Re: YART (Was: Re: Inspirational languages)

H. S. Teoh wrote:

| On Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 12:19:06PM +0200, Isaac Penzev wrote:
| > I don't know all the nuances of the *English* verb "to train", so my
| > spontaneous Ru. equivalent to it would be _тренировать_ (back
| > translated "to be a coach"). But then I consult the En-En dictionary
| > and see I am wrong.  That's just a side meaning. We often take
| > *glosses* as *equivalents*, while they are not.
| > So yes, _обучать_ means "to train".
|
| This usage ("to train kids history") is awkward in English, but I guess
| it works in Russian.

Well, if "to train" means "to teach *both* theory and practice", then the
RU. and the EN. semantic fields have too little overlap, but, anyway, that
is USAGE.

| I see. Where are the contexts where чт becomes [St]? I know it does in
| words like что, and I read somewhere that ч has a tendency of
| fricativising in other places as well.

AFAIK, _что_ is the only example of [tS;t] > [St], but [tS;n] often > [Sn]:
_яичница_ [i"iSn;itsV] "fried eggs"
_конечно_ [kV"n;eSnV] "of course". These cases should be learnt as
exceptions.

| > Many RU. verbs are unique wrt "Rection" (prepositional and/or case
| > governing).
|
| That's cool. Almost like Ebisédian. :-) I guess there's no real general
| rule that can be used for deciding which cases go with which verb, and I
| just have to learn them on a case-by-case basis?

Abso-#$%!-lutely. When you stock enough vocabulary, you may figure out
certain regularities, but in general, yes, rection should be learnt by
heart. It may differ even for related words or synonyms, like
_благодарю тебя_ "I thank you" (Acc.) but _я благодарен тебе_ "I am
thankful
to you" (Dat.).
Btw, in Ukrainian both demands Dat.

| OK. So мне нравится говорить по-русски is more appropriate? (Did I
| phrase that right?)

Bingo.

| > To say nothing about slang equivalents to both, for example _Я тащусь
| > от хипхопа._ "I go mad about hiphop".
|
| Тащиться? My dictionary glosses it as "to drag oneself along"?

Exactly.

| Interesting slang...

I can teach you some more! (when we both have time)

| > Exactly so. Plus some archaic idioms that may be used, e.g., ironicly,
| > for example _красна девица_ "a fair maid".
|
| Literally "red maiden"? Funny.

No. Old Russian _красный_ means "beautiful", cf. _Красная площадь_ that is
literally "the Beautiful square", not "the Red square", as we see in the
traditional translation. "Red" was _червленый_ (from _червь_ "worm", like
Portuguese _vermelho_) - still used in Ukrainian (червоний).

| Do all adjectives have a separate short (predicative) form? I almost
| thought хороший was an exception, but then I looked it up and find its
| predicative forms as хорош, хороша, хорошо. Do all neuter short forms
| coincide with the adverbial form?

AFAIK yes for both questions. _Хороша была Татьяна, краше не
было в селе..._
True only for the "qualitative" adjectives, of course. "Relative" adjectives
like _городской_, _каменный_ have no predicative forms.

| T

-- Yitzik