And as it moves, and as it sounds
Mefi lunk this messageboard thread in which a russian guy talks about and posts photos of the fishing cat (maybe twice the volume of a domestic cat; lynxish-sized) that he and his wife own (I think they bought it from a zoo? It's a little hard to tell, what with the babelfishing). It's awesome, really (they fostered it on a housecat, and seem to feed it deer carcasses and non-scaly fish, which it catches in the bathtub), but one of the best bits is sifting through the babelfishy translation and trying to work out what's going on. At one point someone asks how 'hard' the cat's 'language' is, and from context you can tell that it's meant to be about its tongue instead, which is awesome.
Also, the guy often starts a post with 'How do you do everything!' which I eventually realized meant 'How do you do, everyone!' not 'How are you able to get everything done!' 'Everyone' must be gender-neutral, or else the word being used is more like 'all'. The cat's always referred to as a 'tomcat,' so boy-cat must be a term on its own. I'd almost say that cats-plural is masculine, too?
There is a good bit of conspicuous subject-object-verbing, which I just enjoy on its own.
Often a '4' will show up in sentences, and I don't know what that means. Just being a 4-number isn't right; maybe russian has a construction like 'a few' that literally translates to '4'? That doesn't even necessarily work, though. Oh - I think it's 'the', or some particle of that sort.
There's something that I assume IS 'a couple' or 'a few' that keeps getting rendered as 'pair-troika.'
Oh, and I think russian must have a word for animals-eating which is also used for eating-like-an-animal (as in german) because it's always rendered as 'gorging'.
It's possible there's a construction like in latin where you begin and end your 'thing and other thing' or 'thing or other thing' with a signifying word, too, given the structure of the title of this post. Sort of like 'both thing and other thing,' where 'both' and 'and' are the same word?
Anyway, it's strangely enjoyable. I love this sort of thing.
Also, the guy often starts a post with 'How do you do everything!' which I eventually realized meant 'How do you do, everyone!' not 'How are you able to get everything done!' 'Everyone' must be gender-neutral, or else the word being used is more like 'all'. The cat's always referred to as a 'tomcat,' so boy-cat must be a term on its own. I'd almost say that cats-plural is masculine, too?
There is a good bit of conspicuous subject-object-verbing, which I just enjoy on its own.
Often a '4' will show up in sentences, and I don't know what that means. Just being a 4-number isn't right; maybe russian has a construction like 'a few' that literally translates to '4'? That doesn't even necessarily work, though. Oh - I think it's 'the', or some particle of that sort.
There's something that I assume IS 'a couple' or 'a few' that keeps getting rendered as 'pair-troika.'
Oh, and I think russian must have a word for animals-eating which is also used for eating-like-an-animal (as in german) because it's always rendered as 'gorging'.
It's possible there's a construction like in latin where you begin and end your 'thing and other thing' or 'thing or other thing' with a signifying word, too, given the structure of the title of this post. Sort of like 'both thing and other thing,' where 'both' and 'and' are the same word?
Anyway, it's strangely enjoyable. I love this sort of thing.