TL;DR — Talk. Learn. Discover. Repeat. #2
Sentence (dis)order, 46 tips, Lunar New Year Traditions, Pandunia
Hey yall,
I hope your week was awesome! Mine sure was.
I saw friends, spent time with family, started studying a new language (more on this next week 😉), began diving into this month’s language for the deep dive that’ll come out at the end of the month, and also celebrated Christmas since we were finally able to gather the entire family!1
The one negative is that I did sleep pretty badly on most nights. I guess I am worried about my visa application for Korea after all. Meditating every morning has helped wonders though.
Btw, for those who missed it the previous weeks, every deep dive into a lesser-known language is available for free since January 1st. You can find the full list (along with links to the shorter ones) on this page.
Alright, let’s dive in!
🗣️Talk languages
This week, we talk sentence word order. Or maybe we sentence word order talk? Or talk we sentence word order?
Most languages have a set word order most sentences follow, often simplified to the three core aspects of a sentence: Subject, Verb, Object, or S, V, and O. Knowing if your target language is an SVO language or an SOV language can make the whole journey easier as it’ll just be a habit to take. If you don’t check this beforehand, however, each sentence will feel unnatural to you.
I thought about this as I was reading a simple yet interesting piece on the topic on the Duolingo Blog.
You see, I grew up surrounded by SVO languages. I was a French little guy learning English, Spanish, and Latin in school. All SVO languages. At the time, I thought every language followed this structure.
And then I discovered SOV languages like Japanese and Korean. It felt so both strange and incredibly convenient to leave the verb at the end. Why? Because it almost prevents people from interrupting each other!
If you heard “This person suddenly the supermarket …” and interrupted the speaker you could react to a completely wrong sentence. Did that person enter, leave, ran into, broke into, stole something from, got caught in, or even fall asleep in the supermarket?
SVO and SOV languages are the most common ones but VSO ones also are rather common. I’ve never dealt with them so I’m curious as to how they feel for learners. Did you ever learn one?
Finally, there are rare ones like OVS, OSV, or VOS, and the languages that can change depending on the type of sentence. I heard Russian is one such language but German already is quite the challenge since some tenses like the past divide the verb into two (Ich habe dir geschrieben, I wrote to you) and some particles can make the second half of the sentence be SOV instead of SVO.
Here’s one such sentence: “Ich finde, dass du sehr schön bist.” (I think that you’re very beautiful. Literally, “I think, that you very beautiful are.”)
It’s fun but, I mean, wow.
✍️ Learn from my experiences
I’ve tried so many things on my language learning journey and written so much about it (I mean, several hundreds of complete articles as well as over a hundred newsletters) I’m surprised no reader’s head exploded.
That’s why in this recent piece about 46 Short Tips and Resources to Help You Learn Any Language in 2023, I chose to share what I consider the most important recommendations I have for any learner.
Giving you a summary of it is impossible since each of these tips can stand on its own but I’ll share the last one with you because it’s the one I find standing above the rest:
You can start anew any time of the year.
A reminder we should always keep, for every area of our life, right?
🌎Discover new cultures
This week, we’re turning to the traditions related to the “second” New Year of the year: the Lunar New Year.
Most people call it Chinese New Year but it’s not just that. It’s also the New Year for other countries that observe the Lunar Calendar, such as Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, and many more.
Most countries that celebrate the Lunar New Year have similar celebrations that include gathering with family and honoring ancestors which last for days (often 15).
In Korea, the Lunar New Year is known as Seollal (설날) during which people where Hanbok (한복), the traditional Korean attire. Younger generations are supposed to bow to older generations in what is called a sebae (세배).
Korean people also all age one year on that day. (Yes, finally an occasion to mention this curious aspect of Korean culture!) Indeed, Koreans have both an “international age” (the commonly used system everybody uses around the world) and a “Korean age” that starts from 1 on the day they are born. From there on, each Lunar New Year they turn one year older. This means you could be 2 months old and 2 years old at the same time potentially!
My first time in Korea was when I was 19 but over there, I was already 21 😁
In Vietnam, the Lunar New Year is known as Tết and the traditionally worn outfit is the áo dài. Colorful clothes are in order as white and black are said to bring misfortune on the first day. Another belief is that you should pay your debts before the New Year and avoid sweeping the floor (otherwise your money would be swiped away as well).
Interestingly enough, there’s no rabbit zodiac in Vietnam. Instead, it’s replaced by the cat zodiac. And it just happens that the year starting on January 22nd will be this one!
In Malaysia, where the Hokkien community is especially large, the 9th day is celebrated with even more grandeur than the 1st, apparently because it was the day the Hokkien clan was spared. I’ve tried to find out if this was also celebrated this way in other mostly Hokkien areas like Taiwan and Singapore but with no success.
Let me know if you have the answer!
One piece I didn’t talk about much is actually the center of the Lunar New Year celebrations: food.
Every country has its own specialty foods ready for the Lunar New Year!
Oh, and for those who don’t know anything about the Chinese Lunar New Year, this page should give you some basics worth knowing!
🗺️Repeat with me
This week we’re turning to yet another International Auxiliary Language (auxlang) for friends: Pandunia.
My research into conlangs and more particularly auxlangs made me realize that while Interlingua was great for Romance languages and Interslavic for Slavic ones, there didn’t seem to be one that’d cover the entire world well.
It made sense after all. There’s so much diversity out there!
And that’s when I found Pandunia. An auxlang (at least claiming to be) borrowing words “from many languages on all continents and all cultures of the world.”
Looking into the language reminded me of my time looking into Toki Pona (you know, the conlang with 121 words only). After all, this looks a lot like Toki Pona to me:
mi es jen. = I am a person (and in Toki Pona: Mi es jan)
But then, I started finding influences from other places I hadn’t seen before. For example, the present continuous is expressed with the word “zai” while the present perfect uses “le,” both clearly taken from Mandarin:
mi zai luba tu → I am loving you.
mi le luba tu → I have loved you. (the placement of the “le” differs from Mandarin though.)
I also found this webpage explaining the origin of countless words. Here are a few to give you an idea of how wide it goes:
jaru broom (sweep) ← Hindi:झाड़ू (jhāṛū), Bengali:ঝাড়ু (jhaṛu) + Korean:빗자루 (bitjaru)
dom home (house, residence) ← Russian:дом (dom), Polish:dom, Latin:domus, + English:domestic, French:domestique, Spanish:Portuguese:doméstico
sama sky (heaven) ← Arabic: سَمَاء (samāʾ), Swahili:samawati, Amharic:ሰማይ (sämay), Hausa:sama, Yoruba:sanma, Turkish:sema, Oromo:samii + Hindi:आसमान (āsmān), Bengali:আসমান (aśman)
be undergo (passivizing verb) ← Mandarin:被 (bèi), Cantonese:被 (bei6), Wu-Chinese:被 (bé), Japanese:被- (hi-), Korean:피— (pi-), Vietnamese:bị + English:be
Mind blown, right?
Now, Pandunia is already extremely impressive, but it doesn’t stop here. Its basic grammatical rules hold into one page and the entire grammar in 58. Oh, and this information exists in 13 languages (including in the Pandunia language itself!)
Everything can be found on this website so I invite you to check but, let me TL;DR the grammar for you:
SVO language with no gender nor plural to nouns, nor conjugation to verb (instead uses separate words)
Adjectives go in front of the noun they refer to.
So, what’s not so great about Pandunia then?
My perspective is that its use of words from all around the world makes it easy to learn for nobody. While Esperanto or Interlingua’s focus on Romance languages excludes other languages, it makes it easy for some people to learn. That’s not the case for Pandunia.
At least when it comes to vocabulary. You can’t figure out words on the fly because the next word could come from a completely different language family than you thought.
Still, its clear advantage is that, by learning it, you could get to make almost any language in the world easier to approach.
Fun, right?
Well, hold on to your horses because next week we’ll be turning to a more recent conlang that I’ve now started learning and find absolutely incredible.
Thanks for reading this second edition of TL;DR! Let me know your thoughts 🙃
Mathias, an average polyglot
One of my gifts, a portable second computer screen completely changed how I use my computer. I absolutely love it and am typing this on it at this very moment!