Re: Inspirational languages

H. S. Teoh skrev:
 > On Mon, Jan 15, 2007 at 11:18:05AM +0100, Benct Philip
 > Jonsson wrote:
 >> H. S. Teoh skrev:
 >>
 >>> Я люблю учить русски.
 >> Shouldn't that be _uchit'sja_? (_j_ /j/ != _y_ /i\/ :-)
 >
 > Well, according to my textbook, учить is used for
 > elementary and secondary education, or to adult aquisition
 > of a specific skill, whereas учиться generally
 > refers to higher education, or to mean "to study" without
 > reference to the subject of study.

Ah, that explains. I'm studying at the university although
it's beginners' level.

 > Учить can mean both "to teach" and "to learn", the
 > distinction being drawn by the case of the nouns: "to
 > teach" having the learner in the accusative case and the
 > subject in the dative, whereas "to learn" having the
 > subject in the accusative case (and the learner in the
 > nominative).
 >
 > Having said all this, though, I did make a mistake: the
 > spelling русски is only valid following the prefix
 > по- (e.g., to speak *in Russian*).

Whotsit coming from I wonder? The old locative of a short
adjective perhaps?

 > The correct phrase should be: Я люблю учить
 > русский язык. Well, I hope that's the right
 > expression. :-)

At least я учусь русский язык is what my
teacher keeps saying! :-)

BTW a couple of weeks ago you asked me how _tongue_ and
_язык_ could be cognates.  I never unpacked it for you,
so here goes: it starts from _*dg;n=g;huH_, with a variant
_*dg;n=g;hueH_ in Germanic and a suffixed _*dg;n=g;uHko-_ in
Slavic.  It unpacks like this.

- *dg; -- the initial would be debated.  The traditional account
has _*d-_, but we need something that can become _*t_ in
Germanic
and zero in Slavic.
- *n= -- becomes _*In > *&~ > ja_ in Slavic, but _*un_ in
Germanic.
- *g;

 > Yitzik, please correct me if I'm wrong.
 >
 > <ObConlang> Any other con/natlangs that have such fine
 > distinctions in a verb based just on the case of the
 > nouns, like учить/учиться? </ObConlang>
 >
 >
 >> /BP, who is at approximately the same learning stage as
 >> Teoh...
 > [...]
 >
 > Well, I'm still only 30% through my textbook of 40
 > chapters, and I can't say I've mastered all the material
 > I've gone through so far. I'll probably have to go back
 > and revisit the earlier chapters again later (I've already
 > gone through the first 10 chapters twice 'cos I wasn't
 > picking up enough of the essentials.)

I'm through