This post is the 8th instalment of the Welsh leg of my current Celtic challenge. It covers chapter 7 of Colloquial Welsh. For earlier instalments, please see Welsh Archives – Language Miscellany I’ve used bold type below to highlight words affected by mutations, SM after words that induce soft mutation and SM before words affected…… Continue reading Welsh challenge (8)
Tag: Tense: future
Irish challenge (7)
This post is the 7th instalment of the Irish leg of my current Celtic challenge. It covers chapter 6 of Teach Yourself Irish. For previous instalments, please see https://languagemiscellany.com/tag/irish/ It covers: past, present and future of tá time expressions adjectives weather nouns other words and phrases Mutation is indicated below using bold type. Past, present,…… Continue reading Irish challenge (7)
Irish challenge (5)
This post is the 5th instalment of the Irish leg of my current Celtic challenge. It covers chapter 4 of Teach Yourself Irish. For previous instalments, please see https://languagemiscellany.com/tag/irish/ The demonstrative seo To introduce a person or present a thing, use seo (‘this’) without a verb:Seo Tomás (‘this is Thomas’). In Munster and Connacht, a…… Continue reading Irish challenge (5)
‘Syntactic doubling’ of Italian consonants
Single Italian consonants become pronounced as double (long) consonants (‘geminates’) if they follow: a stressed vowel some short unstressed words The Italian name for this process is raddoppiamento syntattico (‘syntactic (re)doubling’), or sometimes rafforzamento fonosyntactico (‘phonosyntactic stregntening’). ‘Syntactic’ refers to the fact that the doubling crosses word boundaries, unlike in word-internal geminate consonants as in [gattto] ‘cat’…… Continue reading ‘Syntactic doubling’ of Italian consonants
Names for some Portuguese tenses differ between Portugal and Brazil
Portuguese grammars in Brazil and in Portugal have different names for some tenses (table 1). Table 1. Names for some Portuguese tenses In PortugalIn BrazilEnglishIndicativo futuroIndicativo future do presentoFuture (indicative)CondicionalIndicativo future do préteritoConditionalConjuntivoSubjuntivoSubjunctiveInfinitivo flexiandoInfinitivo pessoalInflected (or personal) infinitiveInfinitivo não flexiandoInfinitivo impessoalInfinitive The English labels given in the right-hand column are from Willis (1971). Willis (1971)…… Continue reading Names for some Portuguese tenses differ between Portugal and Brazil
Borrowing verb forms from another verb
Sometimes, an inflected form of a verb was originally an inflected form of another verb. For example, went, the past tense form of the English verb go was originally the past tense of the now obsolescent verb wend. This phenomenon is called suppletion. One striking example of suppletion occurs in the verb meaning ‘go’ in…… Continue reading Borrowing verb forms from another verb
Future tense and psychological distance
When a verb refers to the future, some languages require explicit marking of that fact. A recent paper presents evidence that companies in countries using those languages are slow in reporting that their goodwill has lost value. The paper suggests that this is because speakers of those languages perceive the future as psychologically more distant…… Continue reading Future tense and psychological distance
English Grammar Day
I went along yesterday to an event at University College London (UCL) called English Grammar Day. This was the first time I have been, though it has been held for the last 10 years. The event seems to be aimed mainly at school teachers and academics. I give below summaries of the 6 talks, which…… Continue reading English Grammar Day
Language sketch: Danish, Swedish and Norwegian
Here is a summary of some things I learnt about the Mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) a couple of years ago, when I was carrying out a self-imposed language challenge. http://languagemiscellany.com/2021/09/scandinavian-challenge-how-did-it-go/ I am commenting here only on those 3 languages, not their relatives, the insular Scandinavian Languages (Icelandic and Faroese). For an…… Continue reading Language sketch: Danish, Swedish and Norwegian
A language with only 3 verbs?
Recent press reports talked about a language that has only 3 verbs. Researchers claim that this language (Jingulu) may form a basis for creating a language that leads to better communication between humans and artificial intelligence systems. The basis for these reports is a paper in the journal Frontiers in Physics: JSwarm: A Jingulu-Inspired Human-AI-Teaming…… Continue reading A language with only 3 verbs?