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From: Peter Damer <piotrd@KEINEN_SPAM.plo.lublin.pl>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: a simple question
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 19:01:17 +0100
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Chris Croughton wrote on Thursday 06 January 2005 16:04:
> I would sit in an armchair, on a dining chair (without arms). Again,
> it's the enclosing nature of the space which makes the difference, we
> tend to go for the logical rather than a grammatical rule (my German
> teacher in Germany kept saying "Es is nicht logisch!" when we askeed why
> something is a particular gender or whatever).
Well, actually something has crossed my mind - 'IN the armchair [PL]' would
in fact be possible and even more appropriate than 'ON [PL]' if you - often
indeliberately - stress the ampleness of the armchair and - moreover - the
position of the sitter is closer to slouching than sitting 'properly' :)
But not only is it really vague and subtle, it is also so unimportant that
even I don't bother :)
>>>> No wonder English is such a difficult language! :)
>>>
>>> At least the syntax is simpler than German (or Russian -- do you really
>>> want six inflected cases?)...
>>
>> All the less - I think - you'd like to have seven of them as in Polish :)
One question by the way - would you say 'All the less' or rather 'still
less' despite 'all the more'?
> Glunk. What are the others? I have enough trouble with the four in
> German.
I don't know their English names (a bit ridiculous by the way, naming all
cases in an amorphical language :) but I'll try to come up with some
examples.
N. is obvious :)
G. (Dope?niacz) - also not very bothersome - like the German Genitiv (sth OF
sb etc.). But, moreover, it is used in many phrases like 'There is no + G.'
And I mean all the possible, concrete nouns. However, 'there is + N.' but
again - 'I can see + Acc.' and 'I can't see + G.':)
D. (Celownik) - very similar to the German Dativ.
Acc. (Biernik) - resembles the Akkusativ :) in many cases.
and now it all begins :) - I have some experience in Polish :) but I always
need to think very carefully and form quasi-phrases in my mind to establish
in which of the 2 following cases the noun given is.
Msc. (Miejscownik) (o) kim? (o) czym? (of/about who? of/about what?)
I'm thinking about + Msc (her etc.)
I'm thinking of + Msc. (doing sth. which is a participle in Polish too -
used in this very case)
My opinion about + Msc. (her etc.)
and the like
N. (Narz?dnik) (z) kim? (z) czym? (with who/what?)
I'm playing with + N. (my friend etc.)
etc.
BUT 'I did it with the use of etc.' also needs an Msc. So does 'I was
sitting behind + Msc.' etc. And in such phrases it really takes a while to
establish which case it is because - as you could see above - both
questions are '(z) kim?' or '(o) kim?', (z) czym? and (o) czym? and since
the prepositions aren't anymore so distinctive as the simple 'o/z' and
practically any preposition can somehow be used with EITHER of the 2 cases,
it is really hard to distinguish between the Msc. and N. without a good
context.
And the small beer now - the Vocative (Wo?acz) which is exactly what the
Latin Vocativus was. BUT... It can have the same form as e.g. an Msc.
though without any preposition this time :)
Who invented the Polish grammar definitely overdid it :) And it doesn't
really help me much in learning German because the German and Polish cases
differ a good deal. Maybe I'm only a little more used to inflecting words -
that's all, don't worry :) Inflecting languages are generally so very
clumsy... :)
> Hmm, in what way are nouns uncountable? Or rather, how would you expect
> them to be more countable?
In a very simple way really :) Advice, information, thunder, lightning etc.
are all countable in Polish. What's more - most food products are countable
as well and the use of a plural noun and the numeral simply implies the
wish to have more than one container of the product in which it is usually
sold.
I.e. two breads are correct, 2 milks too! (though a linguist could have sth
aginst the latter). Two teas, two coffees have always been perfectly
correct in Polish but AFAIK there used to be some objections to such use of
them in English.
There's really a bulk of the uncountable nouns in English in comparison with
its Polish equivalents but I have absolutely nothing against it :)
Moreover, they often seem to me really graceful - I mean the use of
collective nouns above all.
> English has the problem (which is also one of its assets) that it has
> absorbed words from many other languages, and so has some which are
> still formed in a Latin way, some in a Germanic way, etc. It also has a
I adore English among others for this :)
> very flexible structure (I'm told that some places teach it as
> exceptions, you can say things any way except certain ones which change
> the meaning). When I've been talking to German friends, my sentences in
> German wordorder are formed, but understandable they are <g>...
Good point :) In these terms (i.e. the strictness of the word order in a
sentence) Polish seems much more tolerant than German :) and apparently
more tolerant than English too. You can use inversion almost whenever you
want and wherever you want and it's all right. You NEVER have to, however.
> Idiom is a barrier in almost every language, of course, it is very much
> based on the culture and shared experiences.
And it really says a lot about the country, its people and attitudes towards
other nations etc. Hence I infer that you don't particularly like the
French for instance :) And so on.
Best regards. Peter.
--
Peter Damer [http://piotrd.czuby.net/]
[www]: http://kolej.czuby.net/
[mobile]: +48 505 924 130
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