Polish: Cześć!

Goodbye Polish … or rather, goodness gracious! I can’t even explain how confused I was trying to read about this language, but I attempted.

SUMMARY: Polish is a West Slavic language spoken by over 50 million people. The first written record of Polish appeared in a papal bull in 1136 AD. Poland, the language’s birthplace, had a union with neighbor country Lithuania that lasted until the 1700s. After this union dissolved, Poland disappeared from European map for over 100 years, due to the paritions from Austria, Prussia and Russia. Poland gained independence in 1918, all the while retaining their language, but the nation was completely devastated during WWII with millions of people lost due to the Holocaust. But the country bounced back, rebuilt and has since become one of the most well-established places in central Europe.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS: Before starting to read more closely about Polish, I used the lessons from fellow blogger, I Kind of Like Languages (whom I highly encourage you to check out). The lessons proved to be helpful and broke Polish down in a way that is very helpful for beginners and those curious about the language.

Now to the nitty gritty. How does Polish work? First, nouns can be masculine, feminine or neuter. Masculine nouns usually end in a consonant, feminine ones with “a” and neuter ones with -e or -o.

Polish is highly inflected; in other words, nouns decline (change endings) according to case, number (singular or plural) and gender. Polish has seven cases: nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, instrumentative, locative and vocative.

Here’s an example of how a masculine, feminine and neuter noun declines in the nominative case:

Chłopak – Boy
chłopak – masculine, singular, nominative
chłopaki – masculine, plural, nominative
chłopaka – masculine, singular, genitive
chłopaków – masculine, plural, genitive
chłopakowi – masculine, singular, dative
chłopakom – masculine, plural, dative
chłopaka – masculine, singular, accusative
chłopaków – masculine, plural, accusative
chłopakiem – masculine, singular, instrumenal
chłopakami – masculine, plural, instrumental
chłopaku – masculine, singular, locative
chłopakach – masculine, plural, locative
chłopaku – masculine, singular, vocative
chłopaki – masculine, plural, vocative

Dziewczyna – Girl
dziewczyna – feminine, singular, nominative
dziewczyny – feminine, plural, nominative
dziewczyny – feminine, singular, genitive
dziewczyn – feminine, plural, genitive
dziewczynie – feminine, singular, dative
dziewczynom – feminine, plural, dative
dziewczynę – feminine, singular, accusative
dziewczyny – feminine, plural, accusative
dziewczyną – feminine, singular, instrumental
dziewczynami – feminine, plural, instrumental
dziewczynie – feminine, singular, locative
dziewczynach – feminine, plural, locative
dziewczyno – feminine, singular, vocative
dziewczyny – feminine, plural, vocative

Piwo – Beer
piwo – neuter, singular, nominative
piwa – neuter, plural, nominative
piwa – neuter, singular, genitive
piw – neuter, plural, genitive
piwu – neuter, singular, dative
piwom – neuter, plural, dative
piwo – neuter, singular, accusative
piwa – neuter, plural, accusative
piwem – neuter, singular, instrumental
piwami – neuter, plural, instrumental
piwie – neuter, singular, locative
piwach – neuter, plural, locative
piwo – neuter, singular, vocative
piwa – neuter, plural, vocative

If you’ve noticed, some of the patterns are the same or resemble each other. There are exceptions to this, as some final hard consonants in words get an extra “i” or change to softer consonants.

Adjectives, just like nouns, decline according to case, number and gender. The declined adjectives must agree with the declined form of the noun. You can find a chart of the forms here.

Polish verbs inflect according to number and gender. Polish verbs also use a thing called “aspect,” which means they are imperfect or perfect (a verb is ongoing and a verb is complete or will be complete, respectively). This essentially means that the present tense is imperfect and that the past and future tenses are perfect. (I think this makes sense). The perfect form of a verb is generally created by adding a prefix to an imperfect verb (pije, drinks, vs. wypije, will drink).

For example, here’s how the verb czytać (to read) is conjugated (from Wiktionary):

-am
Ja czytam (I read)

-asz
Ty czytasz (You read)

-a
On/Ona/Ono czyta (He/She/It reads)

-amy
My czytamy (We read)

-acie
Wy czytacie (You all read)

-ają
Oni/One czytają (They read)

There aren’t different forms for masculine and feminine nouns in the present (simple) or future (simple) tense. But it becomes a factor for past tense and other more complex forms. Sentences seemed to be negated by adding nie (no) before the verb and objects seem to go in the middle of the sentence, after the subject.

Dominik, my friend from Poland, said the worst part of learning Polish would be the declinations. He also provided a lot of detail about the aspect. For example, with infinitives that mean to finish/complete there are different forms which include kończyć, (ongoing), skończyć (completed), zakończyć (completed), dokończyć (completed), dokańczać (ongoing), wykończyć (complete), wykańczać (ongoing).

Reading the orthography, he pointed out a lot of similarities between Russian and some of the other Slavic languages. Rzeka (river) is peка (transliterated as reka) in Russian and in Croatian/Serbian it’s rijeka. As a result, Dominik said he is able to understand a great deal of Czech and Russian, but that the southern Slavic languages were harder to understand. Bulgarian and Macedonian were the most difficult for him to comprehend without difficulty.

Regarding English, Dominik said he had a problem with its definite articles (a, an, the) as these do not exist in English. He also had difficulty with the tenses.

As for me, well … from listening to it, it sounds more nasally than the other Slavic languages I’ve looked at (a lot of “neeyeh/eeyeeh” sounds). I also heard “shh” a lot.

I literally got a headache from trying to understand all the case forms and how to conjugate a verb. For some reason, it seems more complicated than the other Slavic languages, but I can’t pinpoint why. It’s still not very clear to me. And what made it worse was that there seem to be exceptions, especially when declining nouns. However, Polish seems regular and is phonetic.

So, no Polish for me, thanks. But a relaxing song to end on a less frustrating note.

EVALUATION:

Intelligibility: 3
Complexity: 2
Resonance: 2
Continuation: 1

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:

I Kind of Like Languages – Polish Lessons
Transparent Language – Polish Nouns: Gender
Wikipedia – Polish language
Wikibooks – Polish Adjectives
Wikibooks – Polish Verbs
Wiktionary: Polish language – verb conjugation – Class I

COMING UP: Lao

As crazy as this sounds, I never thought I’d be so happy to say bye to a language! Let’s get right into why I’

SUMMARY: Polish is a West Slavic language spoken by over 50 million people. The first written record of Polish appeared in a papal bull in 1136 AD. Poland, the language’s birthplace, had a union with neighbor country Lithuania that lasted until the 1600s. After this union dissolved, Poland disappeared from European map for over 100 years, due to the paritions from Austria, Prussia and Russia. Poland gained independence in 1918, all the while retaining their language, but the nation was completely devastated during WWII, with millions of people who were lost due to the Holocaust. But the country bounced back, rebuilt and as since become one of the most well-established places in central Europe.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS: Before starting to read more closely about Polish, I used the lessons from fellow blogger, I Kind of Like Languages (which I highly encourage you to check out). The lessons proved to be helpful and broke Polish down in a way that is very helpful for beginners and those curious about the language.

Now to the nitty gritty. Polish nouns can be masculine, feminine or neuter. Masculine nouns usually end in a consonant, feminine ones with “a” and neuter ones with -e or -o. http://www.transparent.com/polish/polish-nouns-gender-masculine-feminine-neuter/

Polish is highly inflected; in other words, nouns decline (change endings) according to case, number (singular or plural) and gender. Polish has seven cases: nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, instrumentative, locative and vocative.

Here’s an example of how a masculine, feminine and neuter nouns declines in the nominative case:

Chłopak – Boy
chłopak – masculine, singular, nominative
chłopaki – masculine, plural, nominative
chłopaka – masculine, singular, genitive
chłopaków – masculine, plural, genitive
chłopakowi – masculine, singular, dative
chłopakom – masculine, plural, dative
chłopaka – masculine, singular, accusative
chłopaków – masculine, plural, accusative
chłopakiem – masculine, singular, instrumenal
chłopakami – masculine, plural, instrumental
chłopaku – masculine, singular, locative
chłopakach – masculine, plural, locative
chłopaku – masculine, singular, vocative
chłopaki – masculine, plural, vocative
Dziewczyna – Girl
dziewczyna – feminine, singular, nominative
dziewczyny – feminine, plural, nominative
dziewczyny – feminine, singular, genitive
dziewczyn – feminine, plural, genitive
dziewczynie – feminine, singular, dative
dziewczynom – feminine, plural, dative
dziewczynę – feminine, singular, accusative
dziewczyny – feminine, plural, accusative
dziewczyną – feminine, singular, instrumental
dziewczynami – feminine, plural, instrumental
dziewczynie – feminine, singular, locative
dziewczynach – feminine, plural, locative
dziewczyno – feminine, singular, vocative
dziewczyny – feminine, plural, vocative

Piwo – Beer
piwo – neuter, singular, nominative
piwa – neuter, plural, nominative
piwa – neuter, singular, genitive
piw – neuter, plural, genitive
piwu – neuter, singular, dative
piwom – neuter, plural, dative
piwo – neuter, singular, accusative
piwa – neuter, plural, accusative
piwem – neuter, singular, instrumental
piwami – neuter, plural, instrumental
piwie – neuter, singular, locative
piwach – neuter, plural, locative
piwo – neuter, singular, vocative
piwa – neuter, plural, vocative
If you’ve noticed, some of the patterns are the same or resemble each other. There are exceptions to this, as some final hard consonants in words get an extra “i” or change to softer consonants.
Adjectives, just like nouns, decline according to case, number and gender. The declined adjectives must agree with the declined form of the noun. You can find a chart of the forms here: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Polish:Adjectives

Polish verbs inflect according to number and gender. Polish verbs also use a thing called “aspect,” which means they are imperfect or perfect (a verb is complete or will be complete and a verb is ongoing, respectively). This essentially means that the present tense is always imperfect and that the past and future tense is perfect. (I think this makes sense). http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Polish/Verbs

The perfect form of a verb is generally created by adding a prefix to an imperfect verb (pije drinks, vs. wypije, will drink).

For example, here’s how the verb czytać  (to read) is conjugated http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Polish_language_-_verb_conjugation_-_Class_I

-am
Ja czytam (I read)

-asz
Ty czytasz (You read)

-a
On/Ona/Ono czyta (He/She/It reads)

-amy
My czytamy (We read)

-acie
Wy czytacie (You all read)

-ają
Oni/One czytają (They read)

As you noticed, there aren’t different forms for masculine and feminine nouns in the present (simple) or future (simple) tense. But it becomes a factor for past tense and other more complex forms.

Dominik, my friend from Poland, said the worst part of learning Polish would be the declinations. He also provided a lot of detail about the aspect, For example, with infinitives that mean to finish/complete there are different forms which include kończyć, (ongoing), skończyć (completed), zakończyć (completed), dokończyć (completed), dokańczać (ongoing), wykończyć (complete), wykańczać (ongoing).

Reading the orthography, he pointed out a lot of similarities between Russian and someone of the other Slavic languages. Rzeka (river) is peка (transiliterated as reka) in Russian and in Croatian/Serbian it’s rijeka. As a result, Dominik said he is able to understand a great deal of Czech and Russian, but that the southern Slavic languages were harder to understand. Bulgarian and Macedonian was the most difficult for him to comprehend without difficulty.

Regarding English, Dominik said he had a problem with its definite articles (a, an, the) as these do not exist in English. He also had difficulty with the tenses.

As for me, well … from listening to it, it sounds more nasally than the other Slavic languages I’ve looked at (“eeyeh” sounds). I also heard a lot of “shh” sounds.

I literally got a headache from trying to understand all the case forms and how to conjugate a verb. For some reason, it seems more complicated than the other Slavic languages, but I can’t pinpoint why. It’s still not very clear to me. And what made it worse was that there seem to be exceptions, especially when declining nouns. However, Polish seems very regular and is phonetic.

So, no Polish for me, thanks. But a cool song to end on a less frustrating note.

Polish: Bardzo mi miło.

Cześć, Polski! Jak się masz?

What’s so great about Polish? Well, it’s the second most spoken Slavic language after Russian with over 50 million speakers. It’s in the western Slavic branch and is closely related to Czech (which we’ve looked at before) and Slovak. Polish is number 35 in the language project:

1. Romanian
2. Macedonian
3. Spanish
4. Vietnamese
5. Norwegian
6. Bulgarian
7. Slovenian
8. Malagasy
9. Japanese
10. Moldavian
11. Hindi
12. Finnish
13. Azeri
14. Arabic
15. Czech
16. Albanian
17. Cambodian
18. Serbian
19. Chinese
20. Xhosa
21. Portuguese
22. Armenian
23. Korean
24. Croatian
25. Afrikaans
26. Greek
27. Swedish
28. French
29. Thai
30. Turkish
31. Dutch
32. Hebrew
33. Danish
34. Filipino
35. Polish
36. Lao
37. Catalan

REGIONAL HISTORY: Modern-day Poland formed in 966 in conjunction with the baptism of Mieszko I, Poland’s first ruler. (Catholicism subsequently became the state religion.). A couple of centuries later, the first written record of Polish appeared in the papal bull Bulla gnieźnieńska. After breaking into smaller states, Poland unified in the 14th century and formed a strong union with Lithuania in the 15th century, lasting until the 1600s 1700s.

After a series of attacks by the Swedes and Russia and successfully deflecting the Ottoman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth began to break apart. Famine and epidemics caused a huge population drop by three million. In the late 1700s, the region was partitioned by Austria, Prussia and Russia. Despite the Poles constant struggle for independence, the country would be ruled by its neighbors until 1918.  The Poles did hold strong with their language, as its captors tried to eradicate Polish identity throughout the partitions.

Poland’s independence would be short-lived. Nazi forces attacked Poland in 1939 and later the country was split between the USSR and Germany. Eventually, the entire country became part of Nazi rule. Throughout its occupation, Poland suffered immensely. Over six million people died, with half of them being Polish Jews, making Poland the country with the highest percentage of losses during WWII. Over 85 percent of Warsaw was destroyed, including hundreds of historical buildings. As stated from Poland’s Infopage, the Nazi regime sought to “eradicate Polish culture through mass executions and to exterminate the country’s large Jewish minority.”

However, the Polish bounced back with an indomitable spirit. Almost immediately following the war, they literally rebuilt Warsaw from the ashes. A people’s democracy formed and despite being under the Iron Curtain, some liberties persisted for a while. Later in the 1980s, the popular Solidarność (Solidarity) party drove out the ruling communist one and elected its leader, Lech Wałęsa, in 1990.

Since then, Poland’s been on a roll. It joined the European Union in 2004 and its economy is among the healthiest and fastest growing in the EU. It was also remarkably unaffected by the worldwide recessions of the late 2000s.

WRITING SYSTEM: Polish uses a Latin alphabet, although it’s slightly modified. Several letters have diacritics and there are a few extra consonants and vowels. The example below come from Sadowksa Languages, which I used as a reference. Only the major differences and vowels are highlighted in orange.

a – a as in father
ą – nasalized vowel; -on as in French bon
b
c – cz as in czar
ć – ch as in cheer
d
e – e as in met
ę – nasalized vowel; i as in French fin
f
g
h – ch as in Scottish loch
i – ee as in see
j – y as in yes
l
ł – sounds like the English “w”
m
n
ń – ni as in onion
o – o as in no
ó – oo as in cool
p
r
s
ś – sh as in sheet
t
u
w – an English v sound
y – i as in whim
z
ź – a soft “dj” sound; s as in Indonesia
ż – a hard dj” sound; s as in measure

Q, v and x only appear in foreign words.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Polish seems to have a few more hurdles, when compared to the other Slavic languages. Some of the words look similar (nie, “no”, dobry, “good”) and then others don’t (like dziękuję, “thank you”). The nasal vowels and the diacritics sort of throw me off. At first glance, this language seems difficult to pronounce.

Difficult to pronounce or not, this song in Polish by Ewa Farna was a hit last year in the country. And understandably so. I think you’ll get a kick out of it, this girl can sing!

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:
Infoplease – Poland
Omniglot
Sadwoska Languages – Polish Alphabet
Stay Poland – Polish Language
Wikipedia (Poland, Polish language)
Wikitravel – Warsaw

Filipino: Paalam!

So long, Tagalog! Er … whoops! I mean Filipino, right?

Maybe. I feel like I should have done Tagalog instead, considering how much I had to read about it. But you’ll see for yourself from my observations below.

SUMMARY: Filipino was established as a national language in the Philippines in 1987 upon the introduction of a new constitution. It is spoken by over 90 million around the world, a first language by 25 million. It is primarily based on Tagalog, an Austronesian language, and has borrowed vocabulary from Spanish and English, due to the Philippines’ history with Spain and the United States.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS: Yeah, I probably should have focused on Tagalog instead of Filipino. As I mentioned before, Filipino is primarily based on Tagalog anyway. (It also doesn’t help that I dismissed Spanish.)

Tagalog grammar is interesting. The language uses a marker feature to differentiate between types of nouns. There are three different types of markers, which indicate the focus of a sentence: ang and si/sina, the simplest form that just show a noun is the main subject; ng and ni/nina, which indicate whether a noun is possessive or an object and sa and kay/kina, which is mostly used to show a noun’s location.

Here are some examples on how they work. All of the examples and explanations I used are provided by SEASite’s Tagalog Web site.

ANG, SI/SINA:
ang libro – the book (ang is makes the noun definite)
si Keith – Keith (si is used for single proper nouns)
sina Keith – Keith and company (sina is used for plural proper nouns)

NG, NI/NINA:
bahay ng Keith – Keith’s house (ng comes before thing being possessed)
Nagbasa ako ng libro sa bahay – I read a book at home. (ng comes before the direct object, book)
libro ni Keith – Keith’s book (ni shows possession for single proper nouns)
libro nina Keith – Keith and other’s book (nina shows possession for plural proper nouns)

SA, KAY/KINA:
sa bahay – at the house (sa indicates location of improper nouns)
kay Keith – to/at Keith (kay indicates location for single proper nouns)
kina Keith at Juan – to/at Keith and Juan (kay indicates location for plural proper nouns)

Forming verbs takes a little more work. In Tagalog, verbs have roots with affixes, which are inserted in the middle of the verb or as prefixes or suffixes. There are …

-um, mag- and ma- verbs, for when the main subject of the sentence is the focus.

takbo (go/run) —> Tumakbo ang Keith. (Keith runs.)
luto (cook) —> Magluto ang Keith. (Keith cooks.)
tulog (sleep) —> Matulog ang Keith. (Keith sleeps.)

-in, -i, -an and ma- verbs, for when the object is the focus.

luto —> Lutuin mo ang isda sa kusina. – [You] cook the fish in the kitchen (the fish receives the action of the verb and is the direct object).
luto —> Iluto mo ang isda sa kusina. – [You] cook the fish in the kitchen (the fish receives the action of the verb and is the direct object — this is form not as common).
bukas (open) —> Buksan mo ang bintana. – [You] open the window (the window receives the action of the verb and is the direct object).
kita —> Makita ang libro ng Keith. – [You] see the book by Keith (the book receives the action of the verb and is the direct object).

-an is also used to indicate that the focus of the sentence is a location of the action (example: Lagyan mo ng bulaklak ang mesa, [You] put flowers on the table). Ipag- and -an (again) is also used when the direct object is the focus and ipang- is used when the focus is an instrument of the action.

Confused yet? That seems to be the gist, know what the focus is and what marker to use, which will indicate what verb to use. Sentences are negated with hindi and wala, which are always before the predicate. Hindi is the most common, wala is used for existential (no one is there/nothing is there type phrases) or prepositional sentences.

If you notice, some of the vocabulary is similar to Spanish. Libro means book in Spanish and Tagalog/Filipino. I also noticed para, which means for, and it seems to work the same in all three languages.

Listening to Filipino was kind of confusing. It’s like Tagalog, Spanish and English all mixed together and when listening to it, it sort of threw me off.

I’ll pass on this one. I didn’t want to go with Spanish and hearing English numbers every other time on Filipino radio sort of turned me off. The Tagalog words I heard seemed hard to distinguish as well.

EVALUATION:

Intelligibility: 2
Complexity: 2
Resonance: 2
Continuation: 1

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:

Tagalog at NIU

COMING NEXT: Polish

Filipino: Magsumikap ka!

Mabuhay! We’ll zip on over east to the Philippines to learn about Filipino, the country’s national language. This is number 34 (only three languages left), and one I have truly never, ever looked at before:

1. Romanian
2. Macedonian
3. Spanish
4. Vietnamese
5. Norwegian
6. Bulgarian
7. Slovenian
8. Malagasy
9. Japanese
10. Moldavian
11. Hindi
12. Finnish
13. Azeri
14. Arabic
15. Czech
16. Albanian
17. Cambodian
18. Serbian
19. Chinese
20. Xhosa
21. Portuguese
22. Armenian
23. Korean
24. Croatian
25. Afrikaans
26. Greek
27. Swedish
28. French
29. Thai
30. Turkish
31. Dutch
32. Hebrew
33. Danish
34. Filipino
35. Polish
36. Lao
37. Catalan

Filipino is spoken by a lot of people: over 90 million people speak it, including millions around the world. It is primarily based on Tagalog, an Austronesian language, and has lots of Spanish loanwords.

REGIONAL HISTORY: The Philippines is one of the most multicultural countries in the world and a lot of credit can be given to its history. Many different tribes arrived and settled in the archipelago in the country’s prehistory and various kingdoms were formed throughout the region. In different areas of the archipelago, the Tondo Dynasty in Manila Bay, the Butuan and Cebu Rajahnates existed and had various trading relationships with the Chinese, along with the Country of Mai on Mindoro island. Later, Muslim sultanates were formed upon the arrival of Islam in the 15th century. In the 900s, the first record of written Tagalog appeared.

Ferdinand Magellan arrived in 1521, claiming the islands for the Portuguese Spain. The first book in Tagalog, Doctrina Christiana, was also written in 1593. The country would become part of the empire, with Spanish rule lasting for 350 years. After the Spanish-American War, the islands went over to the U.S., who held control for the first half of the 20th century, despite a brief revolution of the Filipino people in the Philippine-American War.

In WWII, the Philippines suffered horribly. The country was overrun by Japanese forces and it is said up to one million died as a result of war crimes. Despite the horrible losses after the war, the Philippines finally gained independence in 1946. Ferdinand Marcos became president in 1965 and ruled for over 20 years, although his administration was marked with corruption and authoritarian rule. Corazon Aquino took office in 1986, becoming the country’s first female president and restoring democracy. Some major changes also happened a year later in 1987, including the introduction of a new constitution, making Filipino the official language. Since then, the country now has its second female president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

WRITING SYSTEM: Filipino uses a Latin alphabet, but with two extra letters, ñ and ng.

From looking at Philippine Portal, I didn’t notice any major differences, but the j sounds like an h and the ng sounds like “ng” in thing. The ñ is like the “ni” in onion and the double l (ll) is like the y sound in million. As you might guess, this is primarily due to Spanish influences.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: From immediate impressions, it sounds like Khmer, except with longer words. Another thing I noticed from listening to it briefly is how many English words are used, which is quite a surprise. The language seems to use English and Spanish interchangeably, as English and Spanish numbers can be used in speech. I think that’s kind of cool, actually!

For your entertainment, a cool video in Filipino!

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:
Infoplease – Philippines
Omiglot
Philippine Portal
Wikipedia (Filipino language, History of the Philippines, Philippines, Tagalog)

Danish: Farvel!

So, we’ve reached the end of the line for Dansk, the last Scandinavian language in the blog. But not without some interesting observations. What did I discover?

SUMMARY: Danish is spoken by over six million people in Denmark, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and other parts in northern Europe. Danish evolves from Old East Norse, an old Germanic language and obtained a Latin alphabet upon the arrival of Christianity in Denmark around the 800s. The first Danish books appeared in 1495. The language is mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Swedish.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS: In a nutshell, Danish seems to be identical to the other Scandinavian languages, except for its pronunciation. Several sounds tend to be silent. I also heard a lot of rounded vowel sounds. As far as writing, Danish, as I mentioned before, looks exactly like Norwegian’s Bokmål, but there are some difference in vocabulary. The distinctions in grammar are mostly minor.

Danish is the last piece of the Scandinavian language triangle, so here are my observations in conjunction with those from Norwegian and Swedish:

Pronunciation: To me, Swedish tends to sound the strongest out of them all. It has a pitch accent, although it’s generally not indicated in writing. It comes across as sing-songy. Norwegian sort of sounds like Swedish, except softer and not as sing-songy. However, it has a ton of dialects where words can sound different.

Danish, on the other hand, seemed to have the major exceptions. The “d” tends to be swallowed or not pronounced in a lot of words.

Also, there’s this magical thing called the “stød.” What exactly is it? If I’m explaining it correctly, it’s a feature that forces a syllable to become a glottal stop (a sound made in the throat) or a “creaky voice” sound. In English, you can hear it in the phrase “uh-oh” (the dash is the glottal sound in the throat). According to my friend Kristoffer, who is from Denmark, the stød is the thing that instantly identifies if one is a Danish speaker or not, and non-native speakers generally have problems mastering it. I heard it with the Danish word ved (knows).

Grammar: Nouns in Danish can be common or neuter, with 75 percent of the nouns being common. Swedish nouns are also common and neuter. However, Norwegian has three different forms – masculine, feminine and neuter (except for the Bergen dialect, which just has common and neuter). Guessing the form seems to be easier in Swedish.

One thing that’s the same in all of these languages is that the definite article (the) tends to be attached to the noun. Also, these are generally Subject-Verb-Order languages, although the order is inverted when asking a question.

Also, a bonus for English speakers is that verbs don’t change for person, which means the same form is used regardless of the speaker (In Danish, Jeg er, han er, vi er, which translate to I am, he is, we are).

Writing System: Written Danish and Norwegian (Bokmål) are identical, due to Norway inheriting the Danish alphabet from Danish rule. Swedish words look different and the Danish/Norwegian letters æ and ø and appear as ä and ö. I personally prefer the Danish/Norwegian system, but it’s not a big deal (I just like their letters, as silly as it sounds).

So, with all of this in consideration, I’m still going to lean toward Norwegian. I guess this was predictable, but as I’ve already mentioned before, Norwegian seems to be the best language to learn. It is thought that Norwegian speakers have the least amount of trouble understanding Swedish and Danish in comparison to Danish and Swedish speakers with the other Scandinavian languages. Also, Danish pronunciation seems hard to master.

Sorry Dansk! No hard feelings. But at least if I learn Norwegian or Swedish, I’ll be able to understand songs like these:

EVALUATION:

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

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:

Danish Grammar for the World
Norwegian Grammar – St. Olaf University
Swedish Grammar
Wikipedia (Danish language, Norwegian language, Stød, Swedish language)

COMING NEXT: Filipino

Danish: God fornøjelse!

Hey there Dansk, I’m ready for you. Are you ready for me?

(I’m running out of clever introductions, sorry.)

Danish is the last language in the Scandinavian triangle with Norwegian and Swedish, completing the final piece of the puzzle. It’s spoken in Denmark, Greenland, Iceland, other parts of Scandinavia and the Faroe Islands by six million people. It also marks number 33 in the project:

1. Romanian
2. Macedonian
3. Spanish
4. Vietnamese
5. Norwegian
6. Bulgarian
7. Slovenian
8. Malagasy
9. Japanese
10. Moldavian
11. Hindi
12. Finnish
13. Azeri
14. Arabic
15. Czech
16. Albanian
17. Cambodian
18. Serbian
19. Chinese
20. Xhosa
21. Portuguese
22. Armenian
23. Korean
24. Croatian
25. Afrikaans
26. Greek
27. Swedish
28. French
29. Thai
30. Turkish
31. Dutch
32. Hebrew
33. Danish
34. Filipino
35. Polish
36. Lao
37. Catalan

REGIONAL HISTORY: Like the rest of Northern Europe, Danish history is filled with sagas about the Vikings, who were part of a sphere that conquered areas of western Europe in the Middle Ages. Danish evolves from Old East Norse or Runic Danish; the Runic alphabet was used to write Germanic languages at this time.

Hardegon, a Norwegian ruler, helped unite Denmark around the end of the 800s AD and his son, Gorm the Old, set up the first Danish monarchy. Later Harald Bluetooth, Gorm’s son, made Christianity the state religion, introducing the Latin alphabet that Danish uses now. At this point, Denmark was ruling England but it would only last for a short while.

The period following this was quite violent as ruling classes and those in power battled it out for control of the country. Queen Margrethe I, who became the country’s first female monarch, established the Kalmar Union, a pact between Denmark, Norway and Sweden (you might remember this from the Norwegian and Swedish posts), but it didn’t last for very long. Sweden left and declared independence and the union dissolved, but Denmark continued to rule Norway for 300 years. Around the same time, the Danes had also published the first Bible in Danish.

In the 1600s, the Danes dealt with threats from the Swedes which were later quelled a century later. Things were peaceful until 1801, when the British attacked Denmark, who saw them as a challenge to their global status. Things got so bad between the British and the Danes that the British created a blockade in Norwegian and Danish waters causing famine and poverty in both countries and Sweden, who had paired up with the British, to demand Denmark give up Norway. In the meantime, Denmark had also went from an absolute monarchy to establishing a parliament and instituting democratic reforms.

Denmark continued to progress economically, socially and went relatively unscathed in both World Wars. It is now known as one of the world’s happiest nations.

WRITING SYSTEM: As I said before, Danish uses a Latin alphabet. It’s identical to the English alphabet, except there are three extra letters: æ, ø and å. There are quite a few differences in how some letters are pronounced. I used this page as a reference:

æ – a as in ache
ø – a rough “uh” sound (no similarities in English)
å – o as in old
d – d as is dog, except when between vowels or final letters and sounds like th; not pronounced after l, n or r or before s or t
h – h as in his, but silent before j and v
r – an h sound when first letter or after a consonant; becomes part of the vowel elsewhere
t – t as in tin, except before vowels and last letter, becomes a th sound
w – v as in van

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Written Danish pretty much identical to Norwegian’s Bokmål. But from listening to it, the language seems to use more guttural and throaty sounds when compared to the other Scandinavian languages, which makes it stand out a little. I tried saying some Danish words and apparently Danes use every part of their mouths; there also seems to be a lot of  “rounded” sounds.

Anyway, while comparing the sounds of the Scandinavian languages, I found this little gem. It’s hilarious:

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:

DK Headlines – Learn to speak Danish
Lonely Planet’s page on Denmark – History
Wikipedia page on the Danish language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_languag

Hebrew: !שלום

It’s time to say shalom to Hebrew.  And not a moment too soon! While I can sort of read words now, I think I underestimated everything else.

SUMMARY: Hebrew, a Semitic language, dates back to Biblical times, when it was spoken by the Israelites. However, starting from 70 AD, the language was restricted to liturgical use and was not spoken commonly. It wasn’t until the late 1800s when a scholar named Eliezer Ben Yehuda helped construct Modern Hebrew from its Biblical counterpart. Modern Hebrew is an official language in Israel and spoken by five million of its inhabitants there, along with many in the United States and other regions around the world.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS: I can definitely understand the appeal of Hebrew. It is quite distinct from many languages in the way it sounds and I especially like the “x” (ח) consonant, which seemed to be frequent a lot in words I heard.

The vocabulary itself isn’t too hard to grasp either. Like Arabic, Hebrew words tend to be formed through roots or a set of three consonants. For example, if we look at the root l-m-d (למד), which means “learn” we can find words with this root that relate to that meaning, like lamdan (למדן) which mean “scholar”. This makes reading Hebrew much easier, especially as vowels are not used in everyday writing. Hebrew nouns also have gender (masculine and feminine).

Grammatically, Hebrew is SVO and like English and uses prepositions instead of noun cases. However, verb inflection occurs and it’s quite complicated.

First, the are seven patterns a verb (which is a root) can take called Binayim. I’ll try to explain:

-simple active (pa’al)
-intensive active (pi’el)
-causitive active (hif’il)
-simple passive (nif’al)
-intensive passive (pu’al)
-causitive passive (huf’al)
-reflexive (hitpa’el)

One thing I didn’t understand was whether or not every verb had this form. Anyway, once that form is determined, the verb root can be conjugated into present, past or future tense. But, it must agree with the subject’s masculine and feminine form. One thing to note is that the present tense doesn’t inflect by person (I, you, he/she, we, they) but the past and future tense does. (I’m assuming the present tense can be determined through pronouns or the context f the sentence?)

As an example, the present tense of the root sh-m-r (guard) in the pa’al form:

שׁוֹמֵר – (shomer) masculine singular – guards
שׁוֹמֶרֶת – (shomeret) feminine singular – guards
שׁוֹמְרִים – (shomrim) masculine plural – guards
שׁוֹמְרוֹת – (shomrot) feminine plural – guards

There are still unanswered questions I have, which concern me. I asked my friend Dominik who speaks Polish and Hebrew said he was able to notice some some similarities between Polish and Hebrew words; for example, בלגן (balagan) means disorder in Hebrew, while bałagan, which is Polish, means the same. This indicates a possible Slavic influence. Meanwhile, Dominik also said Hebrew letters like vav (ו), pe (פ) were similar to way Latin letters v and p became u and ph, respectively. In Hebrew, vav can become and “o” sound and pe becomes a “ph” sound.

Surprisingly, Dominik said that Hebrew seemed easier for him to learn despite learning it from a young age. My other friend Elad Ogden Gur-Arie, a native Hebrew speaker, said English was easy for him to learn and considered himself fluent during junior high school. As for Hebrew, he said unequivocally that the hardest part for English speakers would be learning the alphabet and the masculine/feminine nouns.

It seems like the more I read about Hebrew the more mysterious it seems (especially with Biblical Hebrew). I found it harder to find sources about Modern Hebrew, which complicated things. I think I’ll leave the clues for someone else to solve.

Still love Hebrew music though .. that’s definitely not a mystery.

EVALUATION:

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

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:

All Things Hebrew – Why Hebrew is Different
I. L. Peretz Community Jewish School – History of Hebrew
LingvoZone – Hebrew
UCLA Language Materials Project – Hebrew
Wikipedia – Hebrew verb conjugation

COMING NEXT: Danish

Hebrew: מה?

Hey Hebrew, how you doin’?

Ok, that was corny. Maybe I should have said, “remember me?” since I did look at the Hebrew alphabet when I was younger (albeit very, very briefly). But what little I could remember has long since disappeared so I’m starting from fresh. Hebrew marks number 32 in the project. Only five left until part two!

1. Romanian
2. Macedonian
3. Spanish
4. Vietnamese
5. Norwegian
6. Bulgarian
7. Slovenian
8. Malagasy
9. Japanese
10. Moldavian
11. Hindi
12. Finnish
13. Azeri
14. Arabic
15. Czech
16. Albanian
17. Cambodian
18. Serbian
19. Chinese
20. Xhosa
21. Portuguese
22. Armenian
23. Korean
24. Croatian
25. Afrikaans
26. Greek
27. Swedish
28. French
29. Thai
30. Turkish
31. Dutch
32. Hebrew
33. Danish
34. Filipino
35. Polish
36. Lao
37. Catalan

Hebrew is in the Semetic language family, along with Arabic. It’s spoken by about 5 million people in Israel and in various communities throughout the world, notably the United States.

REGIONAL HISTORY: Hebrew is one of the oldest languages on the blog. Early forms of written Hebrew stretch back to the 11th century BC and was spoken in Israel. The language was used by Israelites until enslavement through Babylonian rule in the 6th century BC. Hebrew was was later replaced with another local language called Aramaic (Jesus spoke this language) until they were freed by Cyrus the Great.

Collectively, the forms of Hebrew spoken from the 10th century BC to the 4th century AD are known as Classical Hebrew. The Hebrew Bible, also called the Tanakh, is written in one of the earlier stages of Classical Hebrew, called Biblical Hebrew. Much of the Talmud, another religious book in Judaism, is written in Mishnaic Hebrew, the last phase in this language’s stage. The widely known square-ish alphabet also appeared in the 1st century.

Hebrew was mostly used liturgically among Jewish people after 70 AD but not as a spoken language. In the middle ages, scholars attempted to analyze and explain Biblical Hebrew; diacritics were also introduced to help people pronounce Biblical Hebrew. Modern Hebrew, however, didn’t appear until the 1800s, thanks to the efforts of Eliezer Ben Yehuda. This reconstructed version eventually gained momentum among the Jewish community and soon became recognized as an official language.

WRITING SYSTEM: Hebrew uses an abjad, which an an alphabet without vowels. It has 22 letters, five of which change when at the end of a word, and is read from right to left. For learning to read Hebrew, I used My Hebrew Dictionary, which has a helpful reference for pronouncing the letters (the final positions of consonants are noted):

א – silent
בּ / ב – b as in boy / v as in very
ג – soft g as in glue
ד – d as in do
ה – h as in house
ו – v as in very
ז – z as in zoo
ח – ch as in Bach
ט – t as in trail
י – y as in yellow
כ and ך (final) / כּ and ךּ (final – very rare) – k as in kite / ch as in Bach
ל – l as in lay
מ / ם (final) – m as in me
נ / ן (final) – n as in new
ס – s as in say
ע – silent
פּ / פ and ף (final) – p as in pay / ph as in phone
צ / ץ (final) – cz as in czar
ק – k as in kite
ר -  a rough “r” sound, but rolled
שׁ / ש – sh as in she / s as in say
תּ / ת – t as in tree

As you may have noticed, some of the consonants have dots, which indicate that the consonant should sound harder. However, Hebrew does have a system of adding vowels called niqqud, which involves adding diacritics in the form of dashes and dotes around the consonants. However, Modern Hebrew is written without these; niqqud is mostly used for beginners and those reading the Hebrew Bible.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: The alphabet alone is really appealing and I’ve been trying to understand it. While I can read some letters, I still wonder about pronunciation, as vowels are not noted (e.g., Hebrew is עברית or Ivrit, but technically looks like “vryt”. I would rather learn to use it the way everyone else does and not use niqqud, so this could be a problem. But I do love the rhythm of Hebrew and how it sounds.

Predictably, I like music sung in Hebrew. Here’s a song by one of my favorite Israeli singers that might convince you (along with the Spanish subtitles):

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:
My Hebrew Dictionary: Hebrew Pronunciation
Judaism 101: Hebrew Alphabet
Omniglot
Wikipedia (Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew language)

Dutch: Tot ziens (wait … isn’t this Afrikaans?)

I probably should have skipped Dutch.

I thought I would give it the benefit of the doubt due to its resemblance of German. But nah … I still didn’t like it. If anything, I would rather learn Afrikaans, which I might have to reconsider.

SUMMARY: Dutch is spoken by about 30 million people worldwide, mostly in the Netherlands, Belgium, Aruba and Suriname. It’s a descendant of Old Frankish, which comes from Low German. In a nutshell, Old Frankish, spoken in what is now the Netherlands, split in half by the northern and southern dialects, with the northern ones being called Old Low Frankish, also known as Old Dutch. Middle Dutch saw a cluster of dialects and was later standardized, leading to Modern Dutch. Dutch from the 1600s (which saw the advent of the Dutch Bible) differs little from Dutch spoken today.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS: I wonder if Dutch is like German in disguise? Maybe so, considering that vocabulary is 75 percent the same. From listening to it, it sounded like German except softer, with the exception of the “g” sound which seemed to stand out a lot. And of course, the double vowels stand out quite a bit in written, along with the “lj” digraph, which sounds like an English “ay.”

As for grammar, I consulted the resources located at Indo-European Languages, a really great site for language beginners. Apparently, it’s not so bad for English speakers. All nouns are either common or neuter; common nouns use the article “de” while neuter ones use “het”, both of them meaning “the.”

Conjugation is also easy because most Dutch verbs are regular. They end in -en and follow this pattern (using the verb roken, which means “to smoke”):

Ik rook – I smoke
U rookt – you smoke
Hij/Ze rookt – he/she smokes
Wij roken – we smoke
Jullie roken – you (all) smoke
Ze roken – they smoke

The “I” form just takes the stem of the infinitive (with a minor spelling change), while the “you” and “he/she” forms add a -t. All the plural forms are just the infinitive.

As for word order Dutch, like closely related Afrikaans, is a V2 language, which means the verb must always come second or rather after the subject it relates to (even if the subject is a cluster of words). Words are negated by adding niet at the end of clauses (Ik rook niet, “I don’t smoke”). However, nouns use the negative indefinite article geen, which roughly translates as “no” “not a” or “not any” when it comes after a noun (for example, Ik wil geen kopje koffie, “I don’t want a cup of coffee”).

As for the major differences between Afrikaans and Dutch, Afrikaans doesn’t use definite articles has the definite article “die” (the) for all nouns while Dutch uses “de” and “het” as mentioned before. Also, the “lj” translates to a “y” in words. The are also differences in vocabulary and as noted before, Dutch speakers would have more difficulty understanding Afrikaans than the other way around, even though both languages are mutually intelligible.

With all this being said, I’m not sure why I tuned into Afrikaans and was turned off by Dutch. Conjugation is slightly easier because verbs don’t conjugate in the present tense. Also, Afrikaans doesn’t have definite articles. But they both sound the same to me … hmm. I just know I don’t want to pursue Dutch at all.

EVALUATION:

Intelligibility: 3
Complexity: 3
Resonance: 2
Continuation: 1

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:

How to Learn Any Language – Languages similar to German
Indo-European Languages – Dutch
Omniglot
Wikipedia (Afrikaans, Differences between Afrikaans and Dutch, Dutch Grammar, Dutch Language)

COMING NEXT: Hebrew

Dutch: Natuurlijk.

Let’s go Dutch!

Like everyone else this time of the year, the holidays are really putting a strain on my free time, which explains why this post is kind of late. Nevertheless, we now reach Dutch, the 31st language in the blog.

1. Romanian
2. Macedonian
3. Spanish
4. Vietnamese
5. Norwegian
6. Bulgarian
7. Slovenian
8. Malagasy
9. Japanese
10. Moldavian
11. Hindi
12. Finnish
13. Azeri
14. Arabic
15. Czech
16. Albanian
17. Cambodian
18. Serbian
19. Chinese
20. Xhosa
21. Portuguese
22. Armenian
23. Korean
24. Croatian
25. Afrikaans
26. Greek
27. Swedish
28. French
29. Thai
30. Turkish
31. Dutch
32. Hebrew
33. Danish
34. Filipino
35. Polish
36. Lao
37. Catalan

Dutch is a West Germanic language (like English) spoken by over 20 million mainly in the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname, along with some parts of the Caribbean. Dutch comes from Old Frankish, a West Germanic language that was spoken in the region around the 400s.

REGIONAL HISTORY: The Netherlands, the main country where Dutch is spoken, evolved from a cluster of provinces (called the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands, namesake-wise) back in the 1500s. Prior to that, the region was populated by the Franks and Frisians, followed by successful farmers from cities Flanders and Utrecht who formed their own towns. Seven of these provinces separated in 1581 and formed the Dutch Republic, which lasted for about 200 years.

During this time, the Dutch went through a golden age, particularly in the areas of exploration and travel. One major event was the establishment of Capetown (in modern-day South Africa), which led to the creation of Afrikaans, the progeny of Dutch. The Dutch Bible, Staten-Bijbel, appeared in the 17th century, being one of the first major works in Modern Dutch.

In the 1800s, both the Netherlands and Belgium (which had been connected to the Netherlands since, forever) formed their own kingdoms. The century also saw the rule of Queen Wilhelmina, which would last for 60 years. The Netherlands suffered greatly in WWII after being captured by Germany; many Dutch Jews were sent to concentration camps and civilians were forced into labor. The Dutch bounced back though after the war, rebuilding ties with Belgium and Luxembourg, creating the Benelux union. The Dutch are still going strong, with the world’s oldest stock exchange and reputation for being extremely liberal.

WRITING SYSTEM: Latin alphabet. Same as English’s basically, but there are two exceptions. The “g” sounds completely different. It sort of resembles a “kh” sound, with the tongue risen in the back. Sort of like when English speakers say “human” and they emphasize the h. It’s hard to explain, but its very recognizable when you heard it. The other exception is that the “j” sounds like a “y.” Also, when consonants appear at the end of words, they are devoiced (e.g., a voiced letter, like “b” turns into an unvoiced one, like “p”).

There’s also the “ij”. Though not technically a letter, it appears just as frequently as all the other letter.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: From looking at Dutch, it seems to resemble a funky version of English. There are a lot of double vowels, as in Afrikaans. From listening to it, it seems to resemble German (not a good thing). But I did sort of like Afrikaans, so I’ll give it a chance.

Enjoy Pocahontas in Dutch! I did!

SOURCES USED IN THIS POST:
Infoplease – Netherlands (History)
Linguanaut – Dutch Alphabet
Omniglot
Wikipedia (Dutch, Netherlands)

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/21/world/AP-LT-Mexico-GayMarriag.html?_r=1