I love pointing out that German's think chairs are masculine while the Italians think they are feminine.
I don't know why, but I am fascinated by the fact that these two languages which are, essentially, right next to each other would have different views on the "gender" of that thing you sit on.
Yes, I still think having a "gender" for an inanimate object is daft, and I think every language that does so is somehow inferior to the languages that don't (English, Estonian, Esperanto...) but I'm also interested to know why they chose that gender for that object.
I know several studies have been done of several tribal languages with grammatical genders that have determined the they actually see these inanimate objects as having masculine or feminine characteristics. For example, there's one (I think in the Papua region) in which everything large is "he" and everything small is "she".
I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that all languages with grammatical genders are making "value judgments" about those objects that they call masculine or feminine.
What is it that the Germans see in a chair that makes them think "that's a fine, manly chair"? What is it the Italians would see in the same chair that would make them think "she's far to feminine to be manly"?
What is the point of difference between these two cultures that makes them interpret the same object as endowed with different gender traits?
Showing posts with label German language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label German language. Show all posts
Friday, September 28, 2012
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Objects at rest? (aka, some more rabbitting on about Estonian Grammar)
Okay, so I've finally decided to start my little cross-comparisons project. I've been thinking for some time that I need to go through everything I know (or, at least, am familiar with) in German and Estonian and make sure I can do it in both languages.
I'm hoping this will also help with revision, and I might finally be able to remember things like ordinal numbers. Have I looked at them several times? Yes. Can I remember them when I want to? Not so much.
I started the other day with creating tables for First Person Singular Personal Pronouns - lining up the case with the word. It was a small table for German, slightly longer (as in, ten more entries) for Estonian.
Then I tried "matching" the words in both sets. To do this, I had to once again go back and try to wrap my head around the way Estonian deals with direct and indirect objects.
I have often struggled with this, I have read it several times, but never quite gotten to grips with it. I think this is partly because every Estonian textbook (and teacher) I have consulted tends to withhold the Partitive case for an interminable amount of time.
I don't know why they do it. Straight up, you get introduced to Nominative and Genative, but then they take you on a journey through all the locative cases and the Abessive and Comitative before talking about the Partitive.
Yet the Partative case is reasonably important for answering the "whom?" question in a sentence. You can't really talk about the object of a sentence without it, so withholding it is terribly frustrating for someone who comes from a Subject-Verb-Object language background.
I can deal with the S-V-O pattern being changed around, but not being incomplete. "Okay, this is how to recognise the subject, and this is what to do with the verb, and, you know what? Let's just leave the object out of it for a little while whilst we talk about everything else".
Plus, it's a bit hard trying to fully appreciate the fact that the Allative case is used for indirect objects when no one has properly addressed what to do with direct objects yet.
Okay, yes, the Partitive case is a bit weird and challenging when you don't have an equivalent in your language, and the locative cases are much easier to understand, so you can get them over with quickly, but still...
So, anyway, the upshot of my little table game is that I'm starting to finally get a grip on objects in the Estonian sentence. So, here's a little summary of my scribblings:
*If the action isn't completed, involves only part of something or is negative, then you use the Partative (mind, in this example). This seems to be more common than the alternative.
**You only use the Nominative (Mina or ma, in this example) if the action is positive and complete and involves the whole of the thing in question.
***The Allative case is used for indirect objects as well as a locative case, so mulle is the equivalent of "me" in the sentences "he passed it to me", "he did it for me" and "he landed on me".
So, "me" in English could be "mind", "mina" or "mulle" in Estonian, depending on the context of the sentence.
Why it took the better part of three years for me to finally stitch that together in a coherent manner is beyond me.
(Mind you, I can't remember ever seeing it as "mina", so I'm not sure if the thing about Nominative case applies to pronouns exactly...)
I'm hoping this will also help with revision, and I might finally be able to remember things like ordinal numbers. Have I looked at them several times? Yes. Can I remember them when I want to? Not so much.
I started the other day with creating tables for First Person Singular Personal Pronouns - lining up the case with the word. It was a small table for German, slightly longer (as in, ten more entries) for Estonian.
Then I tried "matching" the words in both sets. To do this, I had to once again go back and try to wrap my head around the way Estonian deals with direct and indirect objects.
I have often struggled with this, I have read it several times, but never quite gotten to grips with it. I think this is partly because every Estonian textbook (and teacher) I have consulted tends to withhold the Partitive case for an interminable amount of time.
I don't know why they do it. Straight up, you get introduced to Nominative and Genative, but then they take you on a journey through all the locative cases and the Abessive and Comitative before talking about the Partitive.
Yet the Partative case is reasonably important for answering the "whom?" question in a sentence. You can't really talk about the object of a sentence without it, so withholding it is terribly frustrating for someone who comes from a Subject-Verb-Object language background.
I can deal with the S-V-O pattern being changed around, but not being incomplete. "Okay, this is how to recognise the subject, and this is what to do with the verb, and, you know what? Let's just leave the object out of it for a little while whilst we talk about everything else".
Plus, it's a bit hard trying to fully appreciate the fact that the Allative case is used for indirect objects when no one has properly addressed what to do with direct objects yet.
Okay, yes, the Partitive case is a bit weird and challenging when you don't have an equivalent in your language, and the locative cases are much easier to understand, so you can get them over with quickly, but still...
So, anyway, the upshot of my little table game is that I'm starting to finally get a grip on objects in the Estonian sentence. So, here's a little summary of my scribblings:
| Sentence Part | English | German | Estonian | Subject | I (Nominative) | Ich (Nominative) | Mina/ma (Nominative) |
| Object | Me (Accusative) | Mich (Accusative) | Mind (Partative)* OR Mina/ma (Nominative)** |
| Indirect Object | Me (Dative) | Mir (Dative) | Mulle (Allative)*** |
*If the action isn't completed, involves only part of something or is negative, then you use the Partative (mind, in this example). This seems to be more common than the alternative.
**You only use the Nominative (Mina or ma, in this example) if the action is positive and complete and involves the whole of the thing in question.
***The Allative case is used for indirect objects as well as a locative case, so mulle is the equivalent of "me" in the sentences "he passed it to me", "he did it for me" and "he landed on me".
So, "me" in English could be "mind", "mina" or "mulle" in Estonian, depending on the context of the sentence.
Why it took the better part of three years for me to finally stitch that together in a coherent manner is beyond me.
(Mind you, I can't remember ever seeing it as "mina", so I'm not sure if the thing about Nominative case applies to pronouns exactly...)
Friday, July 29, 2011
May I 'thou' you?
I thought that was a peculiar structure when I encountered it in Estonian, but then I stumbled across it in German and in English (albeit, not Modern English).
Seems to be the way to ask someone if you can be familiar with them - not, "may I call you thou?" but rather "may I 'thou' you"?
It took a while for the purpose of "thou" to sink into my head. In university I don't think we expressly covered the fact that "thou" was singular and "you" was plural. That "you" was the polite form, yes, but not that it was the plural form.
When I started working on Estonian I was giving myself notes in Old English, pulled from the dark recesses of my mind, to help me keep track of things. I had remembered that "eow" was plural, so I jotted it next to "teie/te" in my notes to help me remember that the "you" starting with 't' was plural in this language (I was struggling to separate it from "tu" in French).
I had really only seen the Old English versions laid out in this table from Mitchell and Robinson (1992):
While I inderstood the principles behind the Old English parts of that table, I hadn't quite cottoned onto the fact that "thou" was also in that singular column to help make sense of the "þū". I think I was just distracted by the fact that we used to have a Dual form (as well as a Singular and a Plural) for first and second person.
And, of course, because it was never expressly said in class, and I wasn't paying attention when it was written down, I missed it.
So, here I was using "eow" incorrectly (always in the Accusative/Dative case forms, when Estonian doesn't even have Accusitive or Dative cases), when I could have just been using "thou" (in its various declensions) for "sina/sa".
Like a lot of things in this whole language learning schtick, it suddenly became clear after I started learning German, and noticed that the verb conjugation for "du" was pretty dang close to the conjugation for "thou" - which lead to quite the "well, duh, why didn't I notice that before?" moment, I can tell you.
The odd thing is, I know how to conjugate verbs with a thou form, but hadn't actually noticed it was different from the you form. So many gaps in my knowledge. It's as annoying as heck.
I swear, learning another language would be so much easier if we were just taught English properly at school. Dang post-80s curriculum is too lazy. Keeps trying to keep the kids happy by only teaching the version of English we use currently - and even then it barely teaches the grammar.
I tell you, when I write my "introduction to Estonian" textbook, I'm totally going to use a full English/German comparison model that starts by reintroducing the concepts of second-person singular and cases in English. Everything makes a lot more sense in another language if you can see it working in your own, first.
Seems to be the way to ask someone if you can be familiar with them - not, "may I call you thou?" but rather "may I 'thou' you"?
It took a while for the purpose of "thou" to sink into my head. In university I don't think we expressly covered the fact that "thou" was singular and "you" was plural. That "you" was the polite form, yes, but not that it was the plural form.
When I started working on Estonian I was giving myself notes in Old English, pulled from the dark recesses of my mind, to help me keep track of things. I had remembered that "eow" was plural, so I jotted it next to "teie/te" in my notes to help me remember that the "you" starting with 't' was plural in this language (I was struggling to separate it from "tu" in French).
I had really only seen the Old English versions laid out in this table from Mitchell and Robinson (1992):
| Nom. | þū 'thou' | ġit 'you two' | ġē 'ye, you' |
| Acc. | þē, þeċ | inc | ēow |
| Gen. | þīn | incer | ēower |
| Dat. | þē | inc | ēow |
While I inderstood the principles behind the Old English parts of that table, I hadn't quite cottoned onto the fact that "thou" was also in that singular column to help make sense of the "þū". I think I was just distracted by the fact that we used to have a Dual form (as well as a Singular and a Plural) for first and second person.
And, of course, because it was never expressly said in class, and I wasn't paying attention when it was written down, I missed it.
So, here I was using "eow" incorrectly (always in the Accusative/Dative case forms, when Estonian doesn't even have Accusitive or Dative cases), when I could have just been using "thou" (in its various declensions) for "sina/sa".
Like a lot of things in this whole language learning schtick, it suddenly became clear after I started learning German, and noticed that the verb conjugation for "du" was pretty dang close to the conjugation for "thou" - which lead to quite the "well, duh, why didn't I notice that before?" moment, I can tell you.
The odd thing is, I know how to conjugate verbs with a thou form, but hadn't actually noticed it was different from the you form. So many gaps in my knowledge. It's as annoying as heck.
I swear, learning another language would be so much easier if we were just taught English properly at school. Dang post-80s curriculum is too lazy. Keeps trying to keep the kids happy by only teaching the version of English we use currently - and even then it barely teaches the grammar.
I tell you, when I write my "introduction to Estonian" textbook, I'm totally going to use a full English/German comparison model that starts by reintroducing the concepts of second-person singular and cases in English. Everything makes a lot more sense in another language if you can see it working in your own, first.
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