Slovene Lessons - Ucne ure slovenscine

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Cathbad
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Slovene Lessons - Ucne ure slovenscine

Post by Cathbad »

Following the fact that a grand total of two people (as of yet) expressed a kind of interest for this, I will start my humble enterprise with a simple introduction.

LESSON 1
Prva učna ura*

*učna ura, literally 'learning hour', is as closest a translation of 'lesson' as you can get in Slovene. Needless to say that I hate it, so I really won't translate lesson titles from hereon.

1.1. Distribution - Raz?irjenost

Slovene is a Southern Slavic language spoken by approximately two million people in Slovenia, and a few ethnic minorities in Italy, Austria and Hungary. (Considerable Slovene communities overseas appear in Argentina - from which both the current Slovenian Minister of Finance and the ex-archbishop of Ljubljana, who will become a Cardinal on Wednesday, hail - and the USA. Cleveland, Ohio, used to be called 'the second biggest Slovene city'. By Slovenes, of course.)

1.2. Phonology

Slovene has a more or less simple eight-vowel vowel system:
/a e E @ i o O u/
transliterated, rather confusingly for non-native speakers, as
<a e e e* i o o u>.
The 'narrow' mid vowels, /e o/, can be distinguished by placing an acute over them: <? ?>, while the 'wide' mid vowels /E O/ can be distinguished by a circumflex <? ?> when they appear in the middle of a word, and by a grave <? ?> when they appear at the end.*** Usually, however - and that means nearly always, except when ambiguity may arise - the diacritics are left out.

**/@/ and especially [@] being transliterated as <e> leads to some, well, funny situations. To take a recent Olympic example, the marvellous sport of Curling was, in all sensible Slovene newspapers, written kerling, which any sensible Slovene would read as [kErlink]. Glory to the ignorant.

***Well, not always. Most Slovene linguists claim that this is rather a short/long distinction (grave for short vowels, circumflex for long), but suffice to say that they themselves have great problems distinguishing between the two when asked to provide a phonetic transcription. Same goes for tonemic accent. (Rather comically, the book used by Slovene students in the first year of secondary school states that 'many world languages, even Chinese, distinguish different vowel tones'.)

In these lessons, I will alert you when caution of pronunciation is needed, especially with the almighty schwa.

Slovene has 20 consonant phonemes:
/p b t d k g f v ts) s z tS) S Z x m n l r j/
<p b t d k g f v c s z č ? ? h m n l r j/
Symbols that need to be especially noted are bolded.

Some (more or less) phonetical notes about consonant pronunciation:

1. /v/ is either [w], [W], [v] or [u_^], depending on the following sound. A general guideline should be to pronounce it as [w] at the end of a word and before consonants, and [v] before vowels.

ADDED: 2. /l/ is either [l] or [u_^], depending on the following sound. It should be pronounced as [u_^] at the end of a word and before /n/, and [l] before vowels and other consonants. However, these rules do not always apply. I'll try to indicate cases when they don't.

3. /r/ can be trilled or tapped; most people can trill it whenever they want to (for emphasis or anything else). When it occurs (orthographically) between two consonants (as in trg, vrt or prst), it is pronounced [@r].

4. When voiced non-sonorant consonants appear before unvoiced consonants or at the end of a word, they are pronounced unvoiced. Similarly, when unvoiced consonants appear before voiced non-sonorant consonants, they are pronounced voiced.

First of all, note that /tS)/ is pronounced [dZ)] before voiced consonants - similarly /ts)/ as [dz)] - and that phonemic /dZ)/ only appears in some loanwords (such as d?em 'jam, marmalade'). Also, the rule does not apply for the consonants /f v x/; note that /v/ is essentially a sonorant in Slovene (most sources of Slovene phonemics categorise it as such), and that /f/ does not have a pair because it is a 'loan-sound'.**** /x/, actually, is pronounced as [G] in appropriate environments, but the concept of a voiced velar fricative is very probably something much too complicated for people who write books on Slovene phonology.***** In short, it really isn't important.

****An interesting story here is the origin of the Slovene surname Leban - it derives from the name whose English cognate is Phillip, but since old Slovene had no /f/, the first syllable was simply omitted.
*****Experts for Slovene aren't really linguistical experts, actually, not even in something as simple as phonology. The other day I tried to explain the concept of the Arabic glottal stop being phonemic to my Slovene teacher, and it proved a more or less futile task. However, she corrects inaccurately pronounced /v/'s with terrifying strictness.

Also, note that stress is irregular in Slovene, so you just have to learn it. It mostly falls on the penultimate syllable; when it doesn't, I'll indicate it with an acute over the vowel, replaced with a circumflex if it is /E/ or /O/. (As an afterthought, I'll mark them with circumflexes when they are stressed, always.) (The only good thing about Slovene stress is that /e o/ [e o] are never non-stressed, which simplifies things. Somewhat. Some linguists also seem to claim that /@/ is never stressed, but you shouldn't believe them.)

And now, on to the serious stuff. We shall begin with something simple enough, which are Personal Pronouns.

1.3. Personal Pronouns - Osebni zaimki

Whether you are inclined to believe it or not, Slovene does have personal pronouns for more than two persons, and they aren't really all that hard. In this lesson, the nominative forms will be cited (the others will come in subsequent lessons, together with all the five (yes, five) other cases).

There are singular forms:
jaz - I
ti - you
?n/?na/?no - he/she/it

(There are three genders in Slovene, of course - masculine, feminine and neuter.)

And there are plural forms:
mi - we
vi - you (pl)
?ni/?ne/?na - they(masc)/they(fem)/they(neut)

And there are Dual forms: 8)
midva/midve - we two
vidva/vidve - you two
?nadv?/?nidv?/?nidv? - they two
Note the masculine/feminine distinction in the first and second person dual, which is quite cool, and the masculine/feminine/neuter distinction in the third person dual, which is even cooler. (EDIT: I've only just realised that the secondary stress in the third person dual forms makes the final e's pronounced as [e], which shouldn't bother you. Primary stress is still on ?.)

Learn these pronouns, and learn them well! Once you get to know a bit more Slovene, you will learn that they are really not used all that much, but they are good to know.

1.4. Some Notes on the Dual - Nekaj pripomb o dvojini

The Dual is one of the perhaps most widely known, and arguably one of the most beautiful, features of Slovene.****** It occurs as a grammatical number everywhere a grammatical number should (in an IE language at least) - in nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Well, yes, it is difficult to grasp, but nothing beats the fact that your language distinguishes whether you were on a romantic dinner with just one person - or, well, several. ('We had a romantic dinner yesterday' is just too ambiguous, really...)

This lesson's Vocabulary includes personal pronouns and the following (colloquial) greetings:
?ivjo! (Hello!)
Adijo! (Goodbye!)
D?bro jutro! (Good morning!)
Dober dan! (Good day!) Note that the <e> in dober is a schwa. This is the most common greeting you'll hear, ofter contracted just to dan.
Dober več?r! (Good evening!)

And the following phrases:
Hvala. (thank [you])
Prosim. (please - in all senses of the word)
Ni za kaj. (you're welcome) Colloquially, you'll hear [ni za kE_"j].

In the next lesson, we will take a look at the multitude of different declensions nouns have, how to distinguish those same nouns' grammatical gender, and some basic verbs.

******It would be closely followed by the fact that there are bunch of different ways in which to curse your neighbour, including some neat non-subject ones.

(Sorry for the lack of the hačeks in the post title. It looks really horrible, but the other option (with codes) is even more horrible.)
Last edited by Cathbad on Tue Feb 28, 2006 9:57 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Post by Klaivas »

Hvala lepa! The pronunciation guide is nice. I now know how to pronounce <h> :mrgreen:

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Post by Gomer Kyle »

Looking forward to this! Keep it coming. And one thing you could maybe do is to put the ****'ed things at the bottom of the section - keeps me from having to scroll all the way up and down (something that I hate doing without a mouse).


Thanks!
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Post by Oric »

I like it. I don't plan on learning Slovene, but it's a language I don't know much about, and I'll definitely keep an eye on this.

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Post by Anotae »

Nice :D I'm already looking forward to your next lesson but don't worry if it takes some time to make them as that usually improves quality.

My first question: since the first and second person dual pronouns only distinguish masc/fem, which one do you use for a pair of one male and one female? Based on other IE languages I'd guess the masculine form is used but Slovene could be an exception
[i]BendaÞ nousfakedhi ðaekkok, hake nousfaki taunexxok bottok. Nak Þezépuf, zep houpike. Nousfak tegassok bottok.[/i]
The hunter who chases two rabbits misses them both. If you must fail, fail splendidly. Hunt two tigers.

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Post by Cathbad »

-Klaivas- wrote:Hvala lepa! The pronunciation guide is nice. I now know how to pronounce <h> :mrgreen:
Welcome.
My first question: since the first and second person dual pronouns only distinguish masc/fem, which one do you use for a pair of one male and one female? Based on other IE languages I'd guess the masculine form is used but Slovene could be an exception
You've guessed correctly. It's no exception, really.
Looking forward to this! Keep it coming. And one thing you could maybe do is to put the ****'ed things at the bottom of the section - keeps me from having to scroll all the way up and down (something that I hate doing without a mouse).
That would also save me the trouble of packing together seven asterisks at once, which looks quite revolting, so I'll restructure the post a bit.

And the next lesson will probably come on Thursday evening (CET), for your information. It'll cover gender differences in nouns, together with the basic three declensions; some basic verbal morphology; and the genitive case.

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Post by aardwolf »

I'll definitely be following this thread!

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Post by Mecislau »

midva/midve - we two
vidva/vidve - you two
?nadv?/?nidv?/?nidv? - they two
Question - why are these considered dual pronouns? I mean, clearly the first half comes from the plural pronouns, and the second half is from the pan-Slavic "dva" = two. Or is "two" no longer pronounced dva/dve in Slovenian?

In other words, how is midva anytime different than the English "us two"? The latter certainly isn't considered dual...

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Post by Drydic »

:moves to Slovenia's Adriatic coast:

I may have found it.
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Post by Cathbad »

Maknas wrote:
midva/midve - we two
vidva/vidve - you two
?nadv?/?nidv?/?nidv? - they two
Question - why are these considered dual pronouns? I mean, clearly the first half comes from the plural pronouns, and the second half is from the pan-Slavic "dva" = two. Or is "two" no longer pronounced dva/dve in Slovenian?

In other words, how is midva anytime different than the English "us two"? The latter certainly isn't considered dual...
Two is still 'dva/dve', but you cannot speak about two persons without using 'midva' forms, while in English, you can use 'us' instead of 'us two', anytime. Furthermore, the inflected forms are different. Compare:
He saw us [John and me]. / He saw us two.
Videl nas je. (pl) / Videl naju je. (dual)

Actually, the 'naju' (accusative of 'midva') is a so-called 'leaning form' (naslonska oblika); the full form is, actually, najudva and is only used for emphasis, when the word order is turned around a bit:
Videl je najudva.

(Note that, however tempted a native Croatian or Serbian speaker might be to use it, nasdva* is not possible, in no circumstances at all.)

And I just noticed that I forgot to explain the pronunciation of <l>... which is just inexcusable... :oops: I'll fix it.
:moves to Slovenia's Adriatic coast:

I may have found it.
Sadly, there's only 20 and something kilometres of it, so you might get bored quite soon.

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Post by chris-gr »

Cathbad, this is a great therad. Could I ask you for one little thing? After you're finished with the Grammar, please post some things about onomastics, that' d be great! :)
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Post by Echobeats »

I wonder if Janko will contribute...
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—Stephen R. Anderson

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Post by Cathbad »

chris-gr wrote:Cathbad, this is a great therad. Could I ask you for one little thing? After you're finished with the Grammar, please post some things about onomastics, that' d be great! :)
No problem... :D (I'll definitely include some snippets before, as the Grammar will, probably, take quite a while.)

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Post by Cathbad »

This is two days early, but since I've found out that it's no use studying for tomorrow's Anthropology essay, I ended up writing this. Hope you don't mind. :)

Lesson 2

2.1. Nouns and their gender

As many other languages, Slovene has grammatical genders. Three of them:

-masculine (mo?ki spol)
-feminine (?enski spol)
-neuter (srednji spol - literally 'middle gender')

One might think they can be usually guessed quite nicely when you know the following rules:

-most nominative forms of masculine nouns end in a consonant (kor?k 'step', vrt 'garden', izdajalec 'traitor')
-most feminine nouns end in -a (lipa 'linden tree', miza 'table', izdajalka 'feminine traitor')
-most neuter nouns end in either -o (m?sto 'city', ljudstvo 'folk, nation') or -e (tele 'calf' (the four-legged one), s?nce 'sun').

However, it's really not so simple. You cannot know, for example, that the word v?jvoda is masculine, and mi? and stvar are feminine... and words ending in -i, such as mami and mo?ki seem to be, if the above rules are followed by the letter, without gender at all. The gender of these words just has to be learned. Exceptions will be noted, of course, as there is no way a non-native speaker may know them - there are no rules - except from context, like observing gender agreement and seeing that, as a mi? 'mouse' will be described as siva, rather than siv, it is actually a feminine noun.*

*The fun really starts when you have to determine the gender of nouns that only exist in the plural. To do this, one has no other way but to assign an adjective to the noun (most often, a demonstrative pronoun, which is a subset of adjectives in Slovene grammar)**, and observe its ending. If it's the same as the plural masculine ending, the noun is masculine - and so on. It's probably needless to say that, in secondary schools, it is quite a frequent way of torture used by Slovene teachers when the need arises.

**Slovene grammar groups words more according to their role in a sentence than according to what they actually are. This leads to somewhat weird supergroups, such as samostalni?ke besede (literally 'noun-like words') - including all sorts of nouns; personal, reflexive, interrogative, indefinite, negative and some relative pronouns; and adjectives used as nouns, named with the really horrible phrase posamostaljena pridevni?ka beseda, literally 'into-noun-transformed adjective-like word'.

2.2. Cases and declensions

Slovene has different noun cases. There are six: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative and instrumental. Note that, with the latter two, a preposition is always needed (they are used after prepositions with a locative or instrumental meaning, respectively).

Nouns decline for these cases, as well as for number (singular, dual, and plural). There are three groups of declensions according to gender:

-the masculine declensions (first, second, and third)
-the feminine declensions (first, second, and third)
-the neuter declension. Thankfully, only one.

For nouns that are 'standard' - which means that their gender can be determined by using the rules mentioned above - the first declension in each gender is used. Note that this declension is also used for some nouns that do not have telltale endings; these will be dealt with later.

Nouns are declined by changing their ending, which usually consists of a vowel, a vowel and a consonant, or nothing. (Standard masculine nouns are seen as having 'zero-ending' in the nominative singular, as they end in a consonant. Standard feminine and neuter nouns end in vowels in their nominative singular; these vowels are in themselves endings.)

(Following a desire not to complicate things too much, I decided to introduce one case per lesson - this holds for their morphological forms as well. In this lesson, the genitive will be introduced (see below for usage).)

In the following declension patterns, the first form in each row is nominative, and the second one genitive.

THE FIRST MASCULINE DECLENSION

SG: kor?k - kor?ka***
DL: koraka - korakov
PL: koraki - korakov

***Note that there are some exceptions, such as m?st 'bridge', where the genitive singular ending is -u, rather than -a; in these cases, the vowel in the genitive ending is accentuated, even in the dual and plural (thus m?st - most?; most?v; most?v). Also, the plural ending is extended with -ov- (most?vi and not *m?sti.)

THE FIRST FEMININE DECLENSION

SG: lipa - lipe
DL: lipi - lip
PL: lipe - lip

THE NEUTER DECLENSION

SG: m?sto - m?sta
DL: m?sti - m?st
PL: m?sta - m?st

Note, though, that this neuter paradigm does not really hold for all nouns. For most neuter nouns, it doesn't matter whether they end in -o or -e in the nominative - the other endings stay the same. However, some neuter nouns have more or less irregular forms, which are usually called 'extended endings'; here, certain consonants, such as t, n, or even s, are used to 'extend' the endings.

2.3. The genitive case

The genitive case is used (but less frequently as possesive adjectives) to indicate possesion. Thus:
k?nec svet?, where svet is a nice little masculine noun, means 'the end of the world'. Note that the e in konec is a schwa.

The genitive is also used after certain prepositions. The one you should try to remember now is br?z 'without', as in the phrase:
hi?a brez vrta 'a house without a garden'.

ADDED: Another important usage of the genitive is after ordinal numerals from 5 onwards. Thus, for example, if you want to say that there are 5 linden trees somewhere, you do not say *p?t lipe, as would be expected, but pet lip (literally 'five of linden trees').

And the final usage of the genitive, which will be explained more fully in Lesson 3 - once we grasp some basics of syntax - is that it marks the direct object in sentences that are in any way negated.

2.4. The verbal conjugation

Slovene verbs only have one actual verb conjugation, in the present tense. (The verb biti 'to be' actually has two, present and future. Wait until the next lesson.) Other tenses do exist, but they are constructed with participle forms, which are conjugated in a different way.

The present tense may expect either habitual actions, states, or actions that are going on at the moment the sentence is being said.

All verbs in the infinitive - without exception (which is quite rare, so learn to cherish the fact) - end in -ti. Examples are, well, even biti - and also (more) regular verbs like govoriti 'to talk, speak'; čakati 'to wait'; and ljubiti 'to love'.

In the present tense, verbs conjugate for number (singular, dual, plural) and person - first, I, second, you, or third, it. They are formed by clipping off the infinitive ending -ti and adding endings for appropriate persons (first, second, and third, respectively, in the little table below). They are really not all that complicated:

SG: -m, -?, nothing
DL: -va, -ta, -ta
PL: -mo, -te, -jo

Thus, we have:
govor?m - govor?? - govor?;
govor?va - govor?ta - govor?ta;
govor?mo - govor?te - govor?jo.

ADDED: Note that the accent is on the same vowel (and not at the same place syllable-wise) as in the infinitive form (the final vowel in the stem).

Note the important fact that, in Slovene, personal pronouns are usually redundant when the verb has been conjugated for person - except for emphasis. Compare the following two sentences:
Govorim. (I speak.)
Jaz govorim. (Same, but carries the meaning of 'it is I who speak'.)

Note also that, once you will be introduced to all the horrors of aspect (in Slovene vid, literally 'sight'), you'll see that the verbs I've provided are in the perfective aspect. This is not unrelated to the fact that the verbs in the imperfective aspect are almost never used in the present tense, except when it is referring to the future, which is another one of its functions. Actually, you needn't worry very much; the endings are, actually - at least for those verbs that are regular - the same.

Vocabulary:

m?sto - city, town (also used in the sense 'place')
??na - wife, woman
hi?a - house
?lica - street
vrt - garden

graditi - to build
govoriti - to talk, speak
čakati - to wait
ljubiti - to love

br?z - without

Since the appropriate verb was introduced, you can also remember the somewhat useful phrase:
Ljubim t?. (I love you [singular])
Be warned, though, that this sounds really corny, at least in colloquial usage.**** When talking, you should use the rather less strained
Rad te im?m.
which means exactly the same, only in a more... relaxed, non-obligatory, sort of way - and it doesn't strictly imply that you've fallen for somebody. You can even say it to a friend.
Colloquialy, you'll most often hear it as [r@t tE mam]. Note that those not hailing from Ljubljana, Gorenjska or Dolenjska will say [rat] rather than [r@t].

****Much, much more so than in English, believe me. The phrase does not only refer strictly to romantic love - any father saying this to his daughter would probably sooner or later be charged with sexual abuse - but it also implies a sense of obligation, of respect, of caring, of monumental wedding fanfares and birdies singing in the valleys, or even of sexual intercourse in the appropriate context. In short, it's almost inappropriate to be said. To anyone.

Tasks:

1. Decline the feminine noun z?mlja 'earth', in the nominative and genitive of all three numbers. (As -mlj is not allowed as a final cluster, see if you can guess what appears instead.)
2. Decline the neuter noun p?lje 'field', in the nominative and genitive of all three numbers.
3. Conjugate the verb odpr?ti 'to open'.
(4.) Try to translate the phrase 'I'm waiting for you on the street'. The only additional information provided is that na means 'on', that the locative singular of the first feminine declension uses the same ending as the nominative dual of this same declension, and that the verb 'to wait' refers to an object directly, with the object being in the accusative - without the help of a preposition as in English. (The brackets mean this is only for enthusiasts.)
Last edited by Cathbad on Wed Mar 01, 2006 8:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Anotae »

Nice work again :D

My feeble attempts on the exercises:

1.
sg: z?mlja-z?mlje
dl: z?mlji-z?mlj
pl: z?mlje-z?mlj

2
sg: polje-polja
dl: polji-polj
pl: polja.polj

3
sg: odpr?m-odpr??-odpr?
dl: odpr?ve-odpr?ta-odpr?ta
pl: odpr?mo-odpr?te-odpr?jo

4 (apparently I'm an enthusiast)
čakam t? na ?lici
[i]BendaÞ nousfakedhi ðaekkok, hake nousfaki taunexxok bottok. Nak Þezépuf, zep houpike. Nousfak tegassok bottok.[/i]
The hunter who chases two rabbits misses them both. If you must fail, fail splendidly. Hunt two tigers.

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Post by Klaivas »

1.
zemlja - zemlje
zemlji - zemlje?
zemlje - zemlje?

2.
polje - polja
polji - polj
polja - polj

3.
odprem - odpre? - odpre
odpreva - odpreta - odpreta
odpremo - odprete - odprejo

4.
čakam te na ulici

I like the exercises :mrgreen: They're hard, but not too hard.

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Post by Cathbad »

Perfectly correct, except for:

Anotae: first person dual is odpreva. Also note that, when conjugating, the ? opens into ? (I've no idea why). It's still accentuated though.

And the horrible genitive of zemlja is zemelj, with the inserted 'e' being a schwa. This almost always happens to break invalid final clusters (such as mlj) in such situations. Try applying the same to ??mlja 'bread roll'.

LESSON 2 - Supplement

Some more useful phrases you should try to learn:

Kje je... (Where is...)
Kdaj je... (When is...)

I'll cover the typical answers in a later lesson.

Try to figure out the following phrases by yourself:
a) Do you speak English?
b) I don't speak Slovene.
Knowing that no special question particles are used,* the word order is not switched around, and that the negational particle for all verbs is ne. Also, the following:
slov?nsko - Slovene
angl??ko - English

*At least not in informal Slovene. In formal environments, the particle ali (very much like, if not identical to, Arabic هل 'hal') is used to mark yes/no questions, at the beginning of them. In colloquial, this is usually contracted to a, and used for emphasis.

(Note also that I've added a use for the genitive I've forgotten, and explained some accent problems which spring up when verbs are being conjugated.)

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Post by Anotae »

Good to see I did quite well with the exercises. I just seem to be unable to tell <a> and <e> apart as I quite often confuse them even while typing in Finnish :| And I'll second what Klaivas (I hope you dont mind me dropping those dashes in your nick, writing them in the middle of a sentence that feels too weird) said about the exercises, I like them too 8) Having said that I had to try the two new sentences:

a) Govor?? angl??ko?
b) Ne govor?m slov?nska

Also, when asking kdaj je are the two /j/'s pronounced separately or do they fuse into /j:/ like they tend to do if I try to pronounce those words?
[i]BendaÞ nousfakedhi ðaekkok, hake nousfaki taunexxok bottok. Nak Þezépuf, zep houpike. Nousfak tegassok bottok.[/i]
The hunter who chases two rabbits misses them both. If you must fail, fail splendidly. Hunt two tigers.

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Post by Cathbad »

slov?nsko, not -a. :)

And the two j's actually do fuse, I think, phonetically at least. However, this is not a rule for non-sonorants; stops and fricatives are always pronounced separately. A textbook example is oddati [Oddati] 'to give (away), to submit'.

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Post by Klaivas »

Govori? angle?ko?
Ne govorim slovensko

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Post by Anotae »

Cathbad wrote:slov?nsko, not -a :)
Fine, I wasn't too sure about that one. The reason for my choice of form was this extract from the previous lesson:
Cathbad wrote:And the final usage of the genitive, which will be explained more fully in Lesson 3 - once we grasp some basics of syntax - is that it marks the direct object in sentences that are in any way negated.
So I guess I'll wait until lesson 3 to find out what that really means
[i]BendaÞ nousfakedhi ðaekkok, hake nousfaki taunexxok bottok. Nak Þezépuf, zep houpike. Nousfak tegassok bottok.[/i]
The hunter who chases two rabbits misses them both. If you must fail, fail splendidly. Hunt two tigers.

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Post by Cathbad »

It doesn't really matter, because, in this case, slovensko is an adverb. (However, if it were used as an into-noun-transformed adjective-like word, the form would be slovenskega. It, however, is not; the closest you can get is
ne govor?m slov?nskega jezika
'I don't speak the Slovene language'. But this is an adjective.

And -Klaivas-, you are indeed correct.

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Post by Klaivas »

Is the plural suffix for the 2nd person used in polite situations? I've noticed in one of my resources that "Can you speak English?" is "Ali govorite angle?ko?"

Also, from the previous lesson, when there are illegal consonant clusters, is <e> inserted between the illegal consonants (assuming "lj" and "nj" are classed as letters)?

Hvala :mrgreen:

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Post by Cathbad »

-Klaivas- wrote:Is the plural suffix for the 2nd person used in polite situations? I've noticed in one of my resources that "Can you speak English?" is "Ali govorite angle?ko?"
Actually, it is, I just wanted someone else to introduce it. :)

Polite situations are classified as:
-children talking to adults;
-adults talking to adults they don' know;
-talking to a person in a position superior to you (such as a teacher or director). In short, use the 'ti' forms for children and friends, and the 'vi' forms anywhere else.

Also, you should drop the ali when talking. It sounds really formal.
Also, from the previous lesson, when there are illegal consonant clusters, is <e> inserted between the illegal consonants (assuming "lj" and "nj" are classed as letters)?
Well actually, these are legal clusters (lj and nj are not classified as letters, as they are often broken up in inflecting). There are really not all that many illegal ones (even monstrosities such as -ck [ts)k]). In any case, remember that mlj becomes melj [m@lj] word-finally.

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Post by Cathbad »

LESSON 3

3.1. Objects

Slovene verbs take two types of objects - direct and indirect (I think), which are marked by the accusative (or genitive - remember?) and dative cases, respectively.

All objects tend to follow the verb. If a personal pronoun is used for emphasis, however, the indirect object tends to precede the verb.

The dative and accusative forms in the declensions you've already been introduced to are as follows:

THE FIRST MASCULINE DECLENSION

SG: (kor?k - koraka) - koraku - kor?k (zero ending)
DL: (koraka - korakov) - kor?koma - koraka
PL: (koraki - korakov) - korakom - korake

What must be noted is the very important fact that animate nouns take an extended -a ending in the singular accusative; thus brat 'brother' becomes brata, j?len [jEl@n] 'deer' becomes jel?na, etc. - thus, essentially the same as the genitive.

THE FIRST FEMININE DECLENSION

SG: (lipa - lipe) - lipi - lipo
DL: (lipi - lip) - lipama - lipi
PL: (lipe - lip) - lipam - lipe

THE NEUTER DECLENSION

SG: (m?sto - m?sta) - mestu - mesto[/i]
DL: (m?sti - m?st) - mestoma - mesti
PL: (m?sta - m?st) - mestom - mesta

You can notice some regularities that can facilitate learning in there, especially regarding the masculine and neuter declension.

3.2. Singular Personal Pronoun Declension

Lesson 1 introduced you to personal pronouns; this one will introduce you to their declensions, but only in the singular (as of yet).
Let us consider them in the four cases we have covered so far:
jaz - mene - meni - mene
ti - tebe - tebi - tebe
on - njega - njemu - njega
ona - nje - njej - njo
ono - njega - njemu - njega

However, these forms are the so-called 'extended forms', which are generally only used for emphasis. More often, you'll both hear and use the contracted forms:
jaz - me - mi - me
ti - te - ti - te
on - ga - mu - ga
ona - je - ji - jo
ono - ga - mu - ga

The only form that cannot be predicted from the extended forms is noted in bold.

3.3. The verb 'to be'

The verb to be (infinitive biti) has a number of functions in Slovene: it can function as a copula, but is - much more importantly - used as an auxilliary verb for participle forms, which are used to construct all non-present tenses. They will be covered in Lesson 4.

The verb has two basic forms, one used for the present and one used for the future. The one used for the future belongs to the group of dati-irregular verbs (see 3.4.). The one used for the present is given below:
SG: sem - si - je
DL: sva - sta - sta
PL: (Challenge! Have a try at figuring out the plural forms by yourself. Hint: the cluster sj is not allowed word initially.)

3.4. The first group of irregular verbs

The verb dati 'to give' is very useful for practicing direct and indirect objects. Its conjugation is a bit irregular:

dam - da? - da
dava - dasta - dasta
damo - daste - dajo*

The verbs that decline the same are the verbs jesti 'to eat', vedeti 'to know', iti 'to go', and the future form of the verb 'to be'. The first person masculine singular forms of these verbs are quite irregular if we regard the infinitive: they are jem, vem, grem, bom. For the moment, you should rather memorise them than the infinitive forms (which, however, are also important to know with regard to participle formation).

*All other verbs of this group should have the ending -do in the third person plural, but the forms with -jo are more widely used colloquially. The form dado* is considered obsolete, and the others are nearing it, but are still used, especially in writing (you'll only very rarely hear them in speech).

Vocabulary:

izdajalec - traitor
izdajalka - traitoress
starec - old man
starka - old woman
prodajalec - salesman, clerk
(Can you figure out the female form?)
drev? - tree. Warning: irregular declension - the stem is extended with -es-; thus drevo - drev?sa etc.
čas - time
avto - car. Warning: masculine noun.
?vtobus - bus
vlak - train
ptič - bird
pes - dog. Warning: pronounced [p@s]. The schwa disappears when declining.
konj - horse
ogenj - fire
streha - roof
cesta - road

videti - to see. Warning: irregular conjugation - the e in the stem is changed into i.
izdati - to betray; can also be used in the sense 'to disclose information' (as in Izdal sem mu, kaj si mislim 'I let him know what I think'); and can also mean 'to publish', especially books.
And all the irregular verbs.

Tasks:

1. Decline (from nominative to accusative, in all three numbers of course):
  • izdajalec
  • izdajalka
  • drev?
  • avto

2. Conjugate:
  • videti
  • vedeti
  • jesti

3. Translate:
  • I give her a horse.
  • I don't see the house.

(4.) Decline:
  • cerkev ["ts)erk@u_^] 'church', feminine noun


(Oh, and try to make the size of your answers something like 1-2, so that the others don't see them. They could be tempted to check their own, as our math teacher says.)

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