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.
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.
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)
नमस्ते - This week's language of the week: Nepali!
Nepali (खस भाषा, also known as Khas-kurā (खस कुरा)) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by around 17 million, most of them in Nepal and Bhutan (where about a quarter of the people speak it). It's the official language of Nepal and is an official language of several of India's states. Historically, the language was originally called Khas (Khas kurā) and Gorkhali (language of the Gorkha Kingdom) before the term Nepali was adopted. The origin of modern Nepali language is believed to happened from Sinja of Jumla. Therefore, the Nepali dialect “Khas Bhasa” is still spoken among the people of the region. It is also known as Khey (the native term for Khas-Arya people living in the periphery of the Kathmandu valley), Parbate (native term meaning "of the hill") or Partya among the Newar people, and Pahari among the Madhesis and Tharus. Other names include Dzongkha Lhotshammikha ("Southern Language", spoken by the Lhotshampas of Bhutan).
Linguistics
Nepali is an Indo-Aryan language, meaning it is closely related to other Indian languages, such as Punjabi, Hindustani and Bengali. It developed under the influence of Sanskrit, and this influence shows in the modern language. However, due to Nepal's proximity to Tibet, there are a large number of detectable Tibeto-Burman influences in the language as well. Classification Nepali's full classification is as follows: Indo-European (Proto-Indo-European) > Indo-Iranian (Proto-Indo-Iranian) > Indo-Aryan (Proto-Indo-Aryan) > Northern Indo-Aryan > Eastern Pahari > Nepali Phonology and Phonotactics Nepali has 11 distinctive vowels, six oral vowels and five nasal ones. All the oral vowels have a nasal counterpart except for /o/, where a nasal vowel only occurs allophonically. However, due to the relative rare occurrences of these nasal vowels, some scholars argue that there are only one or two vowels that have phonemic nasal counterparts, with minimal pairs definitively put forth for /a/ and /ã/. Nepali does not have phonemic long vowels, but long vowels can occur after h-deletion. There are 10 diphthongs recognized in Nepali. When analyzed by the language's traditional system, Nepali has 33 consonant sounds. However, only 27 are found in normal speech, with two, /w/ and /j/, actually being allophones of /i/ and and the others found in prescriptive pronunciations of words borrowed from Sanskrit. All but two of the Nepali consonants can have geminate forms intervocalically, and these forms can be distinctive as in /tsʌpʌl/ (unstable) and /tsʌppʌl/ (slipper). The geminate forms can be used with adjectives to express intensity, as in /miʈʈʰo/ (very delicious) compared to /miʈʰo/ (delicious). While Nepali stress is not contrastive, there are various rules governing where the stress in placed. Generally, it will be placed on either the last syllable, the penultimate one or the antepenultimate syllable. If the word is disyllabic, stress will appear on the first syllable if the last syllable is open or if the second syllable is closed with a short vowel, with stress appearing on the second syllable if it is closed with a long vowel. In longer words, the penultimate syllable is stressed if it is long. If the last syllable is closed and contains a long vowel, or if it ends in two consonants it receives the stress. The antepenultimate syllable only receives the stress when the last syllable is open or closed with a short vowel and ending in only one consonant and the penultimate syllable contains a short vowel. Exceptions to these rules, of course, exist, usually determined by particles or word class. The most basic syllable structures in Nepali are V, VC and CVC, though some exceptions occur, mostly in the combination of root and suffix in finite verb forms. Grammar While Nepali nouns do not decline for gender, they do inflect for number (distinguishing only singular and plural) and for one of seven cases (nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive and locative). However, while Nepali nouns do inflect for number, it is not as strict as English, and the plural suffix can easily be left out when the number is indicated in some other way, such as with numerals or quantifiers like "many". Unlike nouns, adjectives in Nepali do inflect for gender as well as number, but do not have to agree with the case marking on the noun. Nepali adjectives preceed the noun they modify. To mark plurality with an adjective, it can be repeated. Comparative and superlative forms do not exist, and instead are marked with a suffix meaning 'than' and 'than all', respectively. Nepali verbs conjugate to show contrasts in the first, second and third persons, as well as in the singular and plural. In the third person singular, the verb is conjugated to distinguish between two genders, masculine and feminine. Furthermore, the verbs inflect to show contrast in three grades of honorifics (low grade, middle grade, high grade) in the second and third persons. Verbs ('go') can also inflect for an infinitive ('to go'), perfective participle ('gone'), imperfective participle ('going'), conjunctive participle ('when going') and absolutive participle ('having gone'). The Nepali verbal system can be divided into five simple tenses: a present indefinite (repeated action, action in immediate future), perfect (actions completed in the past), a future non-definite (future actions, but only those in which there is less than certainty), imperative (commands in second person, injunctions in the others) and plusperfect (actions completed in distant past or prior to another action). There are several complex tenses: present continuous, past continuous, future (stronger than the future non-definite, indicates certainty), conditional, present perfect (actions done in recent past 'i have done'), past perfect (actions done in distant past or actions completed in past prior to others 'had done'), present unknown (sense of recent discovery or experience of the action of the verb or uncertainty with regard to the action), past unknown (parallel to the previous, but in the past). Furthermore, continuous tenses, perfectives and causatives can all be formed as well as a passive/impersonal form.
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.
Merhaba - This week's language of the week: Turkish
Turkish (Türkçe) also referred to as Istanbul Turkish, is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around 10–15 million native speakers in Southeast Europe (mostly in East and Western Thrace) and 60–65 million native speakers in Western Asia (mostly in Anatolia). Outside Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Turkish is a language I think is somewhat underappreciated. While it is notably complex grammatically, there are some other factors that make it attractive. It is very regular, the phonology is easy, and the extensive usage of roots to form new words make vocabulary much easier than it could be. It's also around the 22nd most spoken language in the world. Despite that, only around 3.4% of us were learning Turkish when we surveyed the sub 3 years ago. My hope here is to draw some people's interest, so please read on if you think you'd consider it.
Linguistics
Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The distinctive characteristics of the Turkish language are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no noun classes or grammatical gender. The language has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics. Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. Phonology Turkish is very phonemic, meaning you can almost always understand how to pronounce a word by its spelling and spell a word by its pronunciation. As noted, Turkish has a system of vowel harmony that causes all vowels in most words to be either front or back. Front vowels are represented by dots above the letters or the letter e. This is why Turkish has the unique letter ı. It is the back version of the front vowel i. Vowel harmony can be viewed as a process of assimilation, whereby following vowels take on the characteristics of the preceding vowel. It may be useful to think of Turkish vowels as two symmetrical sets: the a-undotted (a, ı, o, u) (back) and the e-dotted (e, i, ö, ü) vowels (front). This comes into play when you need to start conjugating things. Grammatical affixes, of which Turkish has many, have "a chameleon-like quality", and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
twofold (-e/-a): the locative case suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive case suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels.
That is to say, the same suffix can be different based on the vowels the normal form of the word has, and will essentially take on the characteristics of that word based on how the vowels sound. When there are different 'types' of vowel in a single root, the suffix will simply use the form of the last vowel. Lexicon After the foundation of the modern state of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary. This is an advantage for learners since learning the root form of a word can open up a wide range of vocabulary. Grammar Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" < sıcak) and masmavi ("bright blue" < mavi). The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words, e.g. Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınızcasına, meaning "In the manner of you being one of those that we apparently couldn't manage to convert to Czechoslovakian". While this case is contrived, long words frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: Bayramlaşamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (İmlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliğin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony. The plural marker -ler immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages"). Example Table - nouns:
Turkish
English
ev
(the) house
evler
(the) houses
evin
your (sing.) house
eviniz
your (pl./formal) house
evim
my house
evimde
at my house
evlerinizin
of your houses
evlerinizden
from your houses
evlerinizdendi
(he/she/it) was from your houses
evlerinizdenmiş
(he/she/it) was (apparently/said to be) from your houses
السلام عليكم - This week's language of the week: Arabic!
Arabic (Arabic: العَرَبِيَّة, al-ʻarabiyyah [ʔalʕaraˈbijːah] or Arabic: عَرَبِيّ ʻarabī [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbijː]) is a Semitic language spoken by anywhere between 290-420 million people worldwide. It is an official or co-official language in 27 countries worldwide, mostly in Africa and the Middle East. Arabic dialects have diverged quite a bit, to the point where mutual intelligibility has been lost, but only one -- Maltese -- is regularly considered a separate language. This is due to political/cultural reasons, as well as the existence of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is a unifying standard register. Several other big dialects do dominate, such as Egyptian Arabic. The examples in this write-up are from MSA.
Linguistics
Arabic is a Semitic language, making it related to languages such as Hebrew and Amharic as well as extinct languages like Akkadian and Ugaritic. Semitic languages are part of the bigger Afro-Asiatic language family, which also makes it related to languages such as the Berber languages. Classification Arabic's full classification is: Afro-Asiatic (Proto-Afro-Asiatic) > Semitic (Proto-Semitic) > West Semitic > Central Semitic > Arabic languages Phonology and Phonotactics Modern Arabic has six pure vowels -- /a i u/ and their corresponding long vowels. There are also two diphthongs -- /aj/ and /aw/. MSA has 28 phonemic consonants, with a 29th that appears only in the word الله ('Allah'). Arabic has two types of syllables: open syllables, with structures of CV and CVV; and closed syllables, with structures of CVC, CVVC and CVCC. The syllable types with two morae (units of time), i.e. CVC and CVV, are termed heavy syllables, while those with three morae, i.e. CVVC and CVCC, are superheavy syllables. Arabic lacks contrastive word stress, which is heavily correlated to vowel length. The general rules for word stress in MSA are:
A final vowel, long or short, may not be stressed.
Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
Given this restriction, the last heavy syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed, if it is not the final syllable.
If the final syllable is super heavy and closed (of the form CVVC or CVCC) it receives stress.
If no syllable is heavy or super heavy, the first possible syllable (i.e. third from end) is stressed.
As a special exception, in Form VII and VIII verb forms stress may not be on the first syllable, despite the above rules
Grammar The basic word order of Arabic is Verb-Subject-Object. Following general typological rules, the adjectives in Arabic follow the nouns they quantify, auxiliary verbs precede main verbs, prepositions precede their objects, and nouns precede their relative clauses (thus Arabic is a head-initial language). Typologically, Arabic is also considered a fusional language, making it typologically similar to Spanish and French. Arabic nouns are declined for case, state, gender and number. Arabic has three cases -- nominative, genitive and accusative -- with six declension patterns. There are two genders -- masculine and feminine -- with animate nouns usually following natural gender with inanimate nouns being placed largely arbitrarily. There are three numbers in Arabic -- singular, plural and dual. State is a grammatical category common to the Semitic languages, with the basic division in Arabic being definite and indefinite, which roughly corresponds to the English definite article and indefinite article. More correctly, a definite noun signals either a particular entity previously referenced or a generic concept, and corresponds to one of the following in English: English nouns preceded by the, this, that, or a possessive adjective (e.g. my, your); English nouns taken in a generic sense ("Milk is good", "Dogs are friendly"); or proper nouns (e.g. John or Muhammad). Indefinite nouns refer to entities not previously mentioned, and correspond to either English nouns preceded by a, an or some, or English mass nouns with no preceding determiner and not having a generic sense ("We need milk"). Definite nouns are usually marked by a definite article prefix اَلـ al- (which is reduced to l- following vowels, and further assimilates to (a)t-, (a)s-, (a)r- etc. preceding certain consonants). Indefinite nouns are usually marked by nunation (a following -n). Adjectives modifying a noun generally decline to agree with the noun except in one case: inanimate plural nouns take feminine-singular agreement. Arabic personal pronouns have twelve forms -- 1st person singular, 1st person dual/plural, 2nd person singular masculine, 2nd person singular feminine, 2nd person dual, 2nd person plural masculine, 2nd person plural feminine, 3rd person singular masculine, 3rd person singular feminine, 3rd person dual, 3rd person plural masculine and 3rd person plural feminine. Arabic also has enclitic pronouns which affix to various parts of speech to change the meaning. Furthermore, Arabic also inflects its prepositions based on the following pronoun, a feature it shares with the Celtic languages. For example, the Arabic preposition 'with' is مَعَ (ma'a), but 'with me' becomes مَعِي (ma‘ī). Arabic verbs undergo extensive conjugation and, like verbs in other Semitic languages, are extremely complex. In Arabic, verbs are conjugated for: three tenses -- past, present and future; two voices -- active and passive; two genders -- masculine and feminine; three persons -- first, second and third; three numbers -- singular, dual and plural; four moods in the non-past -- indicative, subjunctive, jussive and imperative (two more exist in Classical Arabic); nineteen forms, the derivational systems indicating derivative concepts such as intensive, causative, reciprocal, reflexive, frequentative etc. For each form, there is also an active and a passive participle (both adjectives, declined through the full paradigm of gender, number, case and state) and a verbal noun (declined for case; also, when lexicalized, may be declined for number). Weakness is an inherent property of a given verb determined by the particular consonants of the verb root (corresponding to a verb conjugation in Classical Latin and other European languages), with five main types of weakness and two or three subtypes of each type. Miscellany As mentioned, the Arabic language has broken into many dialects over the centuries, with some of these being unintelligible. Despite this, most still consider Arabic a single language -- except for Maltese spoken on Malta -- due to political and cultural reasons. The distinction between dialect and language is inherently more of a political issue than a linguistic one. The main dialects of Arabic are: Egyptian Arabic spoken by 53 million people in Egypt and widely understood outside it; Levantine Arabic spoken by 21 million people; Maghrebi Arabic also called 'Darija' and spoken by 70 million people and which is the dialect that Maltese descends from. There are many other varieties as well. Arabic literature has existed since the 5th century in the form of poems, with the possibility of some oral poems dating back even farther. Before the Qur'an, most literature was poetry. However, after the Qur'an, it quickly became the standard to which all literature was held and Islamic literature soon pervaded the language. Many different types of work have been written in the Arabic language, including poetry, compilations and manuals, geographic works, works of history and biography, diaries, literary theory and criticism. Within the realm of fiction, there are epics, Maqama, romantic literature, murder mysteries, satire and comedy, drama, philosophical novels and science fiction. Exemplars of these works were written before the 13th century, showcasing the diversity of the early Arabic literary tradition. Perhaps the most well-known Arabic work, outside the Qur'an, is the One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of folklore compiled in Arabic in the Islamic Golden Age.
Wolkom - This week's language of the week: Frisian!
West Frisian Frysk, pronounced [ˈfriːs(k)]; Dutch: Fries [ˈfriːs]) is a West Germanic language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland (Fryslân) in the north of the Netherlands, mostly by those of Frisian ancestry. It is the most widely spoken of the three Frisian languages. In the 2001 census, there were 471.000 speakers of West Frisian.
Linguistics
As a Germanic language, Frisian is closely related to other Germanic languages such as English, Scots, Swedish and Gothic. Furthermore, as the Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, Frisian is also related to languages as dissimilar as Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. Classification West Frisians's full classification is as follows: Indo-European (Proto-Indo-European) > Germanic (Proto-Germanic) > West Germanic > Ingvaeonic > Anglo-Frisian > Frisian > West Frisian Phonology and Phonotactics Standard West Frisian has 19 vowel phonemes. These consist of 9 pairs of vowels, contrasting for length, as well as the schwa. The eight vowels are /i y u ɪ ø o ɛ ɔ a/, with the long vowel corresponding to /ɪ/ being /eː/, while the others just are lengthened. /yː/ is fairly rare and, in one dialect, it and /uː/ are both completely absent. Likewise, while they are patterned after monophthongs, several of the long vowels are actually realized as diphthongs. There are 16 diphthongs in West Frisian, with several other possible ones more often being classified as glide+vowel sounds as opposed to a diphthong. There are 18 consonant phonemes, and syllabic sonorants can appear in specific instances. The sequences /nj, tj, sj, zj/ coalesce to [ɲ, tɕ, ɕ, ʑ]. There are several other rules involved as well, such as voicing assimilation, final devoicing, as well as syllabification rules. Stress on native Frisian words is on the first vowel. Morphology and Syntax Frisian has a strict V2 word order. The main verb always appears as the second element (not necessarily word) in the sentence. If there is an auxiliary verb, only the verb that inflects for person and tense, the finite verbhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_verb), is in the second position, while the infinite one goes to the end of the clause. Contrast: ik sjoch har ("I saw her") with ik ha har sjoen ("I have seen her"). Frisian nouns decline solely for plurality, though there are a few isolated holdovers of the case system. Gender does exist, though it is marked on the article instead of the noun. The remains of a genitive case do still exist, but its usage is mainly literary, and a periphrasic manner using a prepositional phrase is preferred. The basic structure for a Frisian noun phrase is (Determiner) - (Adverb) - (Adjective) - Noun, with adverbs only being present to modify adjectives; more than one adjective can be used to modify a noun. While Frisian once had three genders -- neuter, masculine and feminine -- there are now only two genders in the language: neuter and common. The neuter is the remains of the old neuter, while the masculine and feminine have collapsed into the common gender. The words are distinguished by the article they take, it for neuter and de for common, and there is no clearcut relationship to natural gender; for example, the words for wife/woman, girl, and boy are all neuter. Frisian nouns only mark for plurality, and do not have a dual form. If the noun has a regular plural, it is accomplished with either the suffixation of -en or -s to the underlying form of the noun. Polysyllabic nouns ending with -ing can take either of the two forms; the choice is often dependent upon dialect, and both are accepted int he standard form. Frisian adjectives, when used attributively, are inflected to agree with the number and gender of the noun. For common nouns, -e is added as a suffix to the noun, whereas neuter nouns do not have a specific suffix. Unlike in languages such as Spanish, the adjective does not agree with the subject when it is used predicatively. The addition of a determiner can complicate this system, by causing inflection of the adjective of a neuter noun when it follows it, dit, dat. Frisian has nine pronouns, split across two cases: subject and object. There is a formal and informal second person singular pronoun. The formal one is used automatically when talking to strangers, 'as well as with anyone with whom one is not intimate or who is older and/or demands a certain measure of respect.' It is always used with plural verbs. It is not used, however, with parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. who are addressed by their title and the third person. These can be seen in the table below
Gloss
Subject
Object
1sg.
ik
my
2sg.fam.
do
dy
2sg.form
jo
jo
3.sg.M
hy
him
3.sg.F
sy
har
3.sg.N
it
it
1.pl
wy
ús
2.pl
jimme
jimme
3.pl
sy
harren
Neither natural gender nor grammatical gender is strictly adhered to in the choice of third person pronouns. In reference to people, hy or sy/hja is used, depending on the sex of the person, even when that person is referred to with a neuter noun: it famke hat har tas ûnder, 'the girl has her purse under the (her) arm.* Here 'girl' is referred to as 'her', even though it is a neuter noun. Animals of both sexes are generally referred to as hy. Only the verb form distinguishes the feminine singular for the third person plural pronoun; both also have the form hja, which is archaic and thus was not added to the table. Frisian verbs were traditionally divided into two main classes, weak and strong, based on whether they were regular or irregular, respectively. The weak classes is further divided into two other ones, Class I and Class II, depending on the ending of the infinitive. Class I weak verbs are completely irregular, and all forms can be derived from the same paradigm. Class II verbs is the 'default' verb form; when new verbs are formed in Frisian, they are of Class II. Only two tenses are marked on the verb in Frisian: the present and the preterite (or simple past). All other tenses, both active and passive, are formed with one of four auxiliary verbs: wêze, hawwe, wurde and sille. Apart from the present and preterite mentioned above, the other active forms are the present perfect, formed with hawwe and the past participle; the past perfect, formed with the preterite of hawwe and the past participle; the future, formed by the verb sille and the infinitive; the future perfect, formed with the conjugated verb sille plus the past participle of the verb and the helping verb hawwe; the conditional, made up of the past tense of sille plus the infinitive; the perfect conditional, constructed of the preterite of sille plus the past participle of the verb and then hawwe. The first person singular form of these all can be seen in the table below;
Form
Frisian
English
infinitive (class 1)
meane
mow
present
ik mean
I mow
preterite
ik meande
I mowed
present perfect
ik ha meand
I have mowed
past perfect
ik hie meand
i had mowed
future
ik sil meane
I will mow
Future perfect
ik sil meand hawwe
I will have mowed
Conditional
ik soe meane
I would mow
Perfect conditional
ik soe meand hawwe
I will have mowed
All of these also have a passive form, formed with the auxilary verbs wêre, wurde. The passive is used less often than in English, however, with the impersonal construction being preferred. Frisian tenses are used slightly differently than their English counterparts. For instance, all of them can be translated as a progressive as well; to emphasize the action, and adverb must be added. The present tense can be used for the future tense with a temporal adverb, with the future form that uses sille taking a more emphatic connotation. The past perfect can be used to express certain types of counterfactual statements, such as Jelle hie soks noait dien, "Jelle would never have done something like that" (when can be expressed with the past conditional, as well). A few verbs, which involve motion or change of state, sometimes use the complex tenses with wêze instead of hawwe. This can be seen in older English (as well as Dutch and German), 'I am come' instead of 'I have come', or 'He is risen' instead of 'He has risen'. In Frisian, however, wêze itself can take the helping verb, hawwe: ik hie west, 'I had been'
Miscellany
Frisian is often considered to be the closest non-British relation of English.
This can be seen in the sentence, "Brea, bûter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk" or 'Bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Frisian'
According to legend, the 16th century Frisian freedom fighter Pier Gerlofs Donia used a similar rhyme, 'Bûter, brea en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin is gjin oprjochte Fries' as a shibboleth that he forced captives to repeat in order to distinguish Frisians from the Dutch and Germans.
Samples
Spoken sample: Newscast Wikitongues sample Written sample: Berne en opgroeid yn Ynje, sil dêr syn grêf wêze. Syn Heitelaân, Ien grutte emoasje út syn libben stiet him klear foar eagen. It frjemde lân, it lân fan Heit, en noch ien, dat fan Mem. Fan Heit: Fryslân, fan Mem: Noarwegen. Tsien jier wie er, Heit gie mei ferlof, en beide lannen hat er sjoen. Frslân yn maitiidspracht, wyst de sinne skynde oer de marren en de wide greiden mei fee. Noarwegen, doe't de hege sinne dreamde yn 'e fjorden. Hoe djip is dat alles net fêst set en syn siel. Heite en Memme lân. Mar sines? Hy hat der nea weron west.
Tamil meaning for the english word complexity is சிக்கல் from செந்தமிழ் அகராதி செந்தமிழ் அகராதி complexity meaning in tamil Tamil Dictionary definitions for Conjugate. Conjugate: உடன் புணரி. Conjugate: உடன் புணரி. Conjugate: உடன் புணரி. Conjugate definition Adjective. United in pairs; yoked together; coupled. In single pairs; coupled. Containing two or more radicals supposed to act the part of a single one. The Tamil for complex conjugate is இணைச் சிக்கலெண். Find more Tamil words at wordhippo.com! translation and definition "conjugate", English-Tamil Dictionary online. conjugate . IPA: ˈkɒndʒəɡeɪt; Type: adjective, verb, noun; Copy to clipboard; Details / edit; Tamil Technical Terminologies. இணை { verb } Copy to clipboard; Details / edit; Tamil Technical Terminologies. இணையிய. Copy to clipboard; Details / edit; www.tamilri.com. இணைவ. Copy to clipboard; De Tamil translation from Modern English to Tamil dictionary online for the word complex: [Click the audio icon to hear the pronunciation of English words.] Did you mean : complex (1) : சிக்கலான , பலபகுதிகளை உள்ளடக்கிய , சிக்கலுள்ள முழுமை , பல பகுதிகளைக் கொண்ட அமைப்பு . complex (2) : மனப்பான்மை , மனநிலை , மனோபாவம் . The whole endeavor will be both financially and politically complicated. complex in Tamil: சிக்கலான Part of speech : Adjective Definition in English : complicated in structure; consisting of interconnected parts The state of being complex; intricacy; entanglement. bus meaning in tamil with example bus tamil meaning and more example for bus will be given in tamil. Important English Words with Meanings and Examples in Tamil language. (function() {var s=document.createElement Tamil Meaning of Conjugate Division Thanks for using this online dictionary, we have been helping millions of people improve their use of the TAMIL language with its free online services. Tamil meaning of Conjugate Division is as below...
Class 12 Theorem: Complex Conjugate Root Theorem - YouTube
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