>So all this talk about seals and slugs was really to distract everyone from the fact that I haven’t made any progress on this language that was supposed to make my life easy, because my brain is refusing to cooperate. My brain goes WHY ARE YOU MAKING US MEMORIZE RANDOM INCORRECTLY SPELLED RUSSIAN WORDS WITH AN OCASSIONAL NON-CYRILLIC LETTER THROWN IN? Something that usually activates when I’m learning a new language just hasn’t activated here.
This is really relatable. I started learning my third Chinese language last year and it was so familiar until you reach a grammar word that's written different. Now every time I say/write something in it I'm wondering whether a word I'm using only exists in the languages I know and not in this one, or if I'm not using those cognates/borrowings, whether I'm hyperforeignizing it.
I was wondering (and you probably have written about this) if you already have a set-in-stone list of languages you want to learn this year? Or do you have some language bingo like criteria for choosing them? BTW, when you wrote about the lack of Rusyn materials, I tried looking in local used bookstores online, but also couldn't find any. I wonder if there's some Rusyn Culture Institute in Germany or the US that has at least an online library.
No list really. I have some ideas but I want to kind of stay open to whatever happens. Like it was with that Thai speaker in the hospital. I found some Rusyn materials and someone shared with me a pdf of a textbook, but somehow that's not exciting enough. There is a book of Carpatho-Rusyn folktales called "The seventy-seventh kingdom: carpatho-rusyn folktales" (bilingual in English and Rusyn) that I want to get my hands on but haven't figured out how. It is sold online but even if they ship to Israel the shipment itself costs a fortune.
Now that I think about it, Vietnamese questions work the same way as Thai.
"Bạn đang ăn" - You are eating
"Bạn đang ăn gì? " - You are eating what?
"Bạn đang ăn phải không?" - You are eating true no? (Yes/no question, smoother translation is "you are eating, that is true, no?")
As far as I know, many South East Asian languages share the same grammar simplicity and the tonal aspects. Vietnamese is like that, too, but somehow a great amount of our words has Chinese-root and are really different from other SEA languages, despite that Vietnamese sounds really similar to them (eg. Thai sounds like a bunch of nonsense Vietnamese word to me).
>So all this talk about seals and slugs was really to distract everyone from the fact that I haven’t made any progress on this language that was supposed to make my life easy, because my brain is refusing to cooperate. My brain goes WHY ARE YOU MAKING US MEMORIZE RANDOM INCORRECTLY SPELLED RUSSIAN WORDS WITH AN OCASSIONAL NON-CYRILLIC LETTER THROWN IN? Something that usually activates when I’m learning a new language just hasn’t activated here.
This is really relatable. I started learning my third Chinese language last year and it was so familiar until you reach a grammar word that's written different. Now every time I say/write something in it I'm wondering whether a word I'm using only exists in the languages I know and not in this one, or if I'm not using those cognates/borrowings, whether I'm hyperforeignizing it.
I was wondering (and you probably have written about this) if you already have a set-in-stone list of languages you want to learn this year? Or do you have some language bingo like criteria for choosing them? BTW, when you wrote about the lack of Rusyn materials, I tried looking in local used bookstores online, but also couldn't find any. I wonder if there's some Rusyn Culture Institute in Germany or the US that has at least an online library.
No list really. I have some ideas but I want to kind of stay open to whatever happens. Like it was with that Thai speaker in the hospital. I found some Rusyn materials and someone shared with me a pdf of a textbook, but somehow that's not exciting enough. There is a book of Carpatho-Rusyn folktales called "The seventy-seventh kingdom: carpatho-rusyn folktales" (bilingual in English and Rusyn) that I want to get my hands on but haven't figured out how. It is sold online but even if they ship to Israel the shipment itself costs a fortune.
Now that I think about it, Vietnamese questions work the same way as Thai.
"Bạn đang ăn" - You are eating
"Bạn đang ăn gì? " - You are eating what?
"Bạn đang ăn phải không?" - You are eating true no? (Yes/no question, smoother translation is "you are eating, that is true, no?")
As far as I know, many South East Asian languages share the same grammar simplicity and the tonal aspects. Vietnamese is like that, too, but somehow a great amount of our words has Chinese-root and are really different from other SEA languages, despite that Vietnamese sounds really similar to them (eg. Thai sounds like a bunch of nonsense Vietnamese word to me).
Ok, it makes me want to learn all the SEA languages now :)
Pro tip: the key to speaking tonal language is eating rice everyday (preferably jasmine rice)
oh good! now i know the secret :)