Hello and Goodbye

English / Polish / Czech / Slovak

Hello / Dzień dobry / Dobrý den / Dobrý deň
*dobry = good, den=day

Goodbye / Do widzenia / Na shledanou / Do videnia
*do = until, videnia = see (like video)

Slavic cases - Learning tips II

The premise of cases is simple: you add different endings to nouns to show their function in the sentence. In the Western Slavic languages, there are six cases, namely:

Nominative (subject)
Accusative (direct object)
Dative (indirect object)
Genitive (possessive)
Locative (place)
Instrumental (thing used to do something)
Vocative (for addressing people)

Q: What's so hard about that?

There are lots of endings.

Q: I thought you said there were six.

There are six singular endings and six plural endings (i.e. 12 endings) for each declension.

Q: What's that mean?

Different nouns have different endings. There are a handful of really common patterns but lots of exceptions.

Q: What?

The word for horse might use different endings from the word for car from the word for cabinet...

Q: Why?

It's easier that way.

Q: What?

Pardon me... easier to pronounce. Ask the next person you meet what he or she is doing tonight. If you're like most people, you aren't going to make it easy for them by saying "What are you going to do tonight?" You'll probably say, "Whatcha gonna do t'night?" Looking at the declension tables, you can see some commonalities that indicate there were probably one or two sets of endings to start with. Unfortunately, they got changed into lots of different patterns according to what seemed easy to say hundreds if not thousands of years ago, and while the changes made sense at the time, they don't always even make sense to native speakers of these languages, which means you're going to have to learn them, because you won't know them intuitively.

The good news, though, is that lurking underneath, there do seem to be a few standard sets of endings. While you can't just use them, if you look at irregular declensions you'll notice, over time, little connections that make the memorizing easier. But, no, the memorizing never goes away.

Incidentally, there are languages where instead of having to learn either numerous tables or hypercomplicated sound change rules, you can in theory just add the appropriate meaningful endings to words. Such languages are called "agglutinative" because you "glue" the words together. Unfortunately, most of them (Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, Mongolian, the Turkic languages) do require you to learn sound change rules, if not hypercomplicated ones. It seems that nobody likes to keep their endings pure and simple when they actually have to speak a language, however nice such systems seem on paper.

Slavic Cases - Learning tips I

One of the most difficult elements in learning the Slavic languages is dealing with all the noun declensions. Here are some questions you may have:

What's a noun declension?
A noun declension lists the forms a noun takes according to case and number.

What's a case?
Case means, roughly speaking, that you stick endings on nouns to show what they're doing in the sentence.

In English, there is only one distinct case, the possessive. Take the following phrase:

Wilbur's boat sank in the ocean.

The "'s" ending makes Wilbur "possessive."

The other two nouns, "boat" and "ocean" don't have any special endings, so we have to figure out what they're doing by 1) where they are in the sentence and 2) context. In the Slavic languages, that isn't the case. There's an ending for every situation they thought of (there are six of them). Let's see if we can link up English and Slavic to make this make sense.

Imagine that we tightened up the English system a little. We're going to switch things around like this:

Subjects end in "a". Wilbur's boata sank in the ocean.

Possessives end in "i". Wilburi boata sank in the ocean.

Places where things happen start with "o" and end in "e". Wilburi boata sank in the o oceane.

Oops! We don't need that "in the" any more; the o...e takes care of it. So:

Wilburi boata sank o oceane.

Can you read that? A little tricky? But I'll bet you get it. Try these and see:

1. Johni frienda is o worke.

2. Jacobi teachera is o Peteri mansione.

You should have guessed...

1. John's friend is at work.

2. Jacob's teacher is at Peter's mansion.

The second one was a little tricky, but it should make sense.

This system seems kind of funny, but not too difficult, no? Let's add a few more things:

Direct objects end in "en". Johna saw Wilburi boaten.

Things you use to do other things end in "an". Johna saw Wilburi boaten telescopean (with a telescope).

Indirect objects end in "e" (but without an "o" in front). Boba gave boaten Wilbure.

Lastly, if you want to talk to someone, you stick an "o" on their name so they know you're talking to them, not about them. Johno, did Boba give boaten Wilbure? (John, did Bob give a boat to Wilbur?)

I know this is hard, and you may right about now be wondering if I'm completely mad, but let's try the following passage before that discussion takes off:

Boba gave boaten Wilbure. Wilbura thanked Boben. Wilbura put boaten o watere. Wilbura liked boaten very much. Johna saw boaten. Johna saw boaten o watere. Johna said Davide, "Davido, Boba gave boaten Wilbure." Davida saw boaten. Davida saw boaten telescope-an.

Let's mix it up a little:

Boba Wilbure boaten gave. Wilbura Boben thanked. O watere put Wilbura boaten. Very much Wilbura liked boaten. Johna saw Wilburi boaten o watere and Davide said, "Davido, Boba boaten Wilbure gave!" Davida boaten telescope-an saw.

Let's summarize our rules one more time:
subject = "a" / direct object = "en" / indirect object = "e" / place = "o" + "e" / possessive = "i" / case for using things = "an" / case for addressing people = "o"

Now look at the passage starting "Boba Wilbure..." again. Following these rules, you should be able to make sense of it (I hope). If so, congratulations... not only can you use cases, but you know the case endings for feminine singular nouns in Polish.

That's right. If you take authentic feminine singular words (whose stem ends in a consonant), you pretty much know what to do to use them in Polish sentences.

Pretty easy, huh?

You knew there had to be more to it, didn't you?

Article 2 on cases has the messy stuff. But before you dig in, I want you to take another look at this, because this little game represents the fondest hopes of what the logic of cases is all about. Furthermore, if you keep it as your foundation and build on it, you'll have the tools for making the unquestionably complex Slavic case system a little more user friendly.

Slavic sounds and the alphabet - learning tips

In studying the Slavic languages, there are a several major issues that come up. Here are a few, along with suggestions to make your studies easier:

1. Sounds. The Slavic languages distinguish a large variety of sounds; not only do they have sounds that we don't, they sometimes are more precise about ranges of sounds that we lump together.

Suggestions: You will absolutely need recorded materials to learn a good accent for these languages. As important, you will need the patience to listen in order to distinguish sounds that we run together. Listening with an ear acclimated to these languages, you will hear things very differently from when you're just beginning. That said, we do have a lot of the sounds, or similar sounds, in English. The problem is that we use context, not careful listening, to distinguish them in everyday life. Before beginning the Slavic languages, it wouldn't hurt to tune your English ear. Try reading aloud the following words, focusing on the italicized parts, and you'll be in a better position to notice some of the distinctions made by different Slavic languages.

zh/sh : measue / pressure
j/ch : jump / chump
dj/tch : bridges / britches
sh/ch : ship / chip
shch: fish-chucker
u/yu : coo / cue
ah/ya : say "ah" / see "ya"

These sounds don't occur in all the Slavic languages, nor do the cover all the sounds that do. But if you practice with them, you should be a little better focused on your listening, which will help you understand distinctions between sounds that might otherwise escape you.

Writing. The Slavic languages either use the Cyrillic alphabet (commonly thought of as the Russian alphabet) or use so many diacritics (special markings) on our alphabet that it looks equally foreign. What's worse, there isn't a unified system for the marks.

Suggestions: This program limits itself to three languages from the Western Slavic branch, Czech, Slovak and Polish. While all three use different diacritics, within the languages there is a sense to the marks. Within limits.

Many programs simply give rough pronunciation equivalents for each accented character. A few insist that there is an underlying fundamental behind each mark and that if you will only learn the rules and exceptions it will all be clear. The best strike this compromise: the different accents should have a uniform impact on the letters they are placed upon, but don't, at least not that is perceptible to someone without degrees in historical linguistics and phonetics. On the other hand, sometimes it's fairly clear what an accent does. Whatever experts perceive, for you, learning on your own, figuring out what an accent mark does will sometimes be easy, sometimes not so easy. Whenever you can find a common thread that makes sense to you, stick to it. But if you see none, do not twist yourself into knots to figure out what you're doing wrong, but learn the letter with the accent as an entity unto itself. In that way, you'll simplify your task wherever possible, but without frustrating yourself over issues that, frankly, the average Pole, Czech or Slovak may not ever give a thought to in using the language.

multilingua.info's Czech/Slovak/Polish weblog

Welcome to multilingua.info's Slavic languages blog for learning Czech, Slovak and Polish. By following the posts (in chronological order) on this site, you can progressively learn how to speak all three of these languages at once.

These three languages belong to the Western branch of the Slavic family. We hope one day to add a second Slavic program including Russian. For now, however, we believe it best to start with languages that use the familiar Roman alphabet, as the differences between English and the Slavic languages will pose enough complications without there being an extra script to master as well. We likewise feel it best to stick to three languages from the same branch so that the student can focus on similarities between languages, rather than getting swamped by differences.

A word about the structure of multilingua.info: For convenience of content creation, few interfaces are surpassed in ease of use by the free blogger.com service. This site uses blogger.com to generate all short items. The items on this weblog are of two varieties: 1) selections unique to the weblog presented for general interest
2) short items associated with multilingua.info's more structured learning programs

multilingua.info's Slavic languages program is still in a very early stage of development. Though not available as of this posting, a Czech/Slovak/Polish page is coming that will offer a more structured approach to the individual items on this weblog. Stay tuned.