Modern Hebrew

I’ve been doing research on Modern Hebrew for a few years now. One thing that has struck me as being strange is that for such an important language there seems to be very little useful information to learn the language. Most of the websites that I have found are more suited for people who already have some background in Hebrew. As a result, I am thinking about uploading my own vocabulary lists and grammatical notes as I continue my journey towards fluency.

“Heureux qui comme Ulysee…”

Here’s a French sonnet that I love along with it’s translation. It’s taken from Les Regrets, XXXI written by Joachim du Bellay in 1558.

Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage,
Ou comme cestuy-là qui conquit la toison,
Et puis est retourné, plein d’usage et raison,
Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son âge !

Quand reverrai-je, hélas, de mon petit village
Fumer la cheminée, et en quelle saison
Reverrai-je le clos de ma pauvre maison,
Qui m’est une province, et beaucoup davantage ?

Plus me plaît le séjour qu’ont bâti mes aïeux,
Que des palais Romains le front audacieux,
Plus que le marbre dur me plaît l’ardoise fine :

Plus mon Loir gaulois, que le Tibre latin,
Plus mon petit Liré, que le mont Palatin,
Et plus que l’air marin la doulceur angevine.

Happy is he, who like Ulysses has traveled far,
Or like he who sought out the Golden Fleece,
And then returned, full of experience and knowledge,
To dwell amongst his own for the rest of his days.

Alas! When shall I see again, in my small village
The smoking of the chimney, and in what season
Shall I see the enclosure of my humble abode,
That is to me a province, and so much more?

Far happier am I with the dwelling that my forefathers built,
Than with Roman palaces with bold façades,
Just like hard marble pleases me more than fine slate:

Like my Gaulish Loir compared to the Roman Tiber,
My little Liré in comparison with Palatine Hill,
And Angevin sweetness to the air from the sea.

Du vocabulaire français

Salut tout le monde,

Je suis de retour comme toujours mais cette fois j’apporte des cadeaux. Ça fait quelques semaines que je commence à lire un livre français qui s’intitule Le ventre de Paris. C’est un roman historique d’Émile Zola. Pendant les lectures j’essaie de faire des listes de termes que je ne connais pas pour m’aider à améliorer mon vocabulaire. Le langage de ce roman est parfois assez soutenu mais ça ne fait rien. Ce n’est pas difficile à lire et les descriptions du monde naturel et de Paris à cette époque m’époustouflent souvent. Voici la première liste de mots que j’ai ramassée.

1. Les retraites – pensions
   
2. Le bourg – market town
   
3. Les faubourgs (m) – suburbs
   
4. Le/la citadin(e) – city dweller
   
5. L’échoppe – stall, booth (where things are sold)
   
6. L’étalage – display (commonly found in markets)
   
7. L’oreiller – pillow
   
8. La taie d’oreiller – pillowslip
   
9. Éponger – to mop up
   
10. Temper – to soak, dip
    
11. Déblatérer (contre) to go on about, rant on about
    
12. Clinger des yeux – to blink
    
13. La gouttière – gutter
    
14. Le recoin – nook, corner
    
15. La trophée – trophy, prize
    
16. L’échalote – shallot
    
17. Fait de fonte – made of cast iron
    
18. La debacle- collapse (fig.); rout (Mil)
    
19. Bourdonnant – buzzing, humming
    

J’espère que ça vous aiderez.

Ranting About Turkish

My plan was to write about Modern Hebrew tonight. I changed my mind at the last minute though for personal reasons. Right now I’m trying to force myself to focus on Turkish. My adventure with this language started in 2009. I have a good Mongolian friend who speaks both Turkish and his native Mongolian. Although I was interested in learning Turkish because of its sounds and exoticness, I would have probably never gotten around to it if it were not for him. He wanted someone to speak Turkish with as he felt that his skills were atrophying owed to not using the language outside of listening to music and watching some online television shows. My initial thoughts were that Turkish would be extremely difficult for a Westerner to master, but I so far I have found the grammar to be quite logical. To my surprise I encountered several easy aspects in Turkish. The alphabet is phonetic. The grammatical cases are relatively easy. Some words are derived from others by adding affixes to a base term. The sound of the language sounds really playful too. These are some of my favorite things about the language. Some of the harder parts of the language include word order (syntax) and the vowel harmony that is so prevalent in the language.

 

Here are a few facts about verbs:

They tend to have the endings –mak and –mek depending on vowel harmony.

In order to see how verbs form it is necessary to know the personal pronouns. They are as following:

1. Ben = I
2. Sen = you (informal)
3. O = he, she, it
4. Biz = we
5. Siz = you (plural, formal)
6. Onlar = they

Verbs are formed in the present continuous tense by using the present ending of “to be”. This form of the present is used for the simple present in the spoken language too.

I’m going to conjugate a verb in the present continuous tense now.

Bakmak – to look

Ben bak-i-yorum : I look, I am looking

Sen bak-i-yorsun : You (inf.) look, you are looking

O bak-i-yor : he, she, it looks, he, she, it is looking

Biz bak-i-yoruz : we look, we are looking

Siz bak-i-yorsunuz : you (plural, formal) look, you are looking

Onlar bak –i-yorlar : they look, they are looking

*Notice that there is an “I” between the root bak- and the rest of the verb. This “I” doesn’t mean anything. It is just put there to keep the language’s rhythm. Turkish doesn’t like to have too many consonants near one another. This isn’t the best verb to use, but it’s late and I was too lazy to think of anything else. Note also that I am not an expert at this language. I haven’t studied it since the beginning of February as I had to stop because of classes at the university.

Here are some other verbs that end in the –mak and –mek forms. The endings above apply to all of the verbs in this respective tense.

Durmak: to stop

Okumak: to read

Konuşmak: to speak or to talk

Vermek: to give

Gitmek: to go

Içmek: to smoke

Return After A Long Absence

Hi everyone,

I’m glad to announce that I will be starting to blog again about my linguistic adventures starting tonight. Another semester has ended at the university and a new adventure has began. I’ve been thinking about doing a few things differently this time however. I think that instead of just writing about me and what I think about languages, which is pretty redundant, I’m going to show what I’m studying. This way everyone will be able to access the new vocabulary that I run into into from all of the respective languages that I’m studying. I hope that this will help people in the end. I am constantly making word lists and putting them in Anki to review. I plan on reading lots of Spanish and French materials this coming summer and am excited to be contributing something worthwhile to everyone.

My Return and the Start of a New Linguistic Adventure

I’m back! This blog is not dead! The reason why I wasn’t regularly writing was because I was in extremely busy at the university. However, now that the spring semester is over I have to to blog once again. There are several subjects that I want to address before the summer ends. I’ll be back soon after a little break to write about one of them.

Après un mois…

Je sais bien que je n’ai pas écrit là dans mon blogue pendant plusieurs mois. Je ne savais quoi écrire et c’était très triste pour moi. Alors, j’ai décidé de parler un peu de certaines choses que je fais pour apprendre les langues étrangères. La plupart de gens pensera que mes méthodes sont extrèmes mais j’ai un vocabulaire immense en français pour montrer que elles marchent.

1. Je passe au moins une heure dans le dictionnaire chaque jour.

Je fais des petites listes de mots fréquents et je les étudie. C’est tout!

2. Lire est essentiel…des livres, des journaux, tout ce qui vous pouvez trouver.

3. Parler avec vos amis et vos familles…bien qu’ils ne comprennent rien!

À vrai dire, j’aurais dû écrire cette entrée en l’anglais…eh bien!

Si vous trouvez des erreurs, je voudrais bien savoir parce que le français n’est pas ma langue maternelle. On peut toujours apprendre quelque chose.

Merci!

Learning Mandarin Chinese

Well, I’ve began to learn another language that I’ve wanted to learn for a while. At first, I must admit that I was kind of weary of trying to learn Mandarin because I was afraid that I would not be able to speak it well.

Then two of my Chinese friends asked me if I wanted them to help me. I agreed…of course. It is very hard for me to turn down learning anyone’s language–especially if a native speaker agrees to help me.

I can make my own sentences now in pinyin. I only know a few Chinese characters and they are some of the most common ones. I’m at a pretty good start now because I started learning it in the fall of 2007.

I love this language, it’s like you’re singing a song when you speak it!

Escribir sin rumbo

¡Bienvenidos al blog Polyglot101!

Estoy feliz de que yo escriba este contenido en español esta noche. Este es mi primer post en esta lengua que voy a añadir a la página web. Quiero que mi audiencia sea más grande y por eso, voy a empezar escribiendo en esta lengua hermosa. No cabe duda que me va a ayudar mucho con desarrollar mi vocabulario español. El semestre del otoño, pienso hacer un curso de escritura española a la universidad. Me gustaría mucho para los que hablan este idioma como lengua natal para corregirme cuando me equivoque.

Bueno, ya basta para esta noche. Mis ojos se cansan ahora.

What makes a language simple?

I think that everyone has heard that there are some languages that are easier to learn than others. Certain languages like Spanish, Dutch, and English are considered to be easy languages. Why?

Well, all of the languages that I have chosen here are Indo-European in origin. Therefore, it is “simpler” for a person who speaks one of these languages to learn the other because of some lexical and grammatical similarities.

In my opinion, English has the advantage of their the other two in that it has many words of international birth. If an individual’s first language is Chinese, Russian, Arabic, or Lingala, then the tables turn…because then learning one of those languages becomes more of an obstacle.

I’m not putting anyone down here. I congratulate anybody who is making an effort to learn another language.

Please feel free to make comments to any of my posts. I would love to discuss any of them further…