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Tim’s Catalan Book (Team Caesar)

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Crush
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 Message 25 of 60
01 February 2015 at 4:49am | IP Logged 
Meddysong wrote:
I'm not sure why "Obelix està sempre preparat per deíxar-ho tot i seguir" takes one form whilst "és repectat dels seus homes i temut pels seus enemics", though. They both seem equivalent to me. Maybe that's something which will become apparent over time.
There are a couple reasons i can think of for this, one is that more permanent traits tend to take ser in Catalan (though there's a bit of flexibility). Another is that the first one could be considered a trait and the second a passive construction (something is done to them, ie they're being respected).

Meddysong wrote:
- I'm not yet sure on the placement of pronouns with imperatives. It strikes me that they come after ("Mireu-lo!") but I've found an example "L'agafarem!". Maybe the first-person plural behaves differently ...
Yeah, unlike Italian and it's random use of the subjunctive with Lei, Catalan always puts it afterwards (except in negative commands). The second sentence here is actually the future. -em is stressed, like -ar in Spanish. So this is pronounced "agafarém". The imperative would be "agafem" (also stressed on the last syllable).

Meddysong wrote:
- There seems to be an equivalent to the French construction "ne ... pas", in this case "no ... res", as set out above and in "Mentre en Panoramix, el nostre druidà, ens preparí la poció, els Romans no poden fer-nos res."
Meddysong wrote:
I'm confused now seeing pas in "No crec pas". I'll be keeping my eye out for more examples of this.
I was going to mention this, but it looks like you already figured it out. "no ... pas" is similar to the French construction, except here it's more to stress/contrast the "negativeness" of the sentence. Also, the s is pronounced, unlike in French. It's not necessary, though. "Res" means nothing. Catalan used to favor the double negative, but it seems like it's starting to become less common. Eg. "Jo tampoc no l'he vista" (I haven't seen her either) and "Mai no canviarà" (He/She will never change).

Meddysong wrote:
It also seems to lend itself to obligation when expressed "h- + de", as in "Haig de entregar molts menhirs" and "No hem de comptar".
Spanish also has this construction, but it's a bit more formal. It's much more common in Catalan.

Meddysong wrote:
That i-ending on pugui is interesting to me as is the stem change. I'm anticipating a subjunctive in this sort of structure and my brain believes this to be poder, so I'll be keeping my eyes open to see what that verb looks like in other forms. I've also noticed that the form of the h-verb (I don't know what the infinitive is but would guess haver) has swapped what was a v in other forms for a u in its future form here. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, given that French does the same.
It might help to look at the past participle of poder: pogut. Also, haver turns into hagut (he hagut de...). Also, it's worth noting that haig can only be used in this haig de... construction, not as the present perfect (ie. you can't say "haig pogut", you have to use "he pogut").

Meddysong wrote:
It seems that the h-verb plays a "there is/are" role ("ha") and that there's a pronoun ("hi", reminding me of French "y") to indicate location.
Hi is essentially equivalent to the French ... adverb? ... y and Italian's ci.

Meddysong wrote:
A-ha. I'd picked up on per being used in the context of purpose (ie for) but also seen it used passively (ie by). It seems that the way to distinguish whether we mean "for us" or "by us" is to go from using "per" on its own to "per a".
Nowadays, the distinction between per and per a in many places is roughly equivalent to Spanish's por/para. In the past and in some areas there is a much more complicated distinction between the two, though. There's a thread about it over at WordReference (and many other places) with lots of different opinions.
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Meddysong
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 Message 26 of 60
01 February 2015 at 10:18am | IP Logged 
Lots for me to digest there, Crush. Thank you for taking the time to type it all up for me.

Before too long I'm going to start formally learning rather than just see what I can pick up from Asterix. So I'll soon know what the persons are, have an idea of verbal conjugations etc. I'm quite looking forward to it!

Quote:
Hi is essentially equivalent to the French ... adverb? ... y and Italian's ci.

I thought adverb too but figured I'd better check or risk getting corrected. The Google hits for "french y" all mention "(adverbial) pronoun", however.

I think I'll do some more Asterix later :)

Edit: In one of those bizarre coincidences in life I've just opened my Comprehensive Grammar at a random page and the first thing that caught my eye was "12.7 THE ADVERBIAL PRONOUN hi". Wowzers!

Edited by Meddysong on 01 February 2015 at 11:50am

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Meddysong
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 Message 27 of 60
01 February 2015 at 12:12pm | IP Logged 
Yay, Asterix is done! Here are my observations:

After Crush kindly explained to me above that "L'agafarem!" is the future rather than an imperative, what's the first thing on my page? "Agafeu-lo, covards!" It's followed by "O us faig devorar al circ, pels lleons!" So now I know what "or" is, I can see "do/make" in 1ps (faig) and can see that it's used in passive constructions of the form "I'll have you -ed", with the agent being introduced by "per".

- Pietat! Pietat! No puc més! | No podria suportar aquests crits in un segon més!

A-ha. "More" = "més".

- Prepararé la pociò davant teu.

There are stressed forms of pronouns then, with "teu" being used for "tu".

- Començo a tenir-ne prou! | No puc més! Prou!

"Prou" = "enough".

- Però si no estic enfadat amb ningú

1ps of "estar" is "estic". We're using "estar" here because it refers to a temporary state rather than permanent characteristic of being an angry person.

- Saps qué et dic ... demà m'afaitaràs

Such a bizarre sentence out of context but I enjoy it. "You know what I'm telling you/you know what I'm saying." Now I know the word for tomorrow. I needed to check up on some other words too during the story,since they appeared on several occasions; potser = maybe; ara = now.

- És que no tinc ganes de traballar!

This may as well be Spanish :) It's nice to be able to register the existence of "tenir ganes" for future use.

- Caldrà que vagi a buscar ingredients al bosc

There were a few variations of "caldrà" and I took them to mean "you need/it's necessary" etc. It's clear as well that the subjunctive in -i that I mentioned earlier is also applying to the 1ps.

- És que ... precisament, lluviàtem contra uns Gals ... - Uns Gals? Quants Gals ... ? - Dos ...

Such a fabulous sequence! Grammatically, it's reinforcement for me of an indefinite plural and I now know how to say "how many?".

- Vaja, vaja

This seems to me "go on, continue", so I'll be keeping an eye out to see whether the subjunctive of "anar" is something along this form and whether the imperative is formed from it.

Super fun! I'll have to get another Asterix soon :)

Edited by Meddysong on 01 February 2015 at 12:14pm

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Ogrim
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 Message 28 of 60
02 February 2015 at 10:29am | IP Logged 
Meddysong wrote:

- És que no tinc ganes de traballar!

This may as well be Spanish :) It's nice to be able to register the existence of "tenir ganes" for future use.


Fun to see your grammar analysis of Asterix. I just wanted to chip in with one piece of information. You are right about "tenir ganes de" being the same as Spanish "tener ganas de". However, "gana" in singular means "hunger", "hambre". So if you say "tinc gana" it means "I am hungry". I mention this because when I first came across it I was confused about the use in singular.
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Meddysong
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 Message 29 of 60
10 February 2015 at 7:01pm | IP Logged 
Hello, again!

I've just finished a Catalan book ... albeit a children's one ... with only 14 pages in it. So it's not even as long as Asterix, which thrashes it handily at a colossal 48 pages.

I must've bought it as a souvenir when Clare and I were in Barcelona for a weekend. I remembered I'd stored it away and decided to locate it and give it a try, which I found very rewarding.

It's already pretty by the cover:



But the best feature is the pop-outs on every page; I'd have loved this if I were a kid:



I enjoyed reading it. The sentence structure was, of course, relatively simple, with lots of use of past forms. There were body parts mentioned (to explain the role of various bits of armour), plus some other basic words, the most of surprising of which to me was that "red" is "vermell". Now that I wouldn't have expected!

I've been reading in a few other languages recently. Having finished the Catalan version of Asterix el Gal I decided to buy the Spanish one for £2 to compare them. I think it's genuinely the case that I find Catalan more intuitive; if there's a Spanish word that I don't know, there's a good likelihood that the Catalan one will be recognisable to me. I'm probably a little bit past the halfway mark, but these books are there to be enjoyed rather than rushed when I use them for learning languages.

I'm probably about two thirds the way through La forma dell'acqua. That's sapping my confidence a little bit because of how impenetrable I find some of the vocab and dialogue. I've done better since deciding to stop reading one chapter in Italian and then read it again in English before repeating the Italian. I now do three chapters in a row in Italian, which takes me away from the stop-start. I feel I'm making progress that way.

I started reading the French version of C.J. Sansom's Dissolution. I'm maybe 100 pages into it. I loved the first ever book that I read in the series (the third) and subsequently bought them all, but this one seems to be slow moving. Clare said the same when she read it in Serbian last year. (I have no idea how she managed to do it in Serbian - she'd only started Croatian about 2.5 years prior!) Still, I find French effortless (there's maybe one word per page that I don't know) and so I can easily dip in and read 40 or 50 pages. That's always good for my confidence.

Edited by Meddysong on 10 February 2015 at 7:04pm

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eyðimörk
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 Message 30 of 60
10 February 2015 at 7:10pm | IP Logged 
That is one awesome pop-out book!
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Meddysong
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 Message 31 of 60
10 February 2015 at 7:16pm | IP Logged 
eyðimörk wrote:
That is one awesome pop-out book!

Yep! I couldn't photograph it because the animation won't be captured, but there's a part where you can make a crusader and his counterpart kick each other!

Oh, related to Catalan:

Quote:
Durant segles, milions de pelegrins han viatjat Jerusalem per adorar els llocs on va viure i morir Jesucrist.


Nearly every past form on that page was of the GO - INFINTIVE variety. Does anybody have any insight as to why the first example takes haver? My thinking is that it's because it's talking about duration (so, imperfective) but then if that's what the author is trying to capture, why not use the -av- form?
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anamsc2
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 Message 32 of 60
10 February 2015 at 7:28pm | IP Logged 
Meddysong wrote:

Oh, related to Catalan:

Quote:
Durant segles, milions de pelegrins han viatjat Jerusalem per adorar els llocs on va viure i morir Jesucrist.


Nearly every past form on that page was of the GO - INFINTIVE variety. Does anybody have any insight as to why the first example takes haver? My thinking is that it's because it's talking about duration (so, imperfective) but then if that's what the author is trying to capture, why not use the -av- form?


In Catalan, the present perfect (han viatjat) is used as the past tense while we're still in that time period, if that makes sense. So, for example, you always use it to refer to something happening "today." In this case, pilgrims traveled and are still traveling to Jerusalem, so since it's still happening we use haver. I hope that makes sense!


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