hardest to learn out of all of the Scandinavian languages due to its pronunciation. Danish is coming shortly, so we’ll see if I think the same.)

With all things considered, I … still think I would pick Norwegian to learn over Swedish. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Swedish a lot, but I think this is what convinced me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_languages#Mutual_intelligibility:

The mutual intelligibility between the Continental Scandinavian languages is asymmetrical. Various studies have shown Norwegian-speakers to be the best in Scandinavia at understanding other languages within the language group.

This was referenced in my first post about Norwegian. If I was to learn any Scandinavian language, I think I would want to learn the one that has the best ability to be understood. (The chart also mentioned that Icelandic speakers have the best comprehension out of them all, but I’m not interested in Icelandic, unfortunately). Some have even said Norwegian is written like Danish and spoken like Swedish. Now that I’ve mentioned Danish in this post, I wonder what other keys it has to the Scandinavian language continuum. Hmm …

EVALUATION (same as Norwegian):

Intelligibility: 3
Complexity: 4
Resonance: 5
Continuation: 5

Even if I don’t pick Swedish to learn in the long run, I will always, always love Swedish music. Here’s a treat — pop star named Darin covers a Swedish hit, Det Gör Ont.

Note: After going through the blog, I’ve adjusted Norwegian’s evaluation. Its previous score for resonance was 4, but due to my strong feelings about it, I’ve changed it to 5.

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:
My friends: Ethan, Katerina, Daniel and Sissel
Indo-European Languages – Swedish Tutorial
Wikipedia (Scandinavian languages)

COMING UP: French

Swedish: Hej.

Hey everybody —

It’s SVEEEEEEEEEEEENNNSKKA time!!!

If you can tell, I’m a little bit excited. I’ve been dying to do Swedish for the blog because, well, I’ve been (really) obsessed with Sweden for some time now. Just ask yourself; how can anyone not love a country that’s given us the wonders of IKEA, H&M and ABBA? Certainly not me.

In spite of my early fascination, it’s only fair that I treat Swedish just like all the other languages I’ve done for the blog. Will it ultimately be the language for me? We’ll find out, for better or worse, as there are only 10 languages left until Part Two of the blog! Wow, the end is really in sight!

Swedish is spoken by 10 million people in Sweden, Finland and various parts of North America and northern Europe.

REGIONAL HISTORY: One word … Vikings! From the 700s-1000s, these explorers, also known as the Rus, raided Europe, going as far as modern-day Baghdad and Istanbul. Like Norwegians, some of them even set sail to lands in modern-day America. Most of the people were pagan at the time, until Christianity swept the country in the 1000s, bringing with it a Latin alphabet for Swedish.

Sweden was later ruled by various kings (though power struggles were bitter) and united with the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway to form the Kalmar Union. At the time, the region also suffered a lot of losses from the bubonic plague, which was sweeping through Europe. Sweden only stayed in the union for about 200 years after conflicts with Denmark, declaring independence and naming Gustav Vasa their king on June 6, 1523, also known as Swedish Independence Day. To his credit, he was also responsible for the first Swedish bible, a big step in the Swedish language.

In the following centuries, Sweden would rise to become a great power, gaining most of the Holy Roman Empire and parts of the Baltic. Russia, meanwhile, fought for dominance and would later win, taking Finland with them. However, Sweden bonded with its adversary and Britain around the Napoleon area to attack Denmark. The Danes surrendered Norway, leading to another union of Sweden-Norway that lasted for about 100 years.

Sweden didn’t get industrialized until later in the 1800s (way after some parts of Europe) and suffered from famine. These changes led to a rise of union-based political parties and reforms. Along with the works of authors in Sweden at the time, this period contributed to major changes in the Swedish language, making it more contemporary and less formalized. While staying neutral in WWI and (somewhat) neutral in WWII, Sweden’s economy skyrocketed. Dips occurred later unfortunately, but Sweden joined the European Union in the 1990s and has since retained its influence in the global market.

WRITING SYSTEM: The Latin alphabet is used. Same as English, except with the letters å, ä and ö. However, some of the letters sound quite different. Most notably, the vowels can be short or long. The Stockholm School of Economics provides a helpful guide for all the letters, but I only put the vowels and the ones that are notably different from English:

a – a as in bar
e – Long: e as in French cafe / Short: e as in net
i – Long: ee as in keep / Short: i as in bit
o – Long: oo as in tool / Short: o as in not
u – Long: u as in rude / Short: an “uh” sound as in good
å: Long: o as in fore / Short: o as in yonder
ä: Long: ai as in fair / Short: e as in best
ö: Long: eu as in French peu / Short: e as in her
j – like y in yes
r – trilled (rolled as in Spanish)
x – x as in exceed
y – similar to a French u
z – s as in sing

Also, Swedish distinguishes between hard vowels (a, o, u, å) and soft vowels (e, i, y, ä, ö), which makes consonants hard or soft. So …

c (before a, o, u, å) – hard c as in cake
c (before e, i, y, ä, ö) – c as in city

g (before a, o, u, å) – g as in go
g (before e, i, y, ä, ö) – y as in yes

k (before a, o, u, å) – k as in keep
k (before e, i, y, ä, ö) – ch as in check, but softer

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: I can’t help but compare Swedish to its sister Norwegian, the only other Scandinavian language I’ve done on the blog, which was an early favorite. Swedish sounds more sing-songy than Norwegian, due to its pitch accents. One thing I guess I noticed right off the bat is that Swedish is not phonetic, although it seems to be similar to English in this regard (particularly with the hard vowels). Swedish has more vowels, particularly two with Umlauts, which seem German … I dislike. The long/short vowels would probably be hard to detect because the language doesn’t really use diacritics or accent marks for distinction.

Grammar seems similar to English: no cases and subject-verb-object order for sentences. Pretty straightforward.

What worries me is most Swedes already speak English rather well — would learning Swedish even be worth the effort?

Anyway, this isn’t in Swedish, but it’s one of my favorite Swedish bands …

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:

Omniglot

Stockholm’s School of Economics Introduction to Swedish

Wikipedia (Sweden, Swedish Language)

Greek: αντίο!

Time to say so long to Greek! It definitely had its delights. For you music lovers:

SUMMARY: Greek’s been around since the classical era. The alphabet, which first appeared around the 900 or 800s BC, was the first one to have vowels. The region where Greek was spoken went from Roman to Byzantine to Ottoman rule, until the Greeks declared independence in 1821, followed by a nine-year war. In the later 1900s, Greece went from being a dictatorship to a parliamentary democracy and joined the European Union. Greek is spoken by 15 million around the world.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS: I like Greek, but … hmm. How do I explain this?

I like the way Greek sounds (it has a strong “r” sound by the way), how stress varies among words and how its rhythm seems to match English’s. I especially love hearing it when sung and am able to pick out words that end in “-os” (this language seems to have a lot of “o” sounds in general). I really admire how it can’t be compared to any other language in this regard (even as people mention its related to Armenian, which I still don’t get). I also like how easy the alphabet is to learn.

Greek grammar is quite complex, however. Lang Intro really spelled out how Greek grammar works (even to the point of explaining how things work in English, like cases). I highly recommend that you check out that site if you’re beginning Greek. Anyway, here’s some basics about grammar:

–> Nouns have masculine, feminine or neutral gender. They also change according to case, which is how the noun works in the sentence (in general, if a noun is a subject, a possession or an object) and number (if the noun is singular or plural). All of this is determined by word endings. Adjectives work the same way and must agree with the noun.

Most nouns, when singular and in the nominative (subject) case end in the following:

masc: -ης, -ας; fem: -α, -η; neu: -o, -ι, -μα

–> Nouns usually use a definite/indefinite article (“the” and “a/an”), which must agree with the nouns. Here are the definite articles that match the noun endings above, as an example:

the: masc: o; fem: η; neu: τo
a/an: masc: ενας; fem: μια; neu: ενα (these words also just mean “one”)

–> Adjectives also must agree with the noun in gender, number and case and have varying word endings. There are so many endings, so I will just link to this helpful chart from Lang Intro (starting with masculine adjectives).

–> Regular Greek verbs are conjugated like this:

First person singular (I): -ω
Second person singular (you): -εις
Third person singular (he/she/it): -ει
First person plural (We): -oυμε
Second person plural (You): -ετε
Third person plural (They): -ouv

Basically it seems like Greek relies more heavily on declensions, even though it is a SVO language.

I think I will pass on Greek. I like it in theory, but whether or not I should continue with it is questionable. The grammar would probably be the hardest part to learn, but beyond that my overall impression is just a “hmm.” I like it, but from afar, I guess.

EVALUATION:

Intelligibility: 3
Complexity: 3
Resonance: 3
Continuation: 2

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:

Greece.org – First 101 Words in Greek
Lang Intro – Introduction to Greek
Transparent – Hear Greek Survival Phrases

COMING UP: Swedish

First person singular: -ω
Second person singular: -εις
Third person singular:-ει
First person plural: -oυμε
Second person plural: -ετε
Third person plural: -ouv

Greek: Είναι όλα τα ελληνικά μου.

And then there was … Greek.

Did you know this was one of the first languages to have vowels and that most speakers can understand ancient Greek (even better than English speakers can understand Middle English)? Greek is spoken primarily in the Mediterranean by 14 million, although there are lots of communities in Turkey, Albania and even here in the U.S. and Canada that speak it.

REGIONAL HISTORY: It’s not always good to go by assumptions, but I will take a wild guess and speculate that most of you are already familiar with Ancient Greece and the development of city-states like Sparta and Athens, Alexander the Great’s conquest and eventual takeover by the Romans near the first millennium AD.

Let’s fast forward. Greece became tied to Byzantium around the 300s, with Constantinople as the cultural and political capital of the empire. Greece was part of the Byzantine Empire for nearly 1,000 years. Like the rest of the countries in the Balkans however, Greece would find itself in the hands of the Ottoman Empire around the 1400s, causing many Greeks to immigrate.

Greece would be under Ottoman rule until they waged war in 1821. The Greek War of Independence last for nine years and, although successful, Greece was later ruled by Danish Prince Otto, who was installed by The Great Powers (Britain, France, Russia). Prince William (later King George I), another Dane, would rule for 50 years.

The 20th century for Greece would see highs and lows. Lows include a bitter split of the country over WWI, Turkish conflicts and emigration, German occupation in WWII and division between Communists and anti-Communists after that. Highs, though, included economic growth, the formation of a parliamentary democracy (from a dictatorship) with Konstantinos Karamanlis as the country’s leader and mending ties with Turkey.

WRITING SYSTEM: The Greek alphabet has a bunch of letters similar to Latin ones and even one or two identical to Cyrillic letters. Below, you will find the Greek letters, followed by the English transliterations in parentheses and their pronunciations (according to Greek-Language.com):

Α α – (a) a as in father
Β β – (b)
Γ γ – (g) g as in go; y before Ε/I; ng as in sing before Γ, K, Ξ, or Χ
Δ δ – (d) th as in then (not breathy)
Ε ε – (e) e as in set
Ζ ζ – (z)
Η η – (e) ee as in meet
Θ θ – (th) th as in thin (breathy)
Ι ι – (i) ee as in meet, y as in yet
Κ κ – (k)
Λ λ – (l)
Μ μ – (m)
Ν ν – (n)
Ξ ξ – (ks)  ks as in kicks
Ο ο – (o) o as in boat
Π π – (p)
Ρ ρ – (r) like a Spanish R, trilled
Σ σ/ς – (s)
Τ τ – (t) t as in stop (not breathy)
Υ υ – (u) u as in German über
Φ φ – (ph) ph as in phone
Χ χ – (ch) ch as in bach
Ψ ψ – (ps) ps as in lips
Ω ω – (o) o in tote

There’s a trilled “r,” which is enough to make me excited about the possibilities. I’m also curious about what makes Greek so not like the other languages I’ve looked at.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Greek doesn’t sound like any of the other languages I’ve read about. I think it’s a language isolate anyway in the Indo-European family, but it seems to have its own style, its own flavor. What I think is remarkable is how it has remained relatively unchanged, as compared to Latin and other older languages that have been around for a while (and have broken up into other languages).

If you love listening to Greek sung, you might like this. This song was performed by Sofia Jobbar in Sweden’s Melodifestivalen (a popular music contest that precedes the Eurovision Song Contest) earlier this year and I just love it. It’s one of those songs I think would play in my head, walking in a busy city at night.

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:

Lonely Planet
Omniglot
Visit Greece
Wikipedia (Greece)

Afrikaans: Totsiens!

I have some good news and some not-bad-but-kind-of-eh news.

The latter first: I won’t be doing anymore video updates until Part Two of the blog, which is coming soon. Unfortunately, I have not resolved the issues with my camera and computer connectivity and making the videos consumes too much time, which is why posts have been late. But the recaps will prove to be much more useful in the later parts of this project.

And, good news: 37 Languages is now on Twitter! You can catch up with the blog at 37 Languages. Be sure to follow; I’ll have links to posts and also tweet about interesting things going on in the language world.

Now, on the the Afrikaans wrap-up.

SUMMARY: Afrikaans is spoken in South Africa and Namibia by roughly 7 million people. It is a descendant of Dutch and came into usage by the European settlers in the western part of South Africa (known as Afrikaners). While the Afrikaners moved away from the cape region and formed republics elsewhere, the language also became standardized through the appearance of publications. Afrikaans is one of South Africa’s 11 official languages.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS: Pretty cool, to me at least. I was worried that this language would seem really Germanic (as in identical to German) but that wasn’t the case at all.

The Web site I’ve been using for this, Open Languages, has been extremely helpful. It’s very comprehensive and provides audio for most of its online lessons. One thing I learned was that double vowels are usually added to make one syllable words long (tak vs. taak). I also learned that the “g” sound is really almost like an h, but comes from the throat (no English equivalent). The “r” is also kind of trilled too, which I like.

In the introduction for the grammar section, I was impressed. There’s no verb conjugation except for the verbs “to be” and “to have” and gender for nouns aren’t used. There are also no case systems. Um … what? This language is in the same family as German and English?

Some other distinguishing things about Afrikaans are the use of double negatives (basically just tack on the particle “nie” at the end of a sentence) and its word order, known as “STOMPI” (Subject, Time, Object, Manner, Place, Infinitive).

But it did seem a little too good to be true. Many people are opting to just learn English now as a second language, especially as  Afrikaans was seen historically as the language of the oppressor. While there’s a resurgence of spoken Afrikaans in media and people wanting to learn it, it makes me wonder if English is still the more popular option. And then there’s Dutch …

I still like it though. It sort of sounds like Norwegian (I really liked Norwegian) and when you read it, it sort of looks like a quirky version of English. Sort of.

See Ellen DeGeneres speak Afrikaans (and laugh)!

EVALUATION:

Intelligibility: 4
Complexity: 5 (not hard at all)
Resonance: 3
Continuation: 3

COMING UP: Greek

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:
Open Languages
Wikipedia (Afrikaans Grammar)

Afrikaans: Jammer!

We’re on Afrikaans, y’all.

So what’s up with Afrikaans? Lots. For starters, it’s one of the major languages spoken in South Africa and Namibia by about 7 million people. It’s like Dutch, but not. But we’ll get into that later.

REGIONAL HISTORY: If you recall from the post I made about Xhosa, groups of immigrants, including many from what would now be the Netherlands, Germany and other parts of Europe arrived to the Cape of Good Hope, which mainly served as a pit stop for those traveling to India. The groups of people, known as Afrikaners (referenced generally as Boers in the Xhosa post) would eventually settle there. The Afrikaners later clashed with English settlers, causing the Boer Wars in the 1800s. Afrikaners took part in a mass migration called The Great Trek and formed their own republics in the northeastern parts of the country (The Orange Free State and Transvaal).

Afrikaans also came into fruition while all this was happening. The language had undergone several changes from Dutch, including an influx of words from the native populations and Coloureds (South Africans of mixed ancestry). A book called Zamenspraak tusschen Klaas Waarzegger en Jan Twyfelaar, considered the first text in Afrikaans, appeared in 1861, followed by Afrikaans dictionaries. In the early 1900s Afrikaans became one of the standard languages of the country and the first Bible in Afrikaans was published by 1933, edifying Afrikaans as a languages in its own right, not just a slang version of Dutch. Since that point, the language has been used steadily, being one of the 11 national languages of the Republic of South Africa.

WRITING SYSTEM: Afrikaans uses a Latin alphabet. It has the exact same letters as English and many of the sounds are the same, so I won’t write it. The main exceptions appear to be J, which sounds like the y in “yes,” Q, which sounds like “qu” as in “quite” and V, which basically sounds like an F. The W sounds like a “w” as in “walrus” after consonants and a “v” as in “vase” any other time. Vowels can be short and long.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Afrikaans sounds like a quirky version of German, which can either be a good or bad thing. It sounds  very see-saw like to my ear and I cannot stop noticing the constancy of double vowels (just look at its name!). This makes me wonder if I will be put off by things I didn’t like about German. I also wonder if I will be able to distinguish Afrikaans from Dutch, when I get to the latter in the upcoming weeks.

What I posted below is interesting. Famous South African actress Charlize Theron switches back and forth from speaking English and Afrikaans with a Belgian interviewer. I want to do this one day with a language!

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:
Omniglot’s page on Afrikaans
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: Afrikaans – The Alphabet
Wikipedia (Afrikaner, Afrikaans)

Croatian: Doviđenja! (Wait, isn’t that Serbian?)

Uh, yeah. About that video recap I promised last time? I’m still not able to do one, as my camera issues have not been resolved. I promise I will make it up to you, somehow.

But life goes on, as must I. We have only 13 languages left before 10 are selected. Can you believe we’ve come that far?

SUMMARY: Croatian, a South Slavic language, is spoken in Central Europe and the Balkans by almost 7 million people. It’s spoken mostly in Croatia (of course) whose settlers arrived to the region in the 600s. Croatia would be divided by two separate kingdoms in the Middle Ages before finding itself under the influence of Austria-Hungary and later the Ottoman Empire. Croatia reached a cultural zenith in the 1800s due to a revival in national identity, which helped to propagate the status of the language.

FINAL IMPRESSION: I love it. I think I like it just as much as Serbian, even though the two are almost exactly like.

I’m not exaggerating there. The opinion on whether or not Serbian and Croatian are separate languages varies. Some think that both differ in every area of linguistics (morphologically, phonetically and so on), while others think they’re just different versions of the same thing.

I am not a linguistic scholar by any means, but the differences are very minor to me. Both sound exactly the same and Serbian, when transliterated from Cyrillic, looks just like Croatian. When I asked several friends the degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, it was always 100 percent.

One of my friends mentioned that some Serbian words in Croatian tend to use the “j.” For example, in Serbian the word lepo and in Croatian lijepo, which both mean beautiful.

The biggest difference seems to be the vocabulary, as Serbian has more Greek and Turkish words, while Croatian borrowed from Latin (credit this to Croatia’s Roman Catholic heritage) and German. The months are also different, although the rule is reversed as Croatian uses Slavic-based names, while Serbian uses Latin-based ones.

Grammar seems to be the same. Croatian is just as inflective as Serbian. But here’s a shocker — I actually didn’t mind the noun cases! In fact, they seem to be way more logical than I had assumed. (There’s more to this and I will explain in later posts, but you can thank my blogger friend Benny from his post on Czech — this will definitely make me reconsider my earlier thoughts on Slavic languages.) While Croatian is SVO, the suffixes indicate cases and the declensions seem pretty regular, making word order not so important. Here’s an example of the verb pisati (to write) from Verbix:

First Person Singular (I)	pišem
Second Person Singular (You write)	pišeš
Third Person Singular (He/She writes)	piše
First Person Plural (We write)	pišemo
Second Person Plural (You all write)	pišete
Third Person Plural (They write)	pišu

Apart from these things, I think I prefer Croatian over Serbian because it uses a Latin alphabet, only because that would make it somewhat easier for me to learn. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like Serbian any less, especially the way it sounds. My favorite word, which I have been saying repeatedly since the last post is oprostite (sorry).

And on an end note, I just had to add this. Rock it out, Hrvatski-style!

EVALUTION:

Intelligibility: 4
Complexity: 3
Resonance: 4
Continuation: 4

COMING UP: Afrikaans

Croatian: Ne razumijem …

Hi guys!

We’re on to Croatian this week, also known as Hrvatski. This is the last Slavic language to be featured in the blog … can you believe it?

REGIONAL HISTORY: The Croats settled in Modern-day Croatia in the 7th century, which at the time was divided into two different regions ruled by dukes: Pannonian Croatia in the north and Dalmatian Croatia in the south. In 925, a ruler named Tomislav united both regions, making Croatia a powerful kingdom, while at the same time battling Venetian forces. About 400 years later, though, Croatia would form a union with the kingdom of Hungary, although Hungary would, in actuality, be in control.

For the next centuries, Croatia was invaded by the Ottoman Empire, which had placed a stronghold on the Balkans. Hungary and Austria were powerless to stop the Turkish onslaught. In 1683, the Treaty of Sremski helped put an end to the Ottoman threat, as the Turks gave back Croatian and Hungarian territories. At the same, the Venetians were still controlling the southern part of the country, brutally.

A major event, both linguistically and history, was a national revival that happened in the mid-1800s. A group of young writers started a “Illyrian movement” that promulgated Croatian identity. Croatian became not just the standard language, but the language of arts (previously it had been Hungarian). Later Croatia joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (aka Yugoslavia) in 1918.

Despite the premise of union among Slavic peoples, the kingdom was in disorder. Problems with Serbian and Croatian desires for autonomy bubbled and continued until WWII. The region became a puppet state of the Germans and Italians, ruled by a ruthless party called the Ustashe, which was responsible for the mass murders hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma. After the Axis powers lost and the Ustashe fled, Croatia became a socialist republic of Yugoslavia. Despite recurring movements to separate, Croatia left Yugoslavia nearly 50 years later and declared independence in 1991.

WRITING SYSTEM: Croatian uses a Latin alphabet, not a Cyrillic one like several of the other Slavic languages.  This is probably due to the fact that Croatia has Catholic roots (Latin) as opposed to an Eastern Orthodox background, which used the liturgical language Old Church Slavonic (with a Cyrillic alphabet). You might have already seen it in the Serbian post:

A a – a as in father
B b
C c
Č č – ch as in church
Ć ć -  similar to a soft ch as in ching (no similarities in English)
D d
Dž dž – dg as in fudge
Đ đ – a “jeh” sound
E e – e as in bet
Ff
Gg
Hh
I i – e as in see
J j
K k
L l
Lj lj – an “lyuh” sound as the “lli” in million
M m
N n
Nj nj – an “ng” sound as in “ny” in canyon
O o – o as in long
P p
R r
S s
Š š – sh as in shock
T t
U u – u as in use
Vv
Zz
Ž ž – su as in pleasure

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: I am in love with the way this language sounds! I love the way it rolls off my tongue. I have been saying oprostite (I’m sorry) repeatedly and I believe it’s my favorite word. Croatian sounds exactly like Serbian though, so I’m wondering if this post is a repeat. If so, then the issues of declensions and cases will probably be a factor.

Time now for a REALLY cool video. Enjoy!

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:
Lonely Planet – History of Croatia
Wikipedia’s Page on Croatia

Korean: 안녕!

Two notes before I do the Korean wrap-up:

1) I’ll try to return to a regular schedule, e.g., focusing on at least two languages a week (roughly) as I did when I first started. Since spring of this year, I have been involved in a number of activities which take up a lot of my free time (and time to study), so I apologize for not updating the blog sooner.

2) No video recap this time. My camera works fine, but for some reason, my computer won’t recognize it. I promise, there will be one next go around!

Now, on to Korean!

SUMMARY: Linguists aren’t really sure how to classify Korean. Is it a language isolate? Is it in the Altaic language family? Is it secretly related to Japanese? What is known is that Korean has quite a few Chinese-based words; some words are still used in Korean print today and are written with Chinese characters (called hanja in Korean).

Korea saw a lot of growth between the 900s-1500s, in the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties. Along with the spread of Buddhism, printing and advances in academia and astronomy Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, was invented in the 1400s. The Korean language itself has remained relatively unchanged, in spite of constant invasions from Chinese and Japanese. One of the most notable invasions took place in the early 1900s, when Japan controlled Korea and banned all things related to Korean culture. Korean is spoken today by almost 80 million people.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS: At first I had trouble figuring out what Korean reminded me of. After listening to different sources, it almost (and this is really, really stretching it) reminds me of Japanese. One reason why is because, like Japanese, it’s not a tonal language. Also, words (when transliterated from Hanguel) can be a little long, like some Japanese words I’ve seen before. I noticed a lot of “-en”, “-yo” and “euw” sounds, though, which seem to paint the language.

As for Hanguel itself, it is NOT hard at all to learn. Each block represents a syllable and while some can be just vowels with the (ㅇ) being used as a placeholder, many are consonant and vowel combos which represent one sound.

For example, 한 (han) is made up of ㅎ (h) + ㅏ (a) + ㄴ(n) and are just arranged in a block, which is kind of cool. Honestly, a person can master this alphabet in a week, it is very logical.

Spoken Hanguel is just as logical. Take for example the words for sidewalk (people-road) and street (car-road):

인도 / endo: sidewalk (literally “people road”)
차도 / chado: street (literally “car road”)

Korean is SOV, but there seems to be more emphasis on using the verb. However, I’m guessing that suffixes seem play a huge role in this language. One thing that seems to be common is that -yo is added to the end of verbs to make sentences more polite. Suffixes like these seem to go hand in hand with the fact that Korean uses honorific grammar to a large degree.

I still don’t know if I should learn Korean. It’s not as intimidating to me as I thought before, but rather appealing. It seems easier to learn than Chinese and Japanese. Who knows.

One thing I do know is that Korean pop (K-POP) is AWESOME! If I do decide to ever move to Korea, I am guaranteed really good tunes. Oh my god, what have I been missing? I really have to thank my friend in living there for giving me the heads up about this! The band below is called Big Bang and are tearing up the charts there.

EVALUATION:

Intelligibility: 3
Complexity: 4
Resonance: 3
Continuation: 3

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:

Korean Class 101 on YouTube
Learn Korean and Speak Korean
Omniglot

COMING UP: Croatian

Korean: 사랑해!

I’m starting my Korean post on several coincidental notes.

First, my really good friend just flew back to the peninsula yesterday (or, she is still flying as I type this) as part of an educational program she’s completing since she graduated from college. I will miss her terribly, but I know she will continue to have the time of her life there.

Second, South Korea apparently launched its first carrier rocket into space, called the Naro-1. Pretty great ways to “launch” into this, right? Right? Ok, no more jokes.

REGIONAL HISTORY: Korea’s old, y’all. The first kingdom, called Gojoseon, was founded in 2,333 B.C. Eventually there were city states formed from this kingdom until the emergence of three main kingdoms — Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla — which were formed around the last century BC. These kingdoms competed with each other for a while throughout the beginning half of the first millennium AD, until the Silla kingdom took over the South and Balhae, formed from the former Goguyeo kingdom, controlled a huge portion of the North. Around the 900s, the Sillia kingdom had tumbled and gave way to the Goryeo dynasty, from which modern-day Korea gets its name.

Lots of great things happened during this 400-year period. Korea developed the first movable metal type in the 1200s, way before the Gutenberg press. Also, the Tripitaka Koreana, the oldest and most thorough canon of Buddhism in Chinese in the world, was also published onto more than 80,000 wooden blocks (there are known to be no errors in the canon). However, the influence of Buddhism was countered by the beginning of the Joseon dynasty and the spread of Neo-Confucianism, which lasted until the 1800s. During this dynasty, King Sejong the Great developed Hangeul, the alphabet used in Korean today. This dynasty also saw a flourish in academia and the sciences, especially astronomy.

Japan had been trying to invade Korea to get to China and Korea had successfully held its ground. In the late 1800s to 1900s, Japan had won wars against China and Russia and took control of Korea, leading to a period of brutal rule and suppression of Korean culture, including the banning of Korean language in schools. Despite a peaceful demonstration in 1919, Korea wouldn’t be free from Japanese rule until the end of WWII. After the war, the Northern half fell under Communist rule while the south formed a republic. The climate of the Cold War and the north/south division led to the Korean War, a devastating one which lasted about three years. The aftermath resulted in a permanent demarcation of the peninsula, as North and South Korea continue to be divided.

WRITING SYSTEM: As mentioned before, Korean uses Hangeul (called Josoenguel in North Korea), an alphabet that  was developed in the 1400s.

It has 14 consonants and 10 vowels, which are combined into blocks when written, read left to right (or, more  traditionally, vertically from right to left). One thing to note is that the vowels come in three types, which represent elements: a vertical line (man), a horizontal line (earth) and a dot or dash (heaven). The consonants were also meant to resemble the body parts used when saying them.

CONSONANTS:
ㄱ – k as in kick / g as in god
ㄴ – n as in now
ㄷ – t as in to / d as in do
ㄹ – r as in run, ll as in bell
ㅁ – m as in make
ㅂ – p as in put / b as in by
ㅅ – s as in see / sh as in she
ㅇ – ng as in sing
ㅈ – j as in jail
ㅊ – ch as in chew
ㅋ – c as in cow
ㅌ – t as in tie
ㅍ – p as in pool
ㅎ – h as in how

VOWELS:
ㅏ – a as in father
ㅓ – u as in but
ㅗ – o as in row
ㅜ – oo as in moon
ㅡ – oo as in brook
ㅣ – ee as in meek
ㅑ – ya as in yawn
ㅕ – yu as in yuck
ㅛ – yo as in yodel
ㅠ – ew as in pew

Hanguel also uses diphthongs (not listed). Chinse characers called hanja are used in Korean documents, although less exclusively in informal writing.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: I’m really surprised by how many people  speak Korean (roughly 70 million). Despite some influences from Japan and China, Korean is technically nothing like its neighbors. It sounds more polysyllabic than Chinese and is not tonal, at the same time, I have trouble recognizing it in speech. If anything, it sounds like a weird derivative of Japanese. Sort of. But the alphabet makes sense and doesn’t seem too hard.

Korean is in its own little world (linguistically, it could be considered a language isolate) and I plan on exploring it. Until then, enjoy this awesome mashup I found of Korean pop music hits from this year!

NOTE: I am also happy to announce that I will be doing video recaps again, as I have purchased a new camera!

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:

The official website of the Republic of Korea
Learn Korean Alphabet
Omniglot’s Page on Korean
Wikipedia (Korea, Korean alphabet, Hangul)