Rhuyeve tamile Amaharukwe, Rhux̌akwe tanajha chiwirachive, Tanapm Rhalamereve. ”Amaharu said it to me, I have come to say it to you, And I will go say it to the world (OR: And you will go say it to the world)"
Phonotactics: CV syllables only. /ə/ is pronounced [ɨ] in a stressed syllable unless preceded by a pharyngeal/pharyngealized consonant, otherwise it is pronounced [ə]. Syllabic consonants /l̩/, /r̩/, /n̩/ and /m̩/ appear word finally, but these are best understood as underlying /ənə/, /əmə/, /ələ/ and /ərə/ respectively. With voiced consonants, pharyngealization is realised as:
A pharyngeal/epiglottal voiced trill-release of the consonant.
The following vowel is pronounced with a murmured voice.
With voiceless consonants (including ejectives), pharyngealization is realised as:
A pharyngeal/epiglottal voiceless trill-release of the consonant.
The following vowel is pronounced with a noisy, aspirated release.
Furthermore, vowels /i/ and are diphthongized following pharyngeals: /i/ -> [əi], -> [əu] Thus: /dˁu/ -> [d͡ʢə̤ṳ] /tˁi/ -> [t͡ʜʰəi] (This is based on Chechen btw) Sound changes since Kesan: The aspirated series shift to fricatives: /pʰ/ -> /f/ /tʰ/ -> /s/ /kʲʰ/ -> /xʲ/ /kʷʰ/ -> /xʷ/ /qʰ/ -> /χ/ /qʷʰ/ -> /χʷ/ Palatalized velars shift to Alveopalatals, leaving the language with only a labialized velar series. /kʲ/ -> /t͡ʃ/ /xʲ/ -> /ʃ/ /kʲ'/ -> /t͡ʃ'/ /gʲ/ -> /d͡ʒ/ Following this, alveolars also shift to alveopalatals when followed by /i/ /ti/ -> /t͡ʃi/ /si/ -> /ʃi/ /t’i/ -> /t͡ʃ’i/ /zi/ -> /ʒi/ /t͡si/ -> /t͡ʃi/ /d͡zi/ -> /d͡ʒi/ Glottals become pharyngeals when followed by a pharyngealized vowel: /hVˁ/ -> [ħVˁ] /ʔVˁ/ -> [ʕVˁ] Pharyngealization shifts from vowels to adjacent alveolalabial consonants, If no eligible consonants are adjacent to the vowel pharyngealization is lost, if both adjacent consonants are eligible, the consonant following the vowel is pharyngealized. P=eligible consonant. K=non-eligible consonant. /PVˁK/ -> /PˁVK/ /KVˁP/ -> /KVPˁ/ /KVˁK/ -> /KVK/ /PVˁP/ -> /PVPˁ/ Some time following this, /vˁ/ and /fˁ/ shift to /ʕ/ and /ħ/, respectively. /ə/ inserted errywhere: /CC/ -> /CəC/ /CVC__/ -> /CVCə/ (is this how you denote word-final consonants? pls halp my linguistics formulafu is weak) Vowel reduction? I haven't figured out the exact details yet, open to suggestions. Word final voiceless fricatives and word-final syllables composed of a voiceless fricative and an /ə/ are dropped. This has an interesting effect on certain words, which now develop two distinct forms depending on whether or not they take any suffixes. For instance, the 1st person singular pronoun nominative /ʕuχə/ loses the final syllable, becoming /ʕu/, but in the plural, the final syllable is "protected" by the plural suffix, and so the original form remains: /ʕuχa-t͡ʃə/ Lastly: /ɮ/ -> /ʒ/ /ɬ/ -> /l/ /t͡s’/ -> /səʔ/ /t͡s/ -> /s/ /d͡z/ -> /z/ /ji/ -> /jə/ /wu/ -> /wə/ /Cʷu/ -> /Cʷə/ /VhV/ -> /VnV/ (unless at least one of V=, in which case /VhV/->/VmV/) Overall grammatical changes from the proto-language:
Pronouns developed tripartite allignment (rest of the language stays ergative-absolutive)
Developed a three-way gender system (masculine animate, feminine animate, inanimate)
BECAME NON-CONFIGURATIONAL. Word order is more or less random, discontinuity all over the place, pro-dropping, this language doesn't give a shit.
Lost most of the inflected verbs, so might only have 3 verbs depending on how you look at it. See below.
Omni-predicative? Sort of? Technically not? It's hard to explain, see below, in practice everything can be verbified, but it's less that nouns serve as verbs and more that semantically deficient verbs can have nouns bolted on to them to give them an actual meaning... it's weird.
Pronouns, which are now tripartite:
Singular
Dual
Plural
1.
Nominative
ʕu
ʕuʕu
ʕuχat͡ʃə
Ergative
ʕuχakʷə
ʕuʕuχakʷə
ʕuχat͡ʃəkʷə
Accusative
ʕuju
ʕuʕuju
ʕuχat͡ʃəju
Genitive
ʕujə-
ʕuʕujə-
ʕuχat͡ʃi-
2.
Nominative
t͡ʃiwira
t͡ʃit͡ʃiwira
t͡ʃiwirat͡ʃə
Ergative
t͡ʃiwirakʷə
t͡ʃit͡ʃiwirakʷə
t͡ʃiwirat͡ʃəkʷə
Accusative
t͡ʃiwiju
t͡ʃit͡ʃiwiju
t͡ʃiwirat͡ʃəju
Genitive
t͡ʃiwi-
t͡ʃit͡ʃiwi-
t͡ʃiwirat͡ʃi-
3.
Nominative
kʷ’ə
kʷ’əkʷ’ə
kʷ’əʃat͡ʃə
Ergative
-
-
-
Accusative
kʷ’əʃu
kʷ’əkʷ’əʃu
kʷ’əʃat͡ʃu
Genitive
kʷ’i-
kʷ’əkʷ’i-
kʷ’əʃat͡ʃi-
As you can see above, Chesar has a tripartite pronoun system, with distinct forms for intransitive subject (nominative), transitive subject (ergative) and transitive object (accusative). Note that the lack of ergative pronouns in the third person is not an accident, as Kesar completely lacks them. Demonstratives are instead used. Other 3rd person pronouns exist, but demonstratives are again commonly in their place. True 3rd person pronouns are only used for emphasis. Genitive pronouns may appear on their own without an overt head and may thus both be translated as "my" and "mine". ("That's my book. It's mine"). They agree with their head in gender and case. The tripartite system developed, in parts, as a result of the increased use of demonstratives in lieu of third person pronouns. The fact that these demonstratives, unlike pronouns, but like other nouns, followed an ergative allignment, brought further confusion to to an already complex system. The pattern of these demonstratives, which were marked with an Ergative case suffix when transitive subjects, was regularized to apply to other pronouns, and formed by attaching an ergative /-(a)kʷə/ suffix to the nominative form. However, pronouns had distinct Nominative and Accusative forms, and these stuck around even after the addition of the ergative. Thus you get a tripartite system, with no distinct ergative form for 3rd person pronouns. Examples: ”I went” Rhu rhuzigwe.
GRAMMATICAL GENDER SYSTEM: Each grammatical gender has a "common" ending that many words in the group end on, and this ending is used to derive further words into the group. Gender is also mostyl semantically determined, so it is somewhat predictable. But still, for a lot of words you just have to memorize it. The grammatical gender of a noun triggers agreement in adjectives (whose only distinction from nouns is having no inherent gender) and usually demonstratives and genitive pronouns. Gender suffixes: Masculine: /-Ø ~ -na/ (/-na/ is used for deriving new words into the class and also functions as a generic nomen agentis, in agreement context it only appears on adjectives. Genitive pronouns and demonstratives show null-agreement) Feminine (smaller): /-waʃi ~ -ʃi/ (/-waʃi/ is the prefered form for derivation, while /-ʃi/ is the prefered form for agreement) Inanimate: /-Ø ~ -sə-/ (The /-sə-/ form appears only when followed by another suffix, otherwise /-Ø/ is used) ”That big man” Br zejhina rhala
The gender-system developed as a result of a combination of several things... stuff... stuff happened. The basic idea is that continued dislocation resulted in certain derivational suffixes becoming used A LOT, think of the following: "I killed that fat woman", a sentence we have all said at some point in our life. Over time it became more and more common for Chesar speakers to dislocate parts of the sentence: "I killed fat woman, that (one)", or "I killed that woman, (the) fat (one)". With sentences like these becoming more and more common, speakers needed to disambiguate who the dislocated bit refered to. In the above example, the referent is a woman, and the language already had a derivational suffix /-wasi/ used for deriving words, typically refering to females. This suffix was expanded and applied to the dislocated part when it refered back to a female, so the above would be rendered: "I killed fat woman, that-FEM (one)", or "I killed that woman, (the) fat-FEM (one)". This was then regularized to be used even when these elements were not dislocated, and over time dislocation would become simple discontinuity, so the above would end out as: "I killed fat-FEM woman that-FEM" "I killed that-FEM woman fat-FEM." "I killed that-FEM fat-FEM woman." See? Easy peasy. So the development of gender and non-configurationality was closely related. Anyway, the origin of gender: (WIP) The feminine animate came about due to the following:
Increased productivity of the "feminine/odd" derivational suffix /-wasi/ (/-waʃi/ following sound changes).
Generalization/reinterpretation of many words ending on /-si/ (mostly small birds) as part of a grammatical group, along with words that refered to "odd" members of a particular group (such as flightless birds or legless lizards).
The masculine animate (largest group, default for refering to animates):
Old nomen agentis suffix /-na/ reanalyzed as a masculine/non-feminine animate gender marker.
The inanimate:
The old nominalizing/gerundive suffix /-tʰ/ (/-sə/ following sound changes) reanalyzed as an inanimate/abstract gender marker. It is then lost word-finally as a result of regular sound changes, and only surfaces when followed by other suffixes (such as case markers).
Since all gender markers originated as derivational suffixes, they appear before any other nominal inflectional suffixes. VERBS Form: SIGNIFIER-AGREEMENT-LIGHT.VERB "We went to drink it" Chitekweyenazi. /t͡ʃitəkʷə-jəna-zi/ drink-1.PLU.ERG:3.SG.ABS-go.PERF Verbs in Chesar are unspecified for transitivity, the only thing determining their transitivity is the upper number of arguments they can meaningfully take. The verb meaning "go" can also mean "bring", the verb meaning "dive" can mean "throw into water". "He died" Brhule
bˁu-Ø-lə die-3.SG.ABS-do.PERF
"He killed him" (lit. "he died him") Brhumile
bˁu-mi-lə die-3.SG.ERG:3.SG.ABS-do.PERF
Changes from Kesan: The verbs overall structure is mostly unchanged from Kesan (see the previous post), but six major developments have taken place in the interim:
The Uninflected verbs have integrated fully with whatever inflected verb postcedes them, becoming morphologically part of the same word. They are now refered to as "signifiers" (not sure what else to call them). So /ɮaˁ mid͡zigʷɨd͡zɨ/ -> /ɮaˁmid͡zigʷɨd͡zɨ/. Furthermore, there is no longer a clear distinction between them and nouns; signifiers can serve as nouns if marked for gender, and nouns can serve as signifiers (in most cases losing their gender)
The vast majority of the Inflected Verbs have been lost, reducing the class to a mere handful. This class is now refered to as the "Light Verbs".
Nouns may now be verbed freely, this came about as a result of A: some nouns also serving as uninflected verbs/signifiers set a precedence. B: reduced subordinate clauses became a mainstay: /magʷəχʷə ʔə-lə/ "a bear he-was" became /magʷəχʷə-lə/ "(he) was a bear"
The light verb base has fused with aspect/mode/tense suffixes.
The agreement affixes have undergone some degree of fusion.
The subordinating relativizer affix /-fə/ has been lost as part of regular sound changes.
Signifier: The Signifier is the element of the verb that carries most of the core meaning of the verb, /t͡ʃitəkʷə/, for instance, means "to drink". Signifiers may serve as predicates on their own, with no agreement or light verb, in certain subordinate clauses (see below), but oddly enough, in spite of what I just wrote, they aren't really the core of the verb - the light verb is. A regular noun may also serve as a signifier. The exact meaning of the resulting verb varries, but generally it means "to be NOUN" or "to do (as one would do if one were a) NOUN to X". Signifiers aren't truly distinct from regular nouns, and may in fact just be interpreted as inanimate nouns incorporated into the verb (it's weird). Agreement: See the link below for a comparison between verbal agreement in Kesan (Proto-Dwarf) and Chesar. https://imgur.com/a/mLoU80Z Reflexives and reciprocals are formed by specialized affixes followed by an intransitive agreement affix. Light Verb: There is, in one way of looking at it, only 3 verbs in Chesar. "to do/be", "to go" and "to come". These are the light verbs. They are the final part of the full verb and serve as a way of indicating associated motion, as well as tense, aspect and modality. Light verbs may appear (with agreement) without any signifier when refering to simple motion. "I go to you" could be expressed simply as: Nawegweze.
nawə-gʷəzə 1SG.ERG:2SG.ABS-go.IMPF
No signifier necessary. The same is true when the action refered to refers back to one previously mentioned, or when it is obvious from context: "I killed him, I did it". or "I did that" (pointing to a corpse) Some inflections have two forms: a short and a long form. The short form is used if the light verb is preceded by four or more syllables (including signifier and agreement), the long form is used otherwise. The light verbs are as follows: To go: Four conjugations: Perfect, Imperfect, Future and Imperative (used for positive imperatives which include motion, "go and X") PERFECT: /-zi ~ -zigʷə/ IMPERFECT: /-gʷə ~ -gʷəzə/ FUTURE: /-pəmə/ MOVEMENT-IMPERATIVE: /-ma ~ -d͡ʒima/ To come: Three conjugations: Perfect, Imperfect and Future. PERFECT: /-χa ~ -χad͡ʒa)/ IMPERFECT: /-d͡ʒa/ FUTURE: /-xʷi/ To be/to do: Rather than indicating a lack of motion, this light verb is simply unspecified for motion - it may refer to motion to-or-from an endpoint, it may not. Unlike the other two light verbs, this one has a bunch of forms, including various irrealis forms. It may be treated as many forms of one light verb or many light verbs with a single form, hard to say. PERFECT: /-lə/ IMPERFECT: /-dˁa ~ -nidˁa/ FUTURE: /-dələ/ HABITUAL: /-t’əka/ PERFECT HABITUAL: /-t’ət’ə/ IMPERATIVE: /-da/ NEGATIVE IMPERATIV: /-dənə ~ -nadənə/ SUBJUNCTIVE: /-bˁa/ JUSSIVE: /-χʷəlu/ Subordinate clauses: Due to the loss of the subordinating relative suffix /-fə/ , there is no longer any formal distinction between verbs in subordinate clauses and verbs in main clauses. Instead you just know them from context, and from the fact that most subordinate clauses are headed by some kind of subordinating particle (haven't done any work on them yet). The aspect/tense used in subordinate clauses is always relative to that of the main clause. When the referent and tense is identical to that of the main clause, the agreement and light verb may be omitted entirely, leaving nothing but a naked signifier as the predicate of the subordinate clause. "I fell and cut my leg" Qwagwerhule, qaye t'ume.
qʷagʷə-ʕu-lə qajə t'umə fall-1SG.ABS-do.PERF leg cut
Note how the signifier /t'umə/ lacks both agreement and light verb. This developed from nominalized signifiers which then lost the nominalizing /-sə/ suffix due to sound changes. The alternate system of forming subordinate clauses by attaching case suffixes to the nominalized verb was completely lost in Chesar. But it would have a massive impact on another branch of the family, but more about that next week. Fun, isn't it? Still a bunch of stuff I haven't figured out, including how exactly the case system turned out (Reduced? Mostly unchanged? Expanded?). But it works.
Slovak (/ˈsloʊvæk, -vɑːk/) or less frequently Slovakian is a West Slavic language (together with Czech, Polish, and Sorbian). It is called slovenský jazyk (pronounced [ˈslɔʋɛnskiː ˈjazik] ) or slovenčina ([ˈslɔʋɛntʃina]) in the language itself. Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by approximately 5.51 million people (2014). Slovak speakers are also found in the United States, the Czech Republic, Argentina, Serbia, Ireland, Romania, Poland, Canada, Hungary, Germany, Croatia, Israel, the United Kingdom, Australia, Austria, Ukraine, Norway and many other countries worldwide.
History
he earliest written records of Slovak are represented by personal and place names, later by sentences, short notes and verses in Latin and Czech documents. Latin documents contain also mentions about a cultivation of the vernacular language. The complete texts are available since the 15th century. In the 15th century, Latin began to lose its privileged position in favor of Czech and cultural Slovak. The Old Church Slavonic became the literary and liturgical language, and the Glagolitic alphabet, the corresponding script in Great Moravia until 885. Latin continues to be used in parallel. Some of the early Old Church Slavonic texts contain elements of the language of the Slavic inhabitants of Great Moravia and Pannonia, which were called the Sloviene by Slavic texts at that time. The use of Old Church Slavonic in Great Moravia was prohibited by Pope Stephen V in 885; consequently, Latin became the administrative and liturgical language again. Many followers and students of Constantine and Methodius fled to Bulgaria, Croatia, Bohemia, the Kievan Rus' and other countries. From the 10th century onward, Slovak began to develop independently. Very few written records of Old Slovak remain, mainly from the 13th century onwards, consisting of groups of words or single sentences. Fuller Slovak texts appeared starting from 15th century. The old Slovak language and its development can be research mainly through old Slovak toponyms, petrificated within Latin texts. Examples include crali (1113) > kráľ, king; dorz (1113) > dvorec; grinchar (1113) > hrnčiar, potter; mussenic (1113) > mučeník, martyr; scitar (1113) > štítar, shieldmaker; zaltinc (1156) > zlatník, goldmaker; duor (1156) > dvor, courtyard; and otroč (1156) > otrok, slave, servant. In 1294, the monk Ivanka from Kláštor pod Znievom wrote: "ad parvam arborem nystra slowenski breza ubi est meta". It is important mainly because it contains the oldest recorded adjective Slovak in the Slovak language, whose modern form is slovensky. Up until this point, all adjectives were recorded mainly in Latin, including sclavus, slavus and sclavoniae. Anton Bernolák, a Catholic priest (1762-1813), published the Dissertatio philologico-critica de litteris Slavorum in 1787, in which he codifies a Slovak language standard that is based on the Western Slovak language of the University of Trnava but contains also some central Slovak elements, e.g. soft consonants ď, ť, ň, ľ and many words. The orthography is strictly diacritical. The language is often called the Bernolák language. Bernolák continued his codification work in other books in the 1780s and 1790s and especially in his huge six-volume Slovak-Czech-Latin-German-Hungarian Dictionary, in print from 1825-1927. In the 1820s, the Bernolák standard was revised, and Central Slovak elements were systematically replaced by their Western Slovak equivalents. This was the first successful establishment of a Slovak language standard. Bernolák's language was used by Slovak Catholics, especially by the writers Juraj Fándly and Ján Hollý, but Protestants still wrote in the Czech language in its old form used in Bohemia until the 17th century. In 1843, young Slovak Lutheran Protestants, led by Ľudovít Štúr, decided to establish and discuss the central Slovak dialect as the new Slovak language standard instead of both Bernolák's language used by the Catholics and the Czech language used by older Slovak Lutheran Protestants. The new standard was also accepted by some users of the Bernolák language led by Ján Hollý, but was initially criticized by the older Lutheran Protestants led by Ján Kollár (died 1852). This language formed the basis of the later literary Slovak language that is used today. It was officially declared the new language standard in August 1844. The first Slovak grammar of the new language will be published by Ľudovít Štúr in 1846. With the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Slovak became an official language for the first time in history along with the Czech language. The Czechoslovak Constitution of 1920 and the constitutional law on minorities which was adopted alongside the constitution on the same day established the Czechoslovak language as an official language Since the Czechoslovak language did not exist, the law recognized its two variants, Czech and Slovak. Czech was usually used in administration in the Czech lands; Slovak, in Slovakia. In practice, the position of languages was not equal. Along with political reasons, this situation was caused by a different historical experience and numerous Czech teachers and clerks in Slovakia, who helped to restore the educational system and administration because Slovaks educated in the Slovak language were missing. Czechoslovakia split into Slovakia and Czechia in 1992. The Slovak language became the official language of Slovakia.
Linguistics
An Indo-European language, Slovak is closely related to other languages such as Czech. It is more distantly related to languages as far apart as English and Ancient Hittite. Classification Slovak's full classification is as follows: Indo-European > Balto-Slavic > Slavic > West Slavic > Czech–Slovak > Slovak Morphophonemics Slovak has five (or six) short vowel phonemes. These five can also be distinguished by length, giving a total of 10 contrastive vowel phonemes. There are four diphthongs in the language. Slovak has 29 consonant phonemes, however. These phonemes are contrasted by place of articulation as well as voicing. Voiceless stops and affricates are made without aspiration. In the standard language, the stress is always on the first syllable of a word (or on the preceding preposition, see below). This is not the case in certain dialects. Eastern dialects have penultimate stress (as in Polish), which at times makes them difficult to understand for speakers of standard Slovak. Some of the north-central dialects have a weak stress on the first syllable, which becomes stronger and moves to the penultimate in certain cases. Monosyllabic conjunctions, monosyllabic short personal pronouns and auxiliary verb forms of the verb byť (to be) are usually unstressed. Prepositions form a single prosodic unit with the following word, unless the word is long (four syllables or more) or the preposition stands at the beginning of a sentence. Syntax Word order in Slovak is relatively free, since strong inflection enables the identification of grammatical roles (subject, object, predicate, etc.) regardless of word placement. This relatively free word order allows the use of word order to convey topic and emphasis. Slovak nouns are inflected for case and number. There are six cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, and instrumental. The vocative is no longer morphologically marked. There are two numbers: singular and plural. Nouns have inherent gender. There are three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives and pronouns must agree with nouns in case, number, and gender. Slovak has 9 different personal pronouns, which can also appear in the various cases. The 9 pronouns are given in the nominative case in the table below.
Meaning
Pronoun
1s
ja
2s informal
ty
3s masc
on
3s neut
ono
3s fem
ona
1p
my
2p (2s formal)
vy
3p (masculine animate, or mixed genders)
oni
3p (other)
ony
Verbs have three major conjugations. Three persons and two numbers (singular and plural) are distinguished. Several conjugation paradigms exist as follows: Slovak is a pro-drop language, which means the pronouns are generally omitted unless they are needed to add emphasis. Historically, two past tense forms were utilized. Both are formed analytically. The second of these, equivalent to the pluperfect, is not used in the modern language, being considered archaic and/or grammatically incorrect. One future tense exists. For imperfective verbs, it is formed analytically, for perfective verbs it is identical with the present tense. Two conditional forms exist, both formed analytically from the past tense. Most Slovak verbs can have two forms: perfective (the action has ended or is complete) and imperfective (the action has not yet ended). Orthography Slovak uses the Latin script with small modifications that include the four diacritics (ˇ, ´, ¨, ˆ) placed above certain letters (a-á,ä; c-č; d-ď; dz-dž; e-é; i-í; l-ľ,ĺ; n-ň; o-ó,ô; r-ŕ; s-š; t-ť; u-ú; y-ý; z-ž) The primary principle of Slovak spelling is the phonemic principle. The secondary principle is the morphological principle: forms derived from the same stem are written in the same way even if they are pronounced differently. An example of this principle is the assimilation rule (see below). The tertiary principle is the etymological principle, which can be seen in the use of i after certain consonants and of y after other consonants, although both i and y are usually pronounced the same way. Finally, the rarely applied grammatical principle is present when, for example, the basic singular form and plural form of masculine adjectives are written differently with no difference in pronunciation (e.g. pekný = nice – singular versus pekní = nice – plural). Written Sample: Všetci ľudia sa rodia slobodní a sebe rovní, čo sa týka ich dostôjnosti a práv. Sú obdarení rozumom a majú navzájom jednať v bratskom duchu. Spoken sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLwMLhr_McQ (interview) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShR1Hp4xFDw (lullaby) https://youtu.be/qW0GpWnioTQ (wikitongues) Sources & Further reading Wikipedia articles on Slovak What now? This thread is foremost a place for discussion. Are you a native speaker? Share your culture with us. Learning the language? Tell us why you chose it and what you like about it. Thinking of learning? Ask a native a question. Interested in linguistics? Tell us what's interesting about it, or ask other people. Discussion is week-long, so don't worry about post age, as long as it's this week's language.
வணக்கம் - This week's language of the week: Tamil!
) Tamil (English: /ˈtæmɪl/; தமிழ் Tamiḻ [t̪ɐmɨɻ]) is a Dravidian language spoken by 70 million people, mostly the Tamil people of India and Sri Lanka. It is an official language in Sri Lanka and Singapore and has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the Indian Union Territory of Puducherry. It is one of the four languages of education used in Malaysia, and also one of India's 22 scheduled languages. The modern language experiences a fairly high degree of diglossia, which three different stylistic variants. The information presented in this post comes from the chapter "Modern Tamil" of Steever's The Dravidian Languages (1998, Routledge).
Linguistics
As a Dravidian language, Tamil is related to other languages such as Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. Classification Tamil's full classification is as follows: Dravidian (Proto-Dravidian) > Southern > Tamil-Kannada > Tamil-Kodagu > Tamil-Malayalam > Tamil Languages > Tamil Phonology and Lexicon A note from Steever first:
Lacking an adequate phonology of modem Tamil, linguists take the transcription of the written language as the underlying phonological representation - simultaneously the output of the syntax and the input to the phonology - and the corresponding spoken form as the surface representation. The rules that convert one into the other are considered to be the content of Tamil phonology. While inadequate in some respects, particularly in overlooking diglossic variation, this practice offers a good view of Tamil phonology because the transparent, agglutinating morphology of the language inhibits the development of complex morphophonemic patterns.
Below /ṟ/, /ẓ/, /y/, /v/ and /ñ/ represent /, /ɻ/, /j/, /ʋ/ and /ȵ/, respectively. Tamil has five vowel qualities, /i e a o u/, which can occur either short or long giving rise to ten total phonemic contrasts. There are two diphthongs, /ai/ and /au/. Furthermore, there are two borrowed vowels that are found only in loan words. Vowel sequences do not occur in simple words and vowels can be found in any environment. Word-initial front vowels are preceded by /y/ while word-initial back vowels are preceded by /v/. Word final combinations of vowel + nasal cause the vowel to become nasalized, while the nasal consonant is dropped. Thus /avan/ 'that man' is realized as [avã]. There are 16 consonants that can be divided into three groups: stops (/k c ṭ t p/), nasals (/ñ n n m) and liquids (/j r l ʋ ṟ ẓ ḷ/). There is also a borrowed set of 8 consonants that come mostly from Indo-Aryan, Perso-Arabic and English sources. Consonants are restricted in where they can appear. While all consonants can appear in a medial position, aveolars can't appear initially, and only liquids and nasals occur finally (with the nasals being replaced by a nasal vowel). Retroflex consonants can only appear initially if they're used in native onomatopoeia and borrowed words. All consonants except / and /ẓ/ have geminate forms. Clusters are restricted; they can only appear in medial position and only then in the combination of liquid and/or nasal plus stops. When this occurs, it only happens in syllable offsets. Clusters that appear in loan words are removed by deletion. In the spoken language, virtually no words end in a consonant, with an epenthetic vowel, among other things (such as the nasalization of the vowel mentioned before) appearing to change a final consonant. Grammar The basic word order of Tamil is Subject-Object-Predicate, where the predicate can be either a verb or a noun. Generally, it is given as Subject-Verb-Object, as verbs show the greatest variety in subcategorisation features among the predicates. As to be expected from SOV typology, genitives precede the nouns they modify, postpositions are used, auxiliaries follow main verbs and matrix clauses follow their complements. While there is some free word order among nominals, verbs must remain at the right end of their clause; they mark the clause boundary and are only displaced in marked circumstances. Tamil is an suffixing agglutinative language, which means that inflections are marked by suffixes attached to a root word. These inflections may be further augmented by various derivational suffixes. Allomorphy is fairly simple, therefore complex morphophonemic alternations are limited. Tamil grammar distinguishes between free forms and bound forms. The bound forms are all postlicitc, and appear to the right of their host and form part of the phonological word, blocking certain phonological process. For instance, the interrogative clitic -ā, when attached to avan, blocks the deletion of the nasal, forming avanā ('is it that man'?). There are two basic parts of speech -- nouns and verbs, with adjectives, adverbs and postpositions being labeled as 'indeclinables' and formally appearing as defective nouns or verbs. Inflectional suffixing is more common that derivational suffixing, with cross-categorial derivation being highly restricted and born out by compounding instead of inflecting. The verb bases now represent a closed class, after being an open one in Middle Tamil, thus meaning no N > V and V > V derivational patterns exist. Nouns in Tamil inflect to mark gender, number and case. Gender is based solely on natural gender and not grammatical gender, with there being two basic genders -- 'rational' and 'non-rational', corresponding closely to 'human' and 'non-human'. The human nouns are further split into masculine, feminine and honorific. For certain cases, gender determines which case markers are used. The locative case marker, for instance, is -iṭam/-kiṭṭe for humans and -il/-le for non-humans (the first form is "Standard Tamil" whereas the second one is the spoken form). Likewise, gender is also relevant to the interpretation of verbs. The nouns inflect for two numbers, singular and plural, and eight different cases -- the nominative, accusative (-ai), dative (-(k)ku), sociative (-ōṭu), genitive (-uṭaiya), instrumental (-āl), locative (-iṭam/-il) and ablative (-iṭamiruntu/-iliruntu*). The inflections combine in the order of stem, number then case, with both the singular and the nominative case being the unmarked forms. In the singular, non-nominative cases combine with an oblique stem, which sometimes has the same form as the nominative. An example of the cases on four nouns can be seen below Singular
Case/Form
manitan ('man')
kālam ('time')
nāṭu ('country')
ī ('fly')
Oblique Stem
manitan-
kālatt-
nāṭṭ-
ī.y-
Nominative
manitan
kālam
nāṭu
ī
Accusative
manitan-ai
kālatt-ai
nāṭṭ-ai
ī.y-ai
Dative
manitan-ukku
kālatt-ukku
nāṭṭ-ukku
ī.y-kku
Sociative
manitan-ōṭu
kālatt-ōṭu
nāṭṭ-ōṭu
ī.y-ōṭu
Genitive
manitan-uṭaiya
kālatt-uṭaiya
nāṭṭ-uṭaiya
ī.y-uṭaiya
Instrumental
manitan-āl
kālatt-āl
nāṭṭ-āl
ī.y-āl
Locative
manitan-iṭam
kālatt-il
nāṭṭ-il
ī.y-il
Ablative
manitan-iṭamiruntu
kālatt-iliruntu
nāṭṭ-iliruntu
ī.y-iliruntu
Plural
Case/Form
manitan ('man')
kālam ('time')
nāṭu ('country')
ī.k-kaḷ ('fly')
Nominative
manitar-kaḷ
kālan-kaḷ
nāṭu-kaḷ
ī.k-kaḷ
Accusative
manitar-kaḷ-ai
kālan-kaḷ-ai
nāṭu-kaḷ-ai
ī.k-kaḷ-ai
Dative
manitar-kaḷ-ukku
kālan-kaḷ-ukku
nāṭu-kaḷ-ukku
ī.k-kaḷ-kku
Sociative
manitar-kaḷ-ōṭu
kālan-kaḷ-ōṭu
nāṭu-kaḷ-ōṭu
ī.k-kaḷ-ōṭu
Genitive
manitar-kaḷ-uṭaiya
kālan-kaḷ-uṭaiya
nāṭu-kaḷ-uṭaiya
ī.k-kaḷ-uṭaiya
Instrumental
manitar-kaḷ-āl
kālan-kaḷ-āl
nāṭu-kaḷ-āl
ī.k-kaḷ-āl
Locative
manitar-kaḷ-iṭam
kālan-kaḷ-il
nāṭu-kaḷ-il
ī.k-kaḷ-il
Ablative
manitar-kaḷ-iṭamiruntu
kālan-kaḷ-iliruntu
nāṭu-kaḷ-iliruntu
ī.k-kaḷ-iliruntu
The nominative case is used to mark the subject of the verb. The accusative case marks the direct object of a verb; when it is human the accusative is mandatory, if the object is non-human the presence of the accusative marker means it is definite. The dative case marks the indirect object of transitive verbs, as well as the subject of a clause in certain constructions. The sociative case conveys the general notion of accompaniment or instrument. Genitive signals possession and similar notions. Instrumental marks an instrument or a cause; in passive sentences, it marks the demoted subject. The locative marks location and the ablative marks the source of motion. Tamil has 17 different pronomial forms, with each of them declining for the eight cases. It has three first person pronouns: one in the singular, and then two in the plural, showcasing inclusive and exclusive 'we'. There are two second person pronouns, one singular and plural, as well as two third person reflexive pronouns. There are 5 that are used to mark third person diectic -- masculine singular, feminine singular, human plural, neuter singular and neuter plural -- along with five more corresponding to proximal deixis. Some dialects have an honorific second person pronoun, and most of the third person neuter pronouns are absent from spoken Tamil. Tamil verbs consist of a verb sterm followed by a set of suffixes. The verb stem consists of the verb base and an optional set of stem-forming suffixes. All verb forms encode the category of mood: which qualifies whether a narrated event is actual (indicative) or potential (modal). The past and present finite and non-finite forms, as well as the conjunctive, are indicative; all other forms are modal. Certain syntactic phenomena are sensitive to this distinction, even though mood isn't marked on the verb. 60% of Tamil verbs have two forms, one weak the other strong. This corresponds to the difference in the 'affective voice' and the 'effective voice'. This distinction is made without regards to transitivity. An affective verb characterizes the action of the verb as affecting the subject, whereas the effective verb characterizes the action as being directed or carried out by the subject. There are four tense-oriented finite forms of the verb -- past, present, future and future negative. Each of these can conjugate for one of 10 persons, with the third person singular being split into four for the further subdivision of the noun genders, while the plural stays at 2. The imperative and negative imperative recognize a singular and plural/honorific distinction, while the optative only recognizes the latter. The non-finite forms can appear in with past, present, future or negative meanings, though the latter three can only appear on the adnomial form and the verbal noun. The past form, however, also is used with the infinitive, conjunctive, negative verbal form, conditional, negative conditional and deverbal nouns. Auxiliary verbs can also be used to mark tense, aspect, voice and mood as well as the category of 'attitude', used to express the speaker's subjective evaluation of an event.
Miscellany
TTamil is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world.
The oldest recorded instance of Tamil being used was in 300 BCE.
Tamil literature has been documented for over 2000 years, with the first period correspond roughly to 300 BCE - 300 CE.
Tamil, as mentioned, has a high degree of diglossia. These include a high variety, centamiẓ ('pure Tamil') and a low variety, koṭuntamiẓ ('harsh Tamil'). The low variety is used in particulary all face-to-face communication, while the high variety is used in formal situations. They are complementary: low and high form a privative opposition in which low is unmarked. However, the high variety is losing some ground as the low variety has found a permanent place in fiction writing.
The difference between the two varities is not just a difference between the spoken and written languages, however. The distinction impacts most strongly on lexicon, morphology and phonology. This means that the high variety olural imperative of the verb varu- 'come' is vārunkaḷ ('please come') it can appear in several forms in the low variety, based on case and region, such as vānkō (brahmin) and vānka (non-brahmin). This contrast also shows the difference between the high variety allows words to end in consonants while the low variety does not.
Spoken sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t8ZTMxxtWo (Tamil Nadu newscast) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6svsy8gkxlY (lullaby) Written sample: உறுப்புரை 1 மனிதப் பிறிவியினர் சகலரும் சுதந்திரமாகவே பிறக்கின்றனர்; அவர்கள் மதிப்பிலும், உரிமைகளிலும் சமமானவர்கள், அவர்கள் நியாயத்தையும் மனச்சாட்சியையும் இயற்பண்பாகப் பெற்றவர்கள். அவர்கள் ஒருவருடனொருவர் சகோதர உணர்வுப் பாங்கில் நடந்துகொள்ளல் வேண்டும். உறுப்புரை 2 இனம், நிறம், பால், மொழி, மதம், அரசியல் அல்லது வேறு அபிப்பிராயமுடைமை, தேசிய அல்லது சமூகத் தோற்றம், ஆதனம், பிறப்பு அல்லது பிற அந்தஸ்து என்பன போன்ற எத்தகைய வேறுபாடுமின்றி, இப்பிரகடனத்தில் தரப்பட்டுள்ள எல்லா உரிமைகளுக்கும் சுதந்திரங்களுக்கும் எல்லோரும் உரித்துடையவராவர். மேலும், எவரும் அவருக்குரித்துள்ள நாட்டின் அல்லது ஆள்புலத்தின் அரசியல், நியாயாதிக்க அல்லது நாட்டிடை அந்தஸ்தின் அடிப்படையில் — அது தனியாட்சி நாடாக, நம்பிக்கைப் பொறுப்பு நாடாக, தன்னாட்சியற்ற நாடாக அல்லது இறைமை வேறேதேனும் வகையில் மட்டப்படுத்தப்பட்ட நாடாக இருப்பினுஞ்சரி — வேறுபாடெதுவும் காட்டப்படுதலாகாது
Sources
Further Reading
Modern Tamil, Annamalai and Steever in The Dravidian Languages (Steever 1998)
Benvinguts - This week's language of the week: Catalan
Catalan is a Romance language spoken by approximately 10 million speakers, with roughly 4 million being native speakers. It is the only official language of Andorra, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia (where the language is known as Valencian). It also has semi-official status in the Italian comune of Alghero. It is also spoken in the eastern strip of Aragon, in some villages of Region of Murcia called Carche and in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of France. These territories are often called Països Catalans or "Catalan Countries".
History
Historian Jaume Villanueva stated that the first sample of Catalan was a sentence in a now-lost manuscript from Ripoll. It was a whimsical note in 10th- or early 11th-century calligraphy: Magister m[eu]s no vol que em miras novel ("my master does not want you to watch me, newbie"). Around the 9th century, however, certain texts written in macaronic Latin start to show Catalan traits. However, it was not until the 11th century that texts written wholly in Catalan started to appear. Some of these texts are Oath of Radulf Oriol (ca. 1028-1047) Complaints of Guitard Isarn, Lord of Caboet (ca. 1080–1095), or The Oath of Peace and Truce of Count Pere Ramon (1098). However, it was often difficult at this time to determine if the language of some texts was Catalan or Occitan, as the two languages were extremely similar at the time. Catalan lived a golden age during the Late Middle Ages, reaching a peak of maturity and cultural plenitude. Examples of this can be seen in the works of Majorcan polymath Ramon Llull (1232–1315), the Four Great Chronicles (13th-14th centuries), and the Valencian school of poetry which culminated in Ausiàs March (1397–1459). By the 15th century, the city of Valencia had become the center of social and cultural dynamism, and Catalan was present all over the Mediterranean world.The belief that political splendor was correlated with linguistic consolidation was voiced through the Royal Chancery, which promoted a highly standardized language After the Nueva Planta Decrees, the use of Catalan in administration and education was banned in the Kingdom of Spain. It was not until the Renaixença that use of the Catalan language saw a resurgence. In Francoist Spain (1939–1975), the use of Spanish in place of Catalan was promoted, and public use of Catalan was initially repressed and discouraged by official propaganda campaigns. The use of Catalan in government-run institutions and in public events was banned. During later stages of the Francoist regime, certain folkloric or religious celebrations in Catalan were allowed to resume and were tolerated. Use of Catalan in the mass media was initially forbidden, but beginning in the early 1950s, it was permitted in the theater. Publishing in Catalan continued throughout the dictatorship. There were attempts at prohibiting the use of spoken Catalan in public and in commerce, and all advertising and signage had to be in Spanish, as did all written communication in business. Following the death of Franco in 1975 and the restoration of democracy under a constitutional monarchy, the use of Catalan increased significantly because of new affirmative action and subsidy policies. The Catalan language is now used in politics, education and the media, including the newspapers Avui ("Today"), El Punt ("The Point"), Ara ("Now"), La Vanguardia and El Periódico de Catalunya (sharing content with El Periòdic d'Andorra, printed in Andorra); and the television channels of Televisió de Catalunya (TVC): TV3, and Canal 33 (culture channel), Super3/3XL (cartoons channel) as well as a 24-hour news channel 3/24 and the sports channel Esport 3; in Valencia à punt; in the Balearic islands IB3; in Catalonia there are also some private channels such as 8TV and Barça TV.
Linguistics
As a Romance language, Catalan is related to other well-known languages such as Spanish and French, as well as to lesser-known Romance languages such as Aromanian and Sardinian. It is more distantly related to other Indo-European languages such as English, Hindi and ancient Hittite. Classification Catalan's full classification is as follows: Indo-European > Italic > Romance > Western Romance > Gallo-Romance > Occitano-Romance > Catalan Morphophonemics Catalan contains seven stressed vowel phonemes, which, depending on the dialect, often reduce down to three distinct phonemes when they are unstressed. There are 25 or 26 consonant phonemes, depending on the dialect. Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word. Syntax As in most Romance languages, Catalan nouns, adjectives, pronouns and articles are inflected for two genders (masculine and feminine) and two numbers (singular and plural). Apart from the pronouns, Catalan retains no case inflection. Catalan exhibits more personal pronouns than either Spanish or Italian, with a total of 13, the subject forms are listed in the table below. Like most European languages, there is a T-V distinction in the language based on formality, so a different (more formal) pronoun would be used. There is also an additional, more respectful form of the second person singular pronoun that is archaic except in a few dialects and administrative texts, also included in the table below. Like many Romance language, pronomial objects (both direct and indirect) are represented as either clitics before the verb or as suffixes to the verb.
Pronoun
Meaning
jo, mi
1st singular
nosaltres
1st plural
tu
2nd singular informal
vosaltres
2nd plural informal
vostè
2nd singular formal
vostès
2nd plural formal
vós
2nd person respectful
ell
3rd person singular masculine
ells
3rd person plural masculine
ella
3rd person singular feminine
elles
3rd person plural feminine
si
3rd person reflexive
hom
3rd person impersonal
Catalan verbs can inflect for a wide variety of tenses, aspects and moods, and is typologically a fusional paradigm. Overall, there are 11 total verbal forms, though one of them is archaic. The non-finite forms are the infinitive, the root form of the verb, the gerund, the past participial; the finite forms include indicative present, imperfect, preterite (archaic), future and conditional; subjunctive present and imperfect; and the imperative. Within each finite paradigm, there are six different forms, representing each of the three persons and two numbers; like many other Romance languages, the formal second person forms conjugate in the manner of the third person. Catalan word order is generally subject-verb-object, but can also be fairly free to allow for slight semantic differences and topic focuses. Orthography Catalan uses the Latin script, with some added symbols and digraphs. The Catalan orthography is systematic and largely phonologically based.Standardization of Catalan was among the topics discussed during the First International Congress of the Catalan Language, held in Barcelona October 1906. Subsequently, the Philological Section of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC, founded in 1911) published the Normes ortogràfiques in 1913 under the direction of Antoni Maria Alcover and Pompeu Fabra. In 1932, Valencian writers and intellectuals gathered in Castelló de la Plana to make a formal adoption of the so-called Normes de Castelló, a set of guidelines following Pompeu Fabra's Catalan language norms Text sample: Tenia prop de divuit anys quan vaig conèixer en Raül, a l'estació de Manresa. El meu pare havia mort, inesperadament i encara jove, un parell d'anys abans, i d'aquells temps conservo un record de punyent solitud. Les meves relacions amb la mare no havien pas millorat, tot el contrari, potser fins i tot empitjoraven a mesura que em feia gran. No existia, no existí mai entre nosaltres, una comunitat d'interessos, d'afeccions. Cal creure que cercava... una persona en qui centrar la meva vida afectiva. Spoken sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN4fDhAcGTM (Wikitongues video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diITZkQlcxs&list=PLjDCKlXHQBGYSpTwIy3MSfs7qmn0Artz- (Playlist of Catalan folksongs) Sources & Further reading Wikipedia on Catalan /catalan What now? This thread is foremost a place for discussion. Are you a native speaker? Share your culture with us. Learning the language? Tell us why you chose it and what you like about it. Thinking of learning? Ask a native a question. Interested in linguistics? Tell us what's interesting about it, or ask other people. Discussion is week-long, so don't worry about post age, as long as it's this week's language.
Japanese is a member of the Japonic language family mostly spoken in the Japanese Archipelago. As of 2010, it was spoken by over 125 million people, placing it in the top 15 of the most spoken languages.
History
The first extant evidence of the Japanese language comes from the Old Japanese period of the language, lasting until the end of the Nara Period in 794 CE. Older inscriptions do exist, and there are some phonetic transcriptions of Japanese words/names found in old Chinese literature, but the accuracy of these is debatable. Anything from before the Old Japanese period must be based on reconstructions. Some fossilized constructions from Old Japanese are still found in Modern Japanese. The Middle Japanese period is divided into two time frames: Early Middle Japanese, which lasted through the Heian Period (794-1185) and Late Middle Japanese (1185 - 1600) during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. Late Middle Japanese is subdivided into two periods corresponding to the two periods of Japanese history. It was during Late Japanese period that the first European loan words entered the language, including pan (bread) and tabako (originally tobacco, now cigarette), both coming from Portuguese. Late Middle Japanese was also the first form of the language to be described by non-native scholars. The Middle Japanese period gave way to the Early Modern Japanese which roughly spans the Edo period until the Meiji Restoration. Modern Japanese proper emerged after the Meiji Restoration, and continues today.
Linguistics
As a Japonic language, Japanese is closely related to the Ryukyuan languages which could have split from Japanese during the Yamato period. Japanese was long considered a language isolate before the acceptance of the Ryukyuan languages as separate languages. Since then, it has firmly been linked to them. Other theories link Japanese and Korean, sometimes with the broader Altaic family. These, however, have not garnered wide support Classification Japanese's full classification is as follows: Japonic > Japanese Phonology and Phonotactics Japanese has a five vowel system, /i e a o u/, which contrasts for length, giving a total of 10 vowel phonemes. Japanese has a "pure" vowel system, meaning that there are no diphthongs. The vowels /i/ and often become voiceless when they occur between two voiceless consonants. Japanese has 16 native vowel phonemes, including two special ones that occur with moras, /N/ mora nasalization and /Q/, geminination. Furthermore, there are 11 other vowel sounds in the language, though these only occur allophonically or as phonemes in loan words. Japanese does not use a syllabic system for the timing of words, instead using a mora system. Each mora occupies one rhythmic unit, i.e. it is perceived to have the same time value. Each "regular" mora can consist of a vowel, or a consonant vowel combination, sometimes with a glide before the vowel. The two moraic phonemes can constitute a mora as well. Long vowels constitute two mora, with some analyses introducing a third moraic phoneme, / to constitute this break. A table of all the mora types can be seen below (period representing a mora break). Japanese has a standard pitch accent system as well. A word can have one of its moras bearing an accent or not. An accented mora is pronounced with a relatively high tone and is followed by a drop in pitch. The various Japanese dialects have different accent patterns, and some exhibit more complex tonic systems.
Mora type
Example
Japanese
English
Number of Moras
V
/o/
o 尾
tail
1 mora
jV
/jo/
yo世
world
1 mora
CV
/ko/
ko 子
child
1 mora
CjV
/kjo/
kyo 巨
hugeness
1 mora
R
/ in /kjo. or /kjo.o/
kyō 今日
today
2 moras
N
N/ in /ko.N / kon紺
deep blue
2 moras
Q
/Q/ in in /ko.Q.ko/ or /ko.k.ko/
kokko 国庫
national treasury
3 moras
Morphology and Syntax Japanese is an aggulitinative language, and follows a Subject-Object-Verb word order. The only strict rule of Japanese sentence structure is that the verb must be placed at the end of the sentence, though it can be followed by sentence-ending particles. Japanese is a head-final and left-branching language. Japanese can also be described as a 'topic-prominent' language, a feature which arose during the Middle Japanese period and the subject of the sentence is often omitted unless absolutely necessary to prevent ambiguity or to introduce the topic. Japanese nouns do not inflect for number or gender, and definite articles do not exist (though the determiners can sometimes be translated as articles). However, Japanese does have several cases, which are expressed by particles attached to the nouns. These are summarized in the table below:
Case
Particle
Nominative
が (ga) for subject, は (wa) for the topic
Genitive
の (no)
Dative
に (ni)
Accusative
を (wo)
Lative
へ (e)
Ablative
から (kara)
Instrumental
で (de)
Although many grammars and textbooks mention pronouns (代名詞 daimeishi), Japanese lacks true pronouns. (Daimeishi can be considered a subset of nouns.) Strictly speaking, pronouns do not take modifiers, but Japanese daimeishi do: 背の高い彼 se no takai kare (lit. tall he) is valid in Japanese. Interestingly, unlike true pronouns, Japanese daimeishi do not represent a closed-class, meaning that new members can be, and are, regularly added. Like other subjects, Japanese deemphasizes personal daimeishi, which are seldom used. This is partly because Japanese sentences do not always require explicit subjects, and partly because names or titles are often used where pronouns would appear in a translation. Furthermore, Japanese only has one reflexive daimeishi, with uses much different to English reflexives. Japanese verbs do not conjugate for person or number, meaning the same form of the verb is used regardless of the subject of the sentence. However, they do conjugate differently based on the level of politness required. The basic form of the Japanese verb is the imperfective aspect, which can encompass the present or the future and is thus sometimes called a 'non-past' form. It is the lemma of the word, and thus what will be found in the dictionary, and can stand on its own, as in (私は)買い物する (watashi wa) kaimono suru: "(I) shop", or "(I) will shop". The perfective aspect of a verb generally ends in -ta (or -da), but various phonetic changes are made, depending on the verb's last syllable. This is often presented as a past tense, but can be used in any tense. To make a verb negative, the -u of the ending generally becomes -anai, though this changes based on formality in some auxiliary verbs, notably the copula (which has different forms based on formality). The "i form" of the verb is formed by changing the -u to -i and has a variety of uses including (among others) to form polite verbs when followed by the -ます -masu ending, to express a wish when followed by the ending -たい -tai and to express that something is easy or hard when followed by -易い -yasui or -難い -nikui. The te form of a Japanese verb (sometimes called the "participle", the "gerund", or the "gerundive form") is used when the verb has some kind of connection to the following words. Usages of this form include forming a simple command, in requests (with くれる kureru and 下さい kudasai) and to form the progressive tense as an auxiliary. Many other uses of the te form exist as well. To form the potential form of the verb, the -u ending becomes -eru. This is used to express that one has the ability to do something. Since this is a passive form, what would be a direct object in English is marked with the particle が ga instead of を o. For example, 日本語が読める nihongo ga yomeru: "I can read Japanese" (lit. "Japanese can be read"). It is also used to request some action from someone, in the exact sense of the English "Can you ... ?", though this would never be used to ask permission, unlike in English. The general pattern for the passive voice is: -u becomes -areru. The passive is used as a general passive, as a 'suffering passive', to indicate that something regretful was done to someone, or as a form of polite language. The causative forms are characterized by the final u becoming aseru for consonant stem verbs, and ru becoming saseru for vowel stem verbs. This form is used for making someone do something, allowing someone to do something, with explicit actors making someone do something as well as as an honorific form. The causative passive form is obtained by first conjugating in the causative form and then conjugating the result in the passive form. As its rule suggests, the causative passive is used to express causation passively: 両親に勉強させられる ryōshin ni benkyō saserareru: "(I) am made to study by (my) parents". The eba provisional conditional form is characterized by the final -u becoming -eba for all verbs (with the semi-exception of -tsu verbs becoming -teba). This form is used in conditionals where more emphasis is on the condition than the result as well as to express obligations. The conditional ra form (also called the past conditional) is formed from the past tense (TA form) by simply adding ra. ba can be further added to that, which makes it more formal. This form is used when emphasis is needed to be placed on the result and the condition is less uncertain to be met. 日本に行ったら、カメラを買いたい。nihon ni ittara, kamera wo kaitai: "If (when) I go to Japan, then (when that has happened) I want to buy a camera." It can also be used as the main clause of the past tense and is often translated as 'when'; when used like this, it carries an emphasis that the result was unexpected. Most of the imperative forms are characterized by the final u becoming e. The imperative form is used in orders, set phrases, reported speech where a request might be rephrased this way, on signs and in motivation speaking. Volitional, presumptive, or hortative forms have several endings based on the verb class. This form is used to express or ask volitional ("Let's/Shall we?") statements and questions, to express a conjecture (with deshō), to express what one is thinking of doing (with omou) and to express 'about to' and 'trying to'. Japanese does not have traditional adjectives like English, instead expressing adjectives with 'adjectival verbs' or 'adjectival nouns'. Japanese adjectives do not have comparative or superlative inflections; comparatives and superlatives have to be marked periphrastically using adverbs. Every adjective in Japanese can be used in an attributive position. Nearly every Japanese adjective can be used in a predicative position. Finally, Japanese has many particles. Among the ones already mentioned, with identify the case of the noun, Japanese uses particles to express what would normally be expressed by prepositions in English, but they also have other meanings such as "just" in "I just ate" or "not only" when adding information ("not only did I eat it, but he did too").
Miscellany
The oldest writing in Japan is in Classical Chinese, though some evidence points to the fact that these texts were supposed to be read as Old Japanese.
Japan currently has three writing systems: the syllabic systems of hiragana and katakana as well as the logographic system of the kanji. All of these came from borrowings (and then simplification) of Chinese logographs.
Japanese has had several different methods of adapting the Chinese symbols to their language. Among these are the Kojiki system of mixed writing, Man'yōgana (which hiragana and katakana came from, and is a sister system to modern day kanji).
Hiragana first gained popularity among women, who were generally not allowed access to the same levels of education as men. And thus hiragana was first widely used among court women in the writing of personal communications and literature. From this comes the alternative name of onnade (女手) "women's writing". For example, The Tale of Genji and other early novels by female authors used hiragana extensively or exclusively.
Japanese was traditionally written right to left, top to bottom.
Polish (język polski [jɛ̃zɨk ˈpɔlskʲi]) is a Slavic Language spoken by some 55 million people, primarily in Poland, where it is an official language, but also used by minority communities throughout the world. Although the Austrian, German and Russian administrations exerted much pressure on the Polish nation (during the 19th and early 20th centuries) following the Partitions of Poland, which resulted in attempts to suppress the Polish language, a rich literature has regardless developed over the centuries.
Linguistics
As a Slavic Language, Polish is related to other languages such as Russian and Czech, as well as their more distant cousins Irish and Hindi. More specifically, as a Western Slavic language, it is closely related to languages such as Silesian, Kashubian, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian Classification Polish's full classification is as follows: Indo-European (Proto-Indo-European) > Balto-Slavic (Proto-Balto-Slavic) > Slavic (Proto-Slavic) > West Slavic > Lechitic > Polish Phonology and Phonotactics Polish has eight different vowel phonemes, distinguishing six oral vowels, /i ɛ ɨ a u ɔ/ and two nasal ones, partially preserved from Proto-Slavic, /ɛ̃ ɔ̃/. Polish has either 28 or 31 consonant phonemes, depending on whether the palatalized velars are considered phonemic or not. Polish has a set of retroflex consonants that may be described as palato-aveolar, but are probably better described as retroflex. These retroflex consonants are also laminal, a feature they share with Chinese retroflexes. Polish consonants experience a decent degree of allophony due to various processes. Among these is voicing and devoicing, which has served to neutralize the voicing distinction on consonants in certain positions. Polish, like other Slavic languages, is known to allow complex consonant clusters, such as in the word bezwzględny [bɛzˈvzɡlɛndnɨ]. Stress in Polish is predominantly on the penultimate syllable, with secondary stress appearing on alternating syllables before it. Therefore a five syllable word would have stress on the fourth syllable, with a secondary stress on the second. There are, however, exceptions to this rule, such as some borrowings from Classical languages. Morphology and Syntax Polish is a highly inflected language, with a relatively free word order, though the default is Subject-Verb-Object. Polish nouns inflect for seven cases, nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative. Nouns also decline for two numbers, singular and plural (the dual is seen in some relics, but was mostly lost in the 15th century), as well as three genders or noun classes, masculine, feminine and neuter. However, among these genders, the masculine is further subdivided into personal, animate or inanimate categories. The full declension pattern of three nouns in the singular can be seen below. They are klub ('club', masculine animate), mapa ('map', feminine) and mięso ('meat', neuter).
Case
klub
mapa
mięso
Nominate
klub
mapa
mięso
Accusative
klub
mapę
mięso
Genitive
klubu
mapy
mięsa
Dative
klubowi
mapie
mięsu
Vocative
klubie
mapo
mięso
Locative
klubie
mapie
mięsie
Instrumental
klubem
mapą
mięsem
Polish has 13 different pronomial forms, contrasting several persons and genders, as well as a T-V distinction based on politeness that corresponds to gender. The full set of pronouns, in the nominative, can be seen below
Pronoun
Meaning
ja
1st singular
ty
2nd singular informal
pan
2nd singular formal masculine
pani
2nd singular formal feminine
on
3rd singular masculine
ona
3rd singular feminine
ono
3rd singular neuter
my
1st plural
wy
2nd plural informal
panowie
2nd plural formal masculine
panie
2nd plural formal feminine
oni
3rd plural masculine personal
one
3rd plural other
Adjectives in Polish inflect to agree with the noun in gender, case and number. Polish has no definite or indefinite article, either. Polish verbs conjugate for two numbers, three persons, three tenses, two aspects and four moods. Because of the extensive conjugation paradigm of Polish verbs, the pronoun is often dropped as the information is given in the verb itself, thus making Polish a pro-drop language similar to Spanish. Polish's two aspects are the imperfective aspect and the perfective aspect, though these two aspects can only be utilized in the past and future tenses; all conjugations in the present must use the imperfective as they are ongoing, repeated or habitual. The perfective is used only with structures where an action has ended or will have ended, such as entire, uninterrupted action just after the moment of speech or just before it. To create a perfective verb from an imperfective one, Polish adds a prefix. Some verbs, including all motion verbs, have two forms of the imperfective aspect. The other is the frequentative form, which is used to emphasize repetition and describe habits. The four moods that Polish can express are the indicative, imperative, conditional and subjunctive moods. The three tenses are the past, present and future. Polish verbs come in one of four conjugation paradigms, often based on how the verb ends. Polish also allows for verbal nouns to be derived from the verb and used in certain cases.
Miscellany
The Book of Henryków (Polish: Księga henrykowska, Latin: Liber fundationis claustri Sancte Marie Virginis in Heinrichau), contains the earliest known sentence written in the Polish language: Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai (pronounced originally as: Daj, uć ja pobrusza, a ti pocziwaj, modern Polish: Daj, niech ja pomielę, a ty odpoczywaj or Pozwól, że ja będę mełł, a ty odpocznij, English: Come, let me grind, and you take a rest), written around 1270.
Polish was used as a lingua franca in Central Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries due to the influence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Old Polish is an attested ancestral form of the language, with Middle Polish being used from the 16th to the 18th centuries and Modern Polish being used from then on.
Samples
Spoken sample: Newscast Lullaby Talkshow Written sample: Wszyscy ludzie rodzą się wolni i równi w swojej godności i prawach. Są obdarzeni rozumem i sumieniem i powinni postępować wobec siebie w duchu braterstwa.
Γειά σας - This week's language of the week: Greek
Greek is an Indo-European language spoken by over 13 million people, mostly in Greece and Cyprus. In its modern form, the Greek language is the official language in two countries, Greece and Cyprus, a recognised minority language in seven other countries, and is one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Other speakers can be found in Italy, Albania, Turkey, and among the Greek diaspora.
History
See History of the Greek Language for more information. Greek's history can be divided into several periods. The first of these is the Proto-Greek period, which encompasses the last known ancestor of all the Greek dialects. Proto-Greek is mostly placed in the Early Helladic period (early 3rd millennium BC; circa 3200 BC) towards the end of the Neolithic in Southern Europe The next period was that of Mycenaean Greek, which was the language of the Mycenaean civilization that flourished on the Greek mainland, Cyprus and Crete from the 16th to the 12th centuries BCE. It is our first attested form of Greek, and was written in Linear B, a script deciphered in 1952. Following that comes the Ancient Greek period, from the 9th century BCE to the 6th century CE. It is generally split into three eras: Archaic (9th - 6th Century BCE), Classical (5th and 4th centuries BCE) and Hellenistic In this period, many dialects are attested, such as Ionic, Attic and Doric, among others. Literature in this period was not written in an author's native dialect, but instead each dialect had its own literary tradition, and certain genres were written in specific dialects. Eventually, these all merged into Koine Greek, a supraregional dialect that was largely based on Attic and Ionic Greek. This happened during the Hellenistic period, in part due to the spread of the language under Alexander the Great. It was used through the Roman Empire and also by the Byzantium Empire. It is in this version of Greek that the New Testament texts were written, as well as the Septuagint. Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek: the continuation of Koine Greek, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Medieval Greek is a cover phrase for a whole continuum of different speech and writing styles, ranging from vernacular continuations of spoken Koine that were already approaching Modern Greek in many respects, to highly learned forms imitating classical Attic. Much of the written Greek that was used as the official language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek (Neo-Hellenic): Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period, as early as the 11th century. It is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia: the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki, the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa, meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek, which was developed in the early 19th century and was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, having incorporated features of Katharevousa and giving birth to Standard Modern Greek, which is used today for all official purposes and in education. While most dialects, and thus unique branches, merged together to become Koine Greek, one dialect of Doric Greek did survive through a Doric Koine. This form is today known as the Tsakonian language, which is a highly endangered language and the only other Hellenic language to survive.
Linguistics
As an Indo-European language, Greek is related to other languages like English, Russian and Hindi. The Greek language stands on a branch of its own within Indo-European, though it is closely related to the moribund Tsakonian language mentioned earlier. Some scholars posit a Graeco-Phrygian family, but this is not secure. Classification Greek's full classification is as follows: Indo-European (Proto-Indo-Eropean) > Hellenic (Proto-Greek) > Greek Phonology and Phonotactics Greek has a symmetrical five-vowel system, using the vowels /i e a o u/. While length is not phonemic, stressed vowels tend to be longer than their unstressed counterparts. The number of consonants in the modern Greek language is a matter of open debate. Linguists cannot agree on which consonants count as allophones and which stand as phonemes on their own right. One analysis indicates that there are 18 phonemes, with a total of 32 phones. Morphology and Syntax The predominant word order in Greek is SVO (subject–verb–object), but word order is quite freely variable, with VSO and other orders as frequent alternatives. Within the noun phrase, adjectives precede the noun , while possessors follow it. Alternative constructions do exist, however, as marked variants. Greek is a pro-drop language, i.e. subjects are typically not overtly expressed whenever they are inferable from context. Whereas the word order of the major elements within the clause is fairly free, certain grammatical elements attach to the verb as clitics and form a rigidly ordered group together with it. This applies particularly to unstressed object pronouns, negation particles, the tense particle θα, and the subjunctive particle να. Likewise, possessive pronouns are enclitic to the nouns they modify. Greek is a largely synthetic (inflectional) language. Although the complexity of the inflectional system has been somewhat reduced in comparison to Ancient Greek, there is also a considerable degree of continuity in the morphological system, and Greek still has a somewhat archaic character compared with other Indo-European languages of Europe. The Greek nominal system displays inflection for two numbers (singular and plural), three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and four cases (nominative, genitive, accusative and vocative). As in many other Indo-European languages, the distribution of grammatical gender across nouns is largely arbitrary and need not coincide with natural sex. Case, number and gender are marked on the noun as well as on articles and adjectives modifying it. While there are four cases, there is a great degree of syncretism between case forms within most paradigms. Only one sub-group of the masculine nouns actually has four distinct forms in the four cases. The declension paradigm for the masculine noun άνθρωπος can be seen below:
Case
Form
Nominative singular
άνθρωπος
Genitive singular
ανθρώπου
Accusative singular
άνθρωπο
Vocative singular
άνθρωπε
Nominative plural
άνθρωποι
Genitive plural
ανθρώπων
Accusative Plural
ανθρώπους
Greek has ten personal pronouns, five singular and five plural. It distinguishes three persons, and three genders on the third person in both the singular and the plural. These ten pronouns all decline for the nominative, genitive and accusative cases. You can see the ten nominative forms in the table below:
Meaning
Pronoun
1st Singular
εγώ
2nd Singular
εσύ
3rd Singular Masculine
αυτός
3rd Singular Feminine
αυτή
3rd Singular Neuter
αυτό
1st Plural
εμείς
2nd Plural
εσείς
3rd Plural Masculine
αυτοί
3rd Plural Feminine
αυτές
3rd Plural Neuter
αυτά
Greek verbs conjugate for two aspects (perfective and imperfective) and two tenses (past and non-past). he aspects are expressed by two separate verb stems, while the tenses are marked mainly by different sets of endings. Of the four possible combinations, only three can be used in indicative function: the present (i.e. imperfective non-past), the imperfect (i.e. imperfective past) and the aorist (i.e. perfective past). All four combinations can be used in subjunctive function, where they are typically preceded by the particle να or by one of a set of subordinating conjunctions. The first person forms for these four with the word γραφ- (write) can be seen in the table below:
Word
Meaning
English Translation
γράφω
Imperfective, non-past (i.e. present tense)
I write
έγραφα
Imperfective, past (i.e. imperfect)
I was writing
γράψω
Perfective, non-past (subjunctive)
That I write
έγραψα
Perfective, past (aorist)
I wrote
Greek is one of the few modern Indo-European languages that still retains a morphological contrast between the two inherited Proto-Indo-European grammatical voices: active and mediopassive. In addition to these basic forms, Greek also has several periphrastic verb constructions. All the basic forms can be combined with the future particle θα (historically a contraction of θέλει να, 'want to'). Combined with the non-past forms, this creates an imperfective and a perfective future. Combined with the imperfective past it is used as a conditional, and with the perfective past as an inferential. There is also a perfect, which is expressed with an inflected form of the auxiliary verb έχω ('have'). It occurs both as a past perfect (pluperfect) and as a present perfect.
Miscellany
Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet since roughly the 9th century BCE. Before that it was written in Linear B and the Cypriot Syllabary.
Written sample: Ο βοριάς κι ο ήλιος μάλωναν για το ποιος απ’ τους δυο είναι ο δυνατότερος, όταν έτυχε να περάσει από μπροστά τους ένας ταξιδιώτης που φορούσε κάπα.
Jó napot kívánok - This week's language of the week: Hungarian!
Hungarian is an Uralic language spoken predominantly in Hungary, though there exist enclaves of speakers in neighboring countries and among expatriate communities. There are approximately 13 million native speakers of the language. The dialects of Hungarian identified by Ethnologue are: Alföld, West Danube, Danube-Tisza, King's Pass Hungarian, Northeast Hungarian, Northwest Hungarian, Székely and West Hungarian. These dialects are, for the most part, mutually intelligible. The Hungarian Csángó dialect, which is mentioned but not listed separately by Ethnologue, is spoken primarily in Bacău County in eastern Romania. The Csángó Hungarian group has been largely isolated from other Hungarian people, and they therefore preserved features that closely resemble earlier forms of Hungarian. See Hungarian dialects for more information. Hungarian is the official language of Hungary, and thus an official language of the European Union. Hungarian is also one of the official languages of Vojvodina and an official language of three municipalities in Slovenia: Hodoš, Dobrovnik and Lendava, along with Slovene. Hungarian is officially recognized as a minority or regional language in Austria, Croatia, Romania, Zakarpattia in Ukraine, and Slovakia. In Romania it is a recognized minority language used at local level in communes, towns and municipalities with an ethnic Hungarian population of over 20%
History
See History of the Hungarian Language for more information. Prehistory Hungarian likely split from the other Ugric languages in the first half of the 1st millennium BCE. This likely happened in western Sierian, east of the southern Ural mountains. This event also likely coincided with the shift of the Hungarians from a settled hunter to a nomadic pastoralist lifestyle, which possibly came about through contacts with Iranian nomads (Scythians and Sarmatians). Old Iranian loanwords, dating back to shortly after the split of Hungarian from the other Urgic languages, help support this view. During this shift, the Hungarians were also migrating. They first settled the coastal region of the northeastern Black Sea, where the language was greatly influenced by the Turkish languages spoken in the area. It was while they were living here, in the 6th century CE that Hungarians likely experienced writing for the first time. The first written accounts of Hungarian arise in the 10th century, though they are mostly personal and place names (written in the Old Hungarian Script; this is likely due to wood, a highly perishable material, being the main medium of writing. The first extant text fully written in Hungarian is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer, which dates to the 1190s. A more extensive body of Hungarian literature arose during the 14th and 15th centuries. Changes to the language are clearly seen through the literature of the eras. The Old Hungarian period ended at roughly the beginning of the 16th century. The first printed Hungarian book was published in Kraków in 1533, by Benedek Komjáti. The work's title is Az Szent Pál levelei magyar nyelven (In original spelling: Az zenth Paal leueley magyar nyeluen), i.e. The letters of Saint Paul in the Hungarian language. In the 17th century, the language was already very similar to its present-day form, although two of the past tenses were still used. German, Italian and French loans also appeared in the language by these years. Further Turkish words were borrowed during the Ottoman occupation of much of Hungary between 1541 and 1699. This was the Middle Hungarian period. In the 18th century a group of writers, most notably Ferenc Kazinczy, spearheaded a process of nyelvújítás (language revitalization). Some words were shortened (győzedelem > győzelem, 'triumph' or 'victory'); a number of dialectal words spread nationally (e.g., cselleng 'dawdle'); extinct words were reintroduced (dísz, 'décor'); a wide range of expressions were coined using the various derivative suffixes; and some other, less frequently used methods of expanding the language were utilized. Further standardization occurred during the 19th and 20th centuries, and a leveling of dialects. causing previously unintelligible dialects to move closer together. This is the Modern Hungarian period.
Linguistics
As an Uralic language, Hungarian is related to major languages such as Finnish and Estonian. However, it is more closely related to the Ugric branch of these languages, which includes such as Khanty and Mansi. Classification Hunagarians's full classification is as follows: Uralic (Proto-Uralic) > Finno-Ugric > Ugric > Hungarian Phonology and Phonotactics Hungarian has 14 vowel and 25 consonant phonemes. The vowels are grouped in pars of short and long phonemes. Hungarian consonants can also be long or short, a process knows as gemination As in Finnish, Turkish, and Mongolian, vowel harmony plays an important part in determining the distribution of vowels in a word. Hungarian vowel harmony classifies the vowels according to front vs. back assonance and rounded vs unrounded for the front vowels. While /i/, /iː/, /ɛ/, and /eː/ are all front unrounded vowels, they are considered to be "neutral vowels" in Hungarian vowel harmony. Apart from vowel harmony, Hungarian has many other sandhi processes, such as voicing assimilation, nasal assimilation, sibilant assimilation, palatal assimilation, degimination, intercluster elision, elision of [l] and hiatus effects. Stress is on the first syllable of the word, and particles are generally left unstressed. Morphology and Syntax Hungarian is an agglutinative language, and predominantly suffixing. It is a topic-prominent language and so its word order depends on the topic-comment structure of the sentence (for example, what aspect is assumed to be known and what is emphasised) With a few exceptions, Hungarian nouns do not mark a distinction for gender, or for any noun classes. They are marked for two numbers, the singular and plural, though the plural is used less sparsely. Hungarian nouns do, however, decline for eighteen different cases. These are: nominative, used for the subject; accusative, used to express the direct object; dative, used to mark the indirect object; instrumental-comitative, used to mark 'with'; causal-final, used to signal 'for, for the purpose of'; translative, which works as the English 'into'; terminative, 'as far as, up to'; essive-formal, 'as, in the capacity of'; essive-modal, 'by way of'; inessive, which signals position inside; superessive, which signifies position on; adessive, for position nearby/at; illative, expressing motion into something; sublative, expressing motion onto something; allative, expressing motion to a place; elative, used for expressing motion out of a place'; delative, for expressing motion off a place, or information about/concerning a place; and ablative, expressing motion away from a place. Examples of all of these can be seen in the table below. Where changes differ from the expected form based on the suffix, it's due to assimilation.
Case
Suffix
lakás (apartment)
English Meaning
Nominative
∅
lakás
apartment (as subject)
Accusative
-ot/(-at)/-et/-öt/-t
lakást
apartment (as direct object)
Dative
-nak/-nek
lakásnak
to the apartment
Instrumental-Comitative
-val/-vel
lakással
with the apartment
Causal-final
-ért
lakásért
for the apartment
Translative
-vá/-vé
lakássá
[turn] into an apartment
Terminative
-ig
lakásig
as far as the apartment
Essive-formal
-ként
lakásként
in the capacity of an apartment, as an apartment
Essive-modal
-ul/-ül
lakásul
by way of an apartment
Inessive
-ban/-ben
lakásban
in the apartment
Superessive
-on/-en/-ön/-n
lakáson
on the apartment
Adessive
-nál/-nél
lakásnál
by/at the apartment
Illative
-ba/-be
lakásba
into the apartment
Sublative
-ra/-re
lakásra
onto the apartment
Allative
-hoz/-hez/-höz
lakáshoz
to the apartment
Elative
-ból/-böl
lakásból
out of the apartment
Delative
-ról/ről
lakásról
off the apartment, about/concerning the apartment
Ablative
-tól/-től
lakástól
(away) from the apartment
As you can see, many of these correspond to prepositions in English. That's exactly how they were formed, as can be seen through the shifts in written Hungarian. Several of the suffixes were originally postpositions, common in Hungarian, that were then grammaticalized and suffixed onto the noun before it to form a new case. Even though Hungarian is a pro-drop language, meaning pronouns are rarely used, there are personal pronouns used when for contrast or emphasis, or when there is no verb. Hungarian pronouns decline for person and plurality, but not for gender. There are three second person pronouns, labelled "informal", "formal" and "official". These are seen on the table below, in their subject form.
Meaning
Singular
Plural
1st
én
mi
2nd informal
te
ti
2nd formal
maga
maguk
2nd official
ön
önök
3rd
ő
ők
Most Hungarian verbs only conjugate for the past and present tense, with the future being formed by an auxiliary verb. The verb lenni, 'to be', however, has three inflected tenses. Hungarian verbs can be expressed in three moods: conditional, indicative and subjunctive/imperative. In Hungarian, verbs not only show agreement with their subjects but also carry information on the definiteness of their direct objects. This results in two types of conjugations: definite (used if there is a definite object) and indefinite (if there is no definite object). Therefore, Hungarian verbs conjugate depending on both the subject and the object of the verb. The full paradigm of a regular verb can be seen on the Wikipedia page. Furthermore, Hungarian has two forms which can be added to the stem to modify the meaning. One of these, -hat-/-het-, has a modal meaning of permission or opportunity. Compare beszélek, "I speak", with beszélhetek, "I may speak" or " I am allowed to speak". The other, -at-/-et-/-tat-/-tet- has a causative meaning. It's often used to express "having something done", or "Having/making someone do something. Compare beszélek, above, with beszéltetek, "I make somebody speak". Hungarian verbs also have three participles as well as a verbal noun and infinitve and verbal prefixes/particles.
Miscellany
Old Hungarian text: Latiatuc feleym zumtuchel mic vogmuc. yſa pur eſ chomuv uogmuc. Menyi miloſtben terumteve eleve miv iſemucut adamut. eſ odutta vola neki paradiſumut hazoa. Eſ mend paradiſumben uolov gimilcictul munda neki elnie. Heon tilutoa wt ig fa gimilce tvl. Ge mundoa neki meret nu eneyc. yſa ki nopun emdul oz gimilſtwl. halalnec halalaal holz. Hadlaua choltat terumteve iſtentul. ge feledeve. Engede urdung intetvinec. eſ evec oz tiluvt gimilſtwl. es oz gimilſben halalut evec. Eſ oz gimilſnek vvl keſeruv uola vize. hug turchucat mige zocoztia vola. Num heon muga nec. ge mend w foianec halalut evec. Horogu vec iſten. eſ veteve wt ez munkaſ vilagbele. eſ levn halalnec eſ poculnec feze. eſ mend w nemenec. Kic ozvc. miv vogmuc.
Written sample: Minden emberi lény szabadon születik és egyenlő méltósága és joga van. Az emberek, ésszel és lelkiismerettel bírván, egymással szemben testvéri szellemben kell hogy viseltessenek.
Show English Meaning Noun (1) a mixture of two partially miscible liquids A and B produces two conjugate solutions: one of A in B and another of B in A Verb (1) unite chemically so that the product is easily broken down into the original compounds (2) add inflections showing person, number, gender, tense, aspect, etc. (3) undergo conjugation English verb TO BE conjugated in all forms, with full audio, irregular highlighting, negative forms and contractions. This is best English-English-Tamil dictionary, the first of its kind in India, is a bilingual dictionary covering a wide range of vocabulary from different subject area. ilearntamil couple tamil meaning and more example for couple will be given in tamil. Gains If Ganguly comes good he will only add to the healthy competition but Indian cricket can take solace from the fact that there have been a couple of gains in the bygone year in the form of M.S. Dhoni and Irfan Pathan. The Tamil for conjugate base is இணைப்புமூலம். Find more Tamil words at wordhippo.com! Definition of conjugate base in the Definitions.net dictionary. Meaning of conjugate base. What does conjugate base mean? Information and translations of conjugate base in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on the web. Iṇaippumūlam conjugate, conjugate base Find more words! Another word for Opposite of Meaning of Rhymes with Sentences with Find word forms Translate from English Translate to English Words With Friends Scrabble Crossword / Codeword Words starting with Words ending with Words containing exactly Words containing letters Pronounce Find conjugations Find names conceal tamil meaning and more example for conceal will be given in tamil. The Minister did not conceal his satisfaction at having performed his brief at a press conference on Tuesday. All Congress leaders and the civic body administration are working to conceal illegal structures of the party leaders alleged Leader of Opposition Subhash Arya. conjugate in Tamil translation and definition "conjugate", English-Tamil Dictionary online. conjugate . ... and therefore generally resembling it in meaning. To inflect (a verb) for each person, in order, ... conjugate acid-base pair Tamil Meaning of Conjugate Base - Tamil to English Dictionary with Tamil Meanings, Tamil Vocabulary - Searchable Tamil Dictionary
