Comments | aadroma: [Multilingual Monday] Nominative, Ergative, Plus A Bonus!

aadroma

[Multilingual Monday] Nominative, Ergative, Plus A Bonus!

Jan 25, 2010 18:27

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... )

multilingual monday, 日本語, georgian, ქართული, japanese, basque, ergative, nominative, euskara

Comments 9

I didn't know skosh was from Japenese! pocketbearwa January 26 2010, 00:35:41 UTC

I've used it my whole life; my family (my mother's side - the German-speaking Prussians) used it. It's like jot, tittle, bit, smidge, etc. Small, usually monosyllabic words indicating "tiny amount". :)

As for examples - it was funny learning Russian in college, and having the first collection of adjectives to memorize be climatological - subtropical, arctic, tropical. And have them all be Russian-ized English words. Every. Single. One. In French we were taught geography (mountain, plain, river, etc.) In German it was rooms - bedroom, breakfast room, bathroom, etc. Russian was "kleemat".

(More amusing: I had 2 instructors; one was from the Bronx, the other from Sweden. My Russian accent is ATROCIOUS.)

muckefuck January 26 2010, 15:24:30 UTC

My brother learned Russian in college, and when I was helping him study, I was quite taken aback to learn how many German words it has. I think штаб or масштаб was one of the first examples that caught my eye, but I soon began to spot them everywhere. French I expected, but I somehow forgot that all the burghers and engineers invited to settle by Catherine the Great et al. would leave their mark as well.

ciddyguy January 26 2010, 00:45:27 UTC

I've heard of the word skosh, and have used it myself at times but didn't know it's origins.

One learns something new every day. :-)

gullinbursti January 26 2010, 02:55:09 UTC

"Skosh" was the subject of a post on the linguaphiles community (I think, or it may have been Language Log) a while back. It does indeed come from sukoshi and was apparently imported after WWII when the GIs in the Pacific theatre came back.

bosendorfer_boy January 26 2010, 16:59:13 UTC

What is the name of this community, please? :)

muckefuck January 26 2010, 03:33:08 UTC

Though I'd been hearing it most of my life, I was very surprised to find that copacetic was a "real word" and even more surprised to find that the most sound theory regarding its origins is that it was borrowed from Louisiana French.

Gullinbursti is 100% correct!!! darkphuque January 26 2010, 04:36:28 UTC

Skosh was brought back to our house from Japan. My Dad was a pilot on Saipan during WWII, and we were all Stationed in Fukuoka, Japan during the Korean Conflict.

Skosh was in common usage amongst all the military guys who were in Japan as occupation after WWII and certainly amongst the guys stationed there in the 1950's. When I first began to study Japanese, I caught it right away.