My name is O’Neill. I
have a computer. I do not smoke. Who are you? Why do you smoke?
I don't know why I asked why you smoke. For some reason whenever you learn a language one of the first verbs they teach you is 'to smoke.' I think they're trying to make a statement. Maybe they think I'll grow up to be a smoker. I sure hope not.
This week I’ve been reviewing and memorizing so that I can build up before moving on to harder stuff. I’m trying to focus on vocabulary and pronunciation, since I pretty much have the simple grammar down pat. I’ve made some fabulous note cards with the Luxembourgish noun, plural form, and pronunciation on one side and the English meaning on the other. I haven’t touched these yet, since I need to make another set for verbs and their forms. I want to get those through first. I’m trying to figure out how Luxembourgish verbs are conjugated so that I can memorize them more easily. I need methods, though I do have one....
Ech hunn, du hues, hien hutt, si huet, mir hunn, dir hutt, sin hunn. It's a song. I use songs now. Songs are cool. +10 to anyone who gets that joke*. But seriously, if anyone, +10 or not, has any suggestions for memorizing verb conjugations, then please put them in a comment. I enjoy getting comments, they make me feel loved.
This week I’ve been reviewing and memorizing so that I can build up before moving on to harder stuff. I’m trying to focus on vocabulary and pronunciation, since I pretty much have the simple grammar down pat. I’ve made some fabulous note cards with the Luxembourgish noun, plural form, and pronunciation on one side and the English meaning on the other. I haven’t touched these yet, since I need to make another set for verbs and their forms. I want to get those through first. I’m trying to figure out how Luxembourgish verbs are conjugated so that I can memorize them more easily. I need methods, though I do have one....
Ech hunn, du hues, hien hutt, si huet, mir hunn, dir hutt, sin hunn. It's a song. I use songs now. Songs are cool. +10 to anyone who gets that joke*. But seriously, if anyone, +10 or not, has any suggestions for memorizing verb conjugations, then please put them in a comment. I enjoy getting comments, they make me feel loved.
As with any language, Luxembourgish has pronunciation rules
and weirdnesses, and they have a few letters we don’t have in English, like ë and é. I still have no idea how to pronounce é, but luckily I found this website and I've been reading up on pronunciation. It also has the Luxembourgish
alphabet, which is something I only just realized I don't know.
Oh, yeah, and you know the IPA? No, not the IRA, the IPA? That International Phonetic Alphabet
thing that everyone is supposed to understand easily? It is all a lie. It makes no sense to anyone who doesn't work in linguistics. I sure as heck don’t
understand it or get how people can learn it without crying, but the website I want to use to help me with my pronunciation uses it. I’ll
be referring to this for help with IPA.
Random segue (I just learned I've been spelling it like the Dean Kamen invention and not the actual word my entire life) to my next point, which is quite horrendous. Prepare
yourselves.
(Cue dramatic caps lock)
THERE IS NO WAY TO SAY ‘I LOVE YOU’ IN LUXEMBOURGISH. THERE
IS NO VERB MEANING ‘TO LOVE.’
(End dramatic caps lock)
I was reading this blog post written by a woman living in Luxembourg when I found out this terrible piece of information. Luxembourgish has no
verb that means ‘to love’ in a romantic way or to express intense like for
something. Instead of saying ‘I love you’ Luxembourgers say 'Ech hunn dech gär' which means 'I like you' or 'Ech sinn frou mat
dir’ which literally means ‘I am happy with you.’ For an animate example, I’m
happy with a lot of people, but I don’t love
a lot of people. For an inanimate example, I’m happy with a few TV channels, like NBC
and CBS, but I only love one channel,
BBC (which technically has a few channels, but that's for another time). The points is, this upsets me greatly, since to my knowledge basically every other language in the world has a verb that means 'to love.' I really hope Luxembourgish doesn't have any other surprises for me, since I'll just get upset whenever I have to use its weird phrases.
And do you know how I learned this? The same domain that has the pronunciation webpage has a page with useful Luxembourgish phrases, so I want to memorize those as well. I'll probably put them on note cards as well.
* (Whispers) It's Doctor Who.
P.S. The Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg is still
married. But I’m working on it.
First link:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/luxembourgish.htm
Second link:
http://www.ego4u.com/en/dictionary/ipa
Third link:
http://virtualbreath.net/curious/2008/02/02/missing-luxembourgish-expression-fehlender-luxembourgischer-ausdruck/
Fourth link:
http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/luxembourgish.php
Moien!
ReplyDeleteBy quickly skimming through your blog I noticed you are giving your best to learn the language and therefore allow me to introduce you to one of the fundamental grammatical rules of Luxembourgish. If you're picky like me, then this information is priceless, so handle it with care!
The 'n' rule [d'Regel vum 'n'].
If a word normally ends with "n" and it is not at the end of the sentence, then we must look at the following word:
* If the next word starts with vowels a,e,i,o,u,y or d,h,n,t,z then we WRITE and PRONOUNCE the 'n'
* Otherwise, we don't write the 'n' and we don't pronounce it.
Therefore we end up with:
Ech sinn d’O’Neill. Ech hunn e Computer. Ech fëmmen net. Wien sidd Dir? Firwat fëmms du?
To know more about verb conjugations, you can use http://luxogramm.uni.lu/
I've been living in Luxembourg for nearly a year now and I've started learning the language in October 2h/week and I'd be happy to help during my free time should you need anything :)
You're lucky to know German, because I don't and I find this sometimes very difficult to cope with but when there's a will, there's a way!
Happy learning!
The fact that Luxembourgish (wow that's a mouthful)doesn't have a word for "love" is really interesting! Kind of along the same idea, (but to a lesser degree): There is no character in Chinese that perfectly descibes the english word "awkward" . So you can't ever describe a person or situation as awkward, you kind of have to talk around it to get the general idea. Just an interesting fact. But on a completely different note, I really love the humor and genuineness you put into your blog. Your voice really shines and I can tell that you are passionate about this topic!
ReplyDelete