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Mira & Henry (2021) Part #2


Someone there

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On 3/25/2021 at 10:29 PM, Mira&Henry said:

tomorrow we planning party

I love this sentence, because it proves me wrong. As Mira and Henry perhaps remember, I have been trying to learn Ukrainian for some time. And I think it is almost completely impossible to learn all the cases of a slavic language. I have thought that it must be much more easy for them to learn a germanic language. But this sentence proves me wrong.

This is what I realised:

First of all, the "are"/"is" is normally implicit in slavic, and not mentioned. They say "you beautiful". In writing, they write "you - beautiful" with a dash where germanic speakers would write "are"/"is". They have a word for it, which in Ukrainian is "є", but they neither say it nor write it. So this one is kind of easy: Just add what you do not say, but keep in mind that it depends on the subject. So either "am" (1st person), "are" (2nd person or plural) or "is" (3rd person). Not so easy after all.

The second is much harder. There are no particles in slavic languages. They have neither "a house", nor "the house". They just have "house". "Дім" or "будинок" in Ukrainian. And I can understand that it is difficult. What's the difference between "I live in a yellow house" and "I live in the yellow house"? "A" could be any. "The" signifies one in particular. So to say "I live in the yellow house" would only make sense if there are three houses of which only one was yellow. In that case you would know which one of the three houses I live in. If "I live in a yellow house", it could be any of the yellow houses in the city. In most cases you should specify "a" or "the" for nouns, or even "an" instead of "a" if the noun starts with a vowel sound (yes, that is sound, not letter).

And this is just for English. The Norwegian (my language) version of germanic is even worse. So I stand corrected. Germanic languages are not easy.

"Tomorrow we are planning a party".

Thank you _so_much_ for being a part of the community, @Mira&Henry

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5 hours ago, Someone there said:

hey say "you beautiful". In writing, they write "you - beautiful" with a dash where germanic speakers would write "are"/"is".

I understood everything you said, even though I only speak English, except this: In English, you would never put the words 'you' and 'is' together in a sentence. You wouldn't say, you is planning a party or you is beautiful or you is Mira. It would always be 'you are'.

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