One of my biggest stumbling blocks in learning Georgian was -- as stupid as this sounds -- the NOMINATIVE. The nominative is the case used -- in most languages -- for the subject of a sentence. In "I speak terrible Georgian," "I" is in the nominative. "The cat is urinating on top of the television" features "cat", in the nominative. In most ( Read more... )

It's a two-for-one today!

First up: the partitive case. Just what is this? I've first noticed this in Basque:

Ez dago libururik. "There are no books."
Badago lanik? "Is there any work?"

The suffix -ik (or -rik after a consonant) can translate to "any" in a positive sentence or as "none" in a negative sentence. Rather than having a separate ( Read more... )

I'm amazed I haven't covered this topic yet! Today we talk about terms for family members, and how such terms are used differently in English and make distinctions that would take further elaboration in English as well ...

JAPANESE: We'll start with Japanese, where there is a differentiation between older and younger siblings -- an older brother ( Read more... )

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I can't tell you how many times I've listened to this song. John Kelly and Maite Itoiz sing this song on a German talk show -- quite possibly the most famous Basque song outside of the Basque country's borders, originally written by J. A. Artze and originally sung by Mikel Laboa:

Hegoak ebaki banizkionIf I had cut its wingsnerea izango zenIt ( Read more... )

In the last Multilingual Monday I discussed the complexity of verb forms in Basque, and it was pointed out that I had skipped a verb form -- for good reason, as it gives today's topic: the allocutive form. Basque is the olny language I know of -- please correct me if I'm wrong! -- that contains these special verb forms ( Read more... )

I think every aspiring linguist, at some point in time, delves into Basque. And it's certainly understandable -- I'd convinced myself that, if I could learn Basque, then I could learn ANYTHING. After all, the language is unique in the world, and possesses a unique grammar and verb system that is unlike anything I've ever studied. But these "oh ( Read more... )

Today we take a look at the number "one", which doesn't sound like much of an article, admittedly. :: laugh :: However, in different language the number "one" is distinct from other the other numerals. To clarify what I mean, we'll take a look at "one" in Hebrew. Like the other numerals, in Hebrew there are both masculine and feminine forms of ( Read more... )

Today's Multilingual Monday covers the passive voice. It's used in English quite a bit -- "The meal was cooked by my husband; isn't it great?" "I was robbed by two men." "I got fired for looking at porn in the office." Here the focus isn't on the ACTIONS, but the RESULTS -- the meal is done, and that's because of the husband in example one. The ( Read more... )

Today's topic is about "the definitive", often marked in languages with an article. In English this is "the", a word that originally masculine nominative of se, "that". Several may adjust themselves to phonetic needs -- Hungarian definite pronoun use mirrors the "a/an" use in English, where nouns with a consonant get a and those starting with a ( Read more... )

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