Interlinear books are bilingual translations where the original has a translation right below each word or expression. Try them out on Interlinear Books.
For multilingual verb conjugation, try CoolJugator - a tool that can currently conjugate in dozens of different languages. It also recognizes forms and provides examples for each verb.
That's not my title, it's the title of a video on YouTube that helpfully displays a large number of cognates between Serbian and Sanskrit along with the English meaning and for some reason an image of fire.
Naturally I have not been able to verify the meanings on the Sanskrit side.
Here's an interesting discovery I made today - while looking at the supported languages/countries for Google News I noticed that Serbia was now one of them, and since Serbian was there I looked for Bulgarian as well...no luck. After a bit of searching around though I did find this blog post from 2009, according to which Google has a number of beta languages / countries on Google News and one can find them simply by changing the url. That gives us Bulgarian, and a number of other languages too.
Read more...Forum discussions on the mutual intelligibility and similarities between Slavic languages are plentiful, but this one in particular has taken an interesting turn: on page 3 users began modifying other Slavic languages in accordance with their mother tongues to see if it can be made more intelligible. The best example is the Bulgarianized Serbian, which ends up like this:
(original Serbian followed by Bulgarianized Serbian)
Први три-де снимци Сунца
Първи три-де снимки на Слънцето
Користећи специјалне стерео сонде, тим научника Насе успео је да направи прве фотографије
Користейки специални стерео сонди, тим научници от НАСА успя да направи първите фотографии
и снимке који омогућавају да се види цела површина звезде, чак и иза хоризонта.
и снимки, които омогъщяват да се види цялата површина на звездата, чак и иза хоризонта.
То ће знатно помоћи у прогнозирању свемирских услова и њиховог утицаја на Земљу.
То ще помогне знатно в прогнозирането на всемирските условия и нихния утицай на Земята.
„Америчка агенција за свемирска истраживања (Наса)
„Америчката агенция за всемирски изтраживания (НАСА)
први пут је објавила три-де фотографије и снимке Сунца
за пръв път обявява три-де фотографии и снимки на Слънцето,
који омогућавају да се види његова цела површина", објављено је на сајту те агенције.
които омогъщяват да се види неговата цяла површина", обявено е на сайта на агенцията.
Снимци Сунца направљени су помоћу две стерео сонде
Снимките на Слънцето са направени с помощта на две стерео сонди
(којима су научници наденули име "STEREO",
(на които научниците са надянали името "STEREO",
а и истраживачки програм носи исти назив)
а и изтраживачкият програм носи истия назив)
које су звезду снимале с две различите стране.
които са снимали звездата от две различни страни.
Научници су оценили да ће фотографије и снимци Сунца
Научниците оцениха, да фотографиите и снимките на Слънцето
омогућити значајан напредак у прогнозирању свемирских услова
ще омогъщят значаен напредък в прогнозирането на всемирските условия
и њиховог утицаја на Земљу, а помоћи ће и приликом слања будућих мисија.
и нихния утицай на Земята, а ще помогнат и при случай на слане на бъдещи мисии.
...and so on.
A summary of what I've come across over the past few days:
A Latin - English interlinear text. These literal interlinear translations are my favourite way to read a language I know a certain amount of but am far from fluent in, and even more so with a language like Latin with a fairly flexible word order and a lot of declensions. More modern textbooks should have sections like these, possibly with English in red and a pair of red glasses attached if you want to try the text without the translation first.
More on Afrikaans at the universities of Pretoria and Stellenbosch: Pretoria here, Stellenbosch here.
An article here on Spain's recognition of exceptional Spanish-language programs (educational programs that is, not TV) in the United States.
The Serbian Wikipedia right now has this article on the front page:
I like this:
Tense system also isn't that big of a deal. The only think I can think is that when listening to other Slavic languages, including Serbian, their past simple tense is the same as our past renarrative mood which we use for things we did not witness or are not sure happened. So when I listen to Serbian, it always sounds like they aren't sure about what happened.Read more...
A few days ago I wrote a post about Croatian being the best gateway Slavic language. A good gateway language to a certain language family should have two strengths in particular: 1) relatively easy to learn, 2) as similar to as many others in the language family as possible. Kind of like a language that through chance is kind of like an Interlingua or an Occidental. Croatian fits that description as I wrote in the previous post, but after a bit more looking into the subject it seems that Serbian should get a slight edge. Of course, given how the two are variants of the same language these are really just fine points.
Reasons for the slight edge to Serbian are:
- I wrote before that a Croatian speaker can easily read Serbian as well, and since Serbian is written in both Latin and Cyrillic then it's easy to expose oneself to both. On the other hand, Serbian itself gives one a great deal more passive exposure to Cyrillic, whereas with Croatian alone one could learn the language to fluency without ever seeing it. More passive exposure = a more immersive environment.
Edit: case in point.
- Resources for learning Serbian are more plentiful. When Yugoslavia was a country most Serbian or Croatian textbooks were Serbo-Croatian, which usually meant 90% Serbian with a touch of Croatian. This FSI book, Assimil's Serbo-Croatian textbook, etc.
- Serbian vocabulary seems to be slightly more pan-Slavic while Croatian has more Slovenian. Words like hleb for bread (kruh in Croatian and Slovenian) for example.
- Serbian phonology is slightly simpler. Svako (every) vs. svatko, niko (no one) vs. nitko, pol (gender) vs. spol, dete (child) vs. djeca, etc.
...and that's about it. Maybe learning about Orthodox Christianity and its culture too for those who only know about Protestantism and Catholicism. Slavic does not = Orthodox of course, but if you only know one part then it's helpful to learn about the other.
Where Croatian does have an edge are some of its native Slavic terms, such as the months of the year. Olivier said in the last post that this gives Serbian an edge (Serbian uses the familiar months of the year) but I would disagree as there really is nothing new to learn with the same familiar months we already know. Listopad (October, or was it November? Depends on the language) comes from falling leaves, for example.
From an article here in Turkish. Some of the info from the article:
Binbir Gece (Хиљаду и једна ноћ or Hiljadu i jedna noć in Serbian), one of the most popular shows within Turkey, is shown every night at 8:00 pm on Serbia's Fox television, with repeats on the weekend as well. The television drama with subtitles in Serbian has increased interest in Turkish and Turkey as well within the country. Music from Binbir Dece has found popularity among Serbian cell phone ringtones as well.
30,000 fans on Facebook.
A page for the show has also been started on the social networking site Facebook. On the page where followers of the show share their views on the development of the show now has over 30,000 members. (note: can't find a group of that size but here's one with 2,200 members in Serbian)
1.3 million viewers.
Fox television has become the most watched TV channel in the hour where Binbir Gece is broadcast. (Note: Serbia's total population is 7.3 million)
200,000 Serbian tourists to Turkey
An official from Turkey's Embassy in Belgrade said that in recent years relations between Serbia and Turkey have been very good, the results of which have been seen in tourism as well. According to him almost 200,000 Serbian tourists made their way to Turkey, and that they expected this to increase this year as well.
(Note: distance from Belgrade to Istanbul is 809 kilometres)
The original article is here in Turkish, and here's part of it.
According to a statement by the Ministry of Education, with new changes to the educational system classes will be able to be given not only in Macedonian but also Turkish, Albanian and Serbian. With this Macedonian students as well will be able to have the chance to learn the languages of ethnic groups within their country.Read more...
The Macedonian Minister of Education Nikola Todorovski said he supported the new practice, and that the learning of ethnic languages would bring cultural and scientific richness to the students. The new program is also being supported by the Skopje representation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Here's a short article from Macedonian Radio and Television (Македонска Радио Телевизија) on the languages high school students will be using for the 2008/2009 academic year:
12,030 places in all municipalities across Macedonia are available, out which 7,579 are envisaged for Macedonian language classes, 4,029 for Albanian, 276 for Turkish and 68 for Serbian language classes.Wikipedia also gives the following on the number of hours broadcast by the same station in each language:
Macedonian Radio broadcasts programmes in all the languages of the national minorities in the Republic of Macedonia, including Albanian (from 1948) 8,5 hours; Turkish (from 1945) 5 hours; Vlach (from 1991); Romany (from 1991); Serbian (from 2003) and Bosnian (from 2003) all 30 minutes each per day. Also programmes in Bulgarian and Serbian are broadcasted in the "Radio Macedonia" slot.Read more...
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