Tord Lindberg

European Languages 600 BC

I read another day in the newspaper about a Sami person who told that, in order to learn Finnish and Finnish ethnohistory, they should study Sami.

Having read the text, I remembered a map in a book that I read recently. And the map showed how the only people that dwelled in Northern Europe were Sami.

The map to the right shows the linguistic situation in Europe in 600 BC. The Sami people are displayed in light yellow, and the other (Fenno-)Ugric languages in yellow. As seen the ancestors of today’s Finnish speaking population lived in today’s Estonia and in a very limited area of today’s Southern Finland coast area.

Since then both the Finnish and Germanic tribes have pushed the Sami northward.

Verb tables in PDF

One of the new features of the upcoming Verbix 9 is the possibility to create PDF documents of the verb conjugation tables.

This makes it possible to put your favorite verbs on your iPhone or any other gadget that supports PDF.

Or simply print out the verb table.

The PDF is supported first for Spanish verbs. Please vote for getting PDF support for other languages, too.

The verb cocer ‘to cook’ conjugated in all tenses: Cocer verb.

Verbix 9 Beta Released

Today Verbix 8 Beta was relased.

It is the first public beta version of the upcoming Verbix 9.

Among new features are:

New user interface that clearly divides the software into language selection view and verb conjugation view.

The renewed verb conjugation view now contains the one-stop place for entering a verb:

Enter the verb infinitive in active language nad Verbix conjugates it;
Enter any conjugated form of the verb and Verbix returns the infinitive;
Enter the verb in any language and Verbix translates it to active language.

Verbix 9 Beta is available for download here.

Ethnohistory on the Map

Did you ever wonder where the Teutones lived and when? If you did, then you can see the data at http://ethnohistory.verbix.com/Teutones/.

This new website displays ethnohistory records of 100’s of European people, where they originated and where they dwelled.

One of the best staring points on the Ethnohistory website is the page that groups the peoples by language: http://ethnohistory.verbix.com/languages/

Links to go:

http://ethnohistory.verbix.com/

So Many Books Got Lost!

A couple of years ago Verbix incorporated verb conjugation of many Swedish dialects. This work would never have been possible without books from the serie “Svenska landsmål och svenskt folkliv“. These books were acquired from the Åbo Akademi University in Finland.

More specifically the books were bought from the “Duplicate Centre” of Åbo Akademi.

The Duplicate Centre had acquired during the years of existance a lot of books as donations. In the first hand the collections featured Swedish litterature and science. And the duplicates were sold and the money was spent on aquiring more litterature to the University Library.

In 2009 the Duplicate Centre was closed and the books were moved to a cellar in a nearby manor — out of reach for anyone!

Links to go:

Korean or Arabic

The Korean and Arabic languages were added about in the same time on the Verbix website. Both languages support conjugating verbs since a few months back.

It has been interesting to follow how many verbs have been conjugated since then. Today (9/21/2011) Arabic verbs have been conjugated 59,241 times and Korean verbs 58,226 times.

In the all-time ranking these languages now have the 44th and 45th place in the number of verbs having been conjugated. The most conjugated language is Spanish with verbs having been conjugated 76,986,823 times!

Links to go:

The Swedish verb promota

The Swedish language keeps incorporating words from other languages, such as English for example.

Therefore it’s no surprise that the Swedish adopted the verb promota ‘to promote’, too. The new ‘Swedish’ verb appeared in the beginning of 1990’s. Like other new verbs in the Swedish language, this verb is fully regular.

The work promote originally comes from the Latin language from two separate words pro ‘forward’ and movere ‘to move’. And based on this Latin background, we find the Swedish verb promovera ‘to promote’

Links to visit:

http://www.verbix.com/languages/swedish.shtml (try conjugating ‘promota’)
http://www.verbix.com/languages/latin.shtml (try conjugating ‘moveo’)

Meaning of the Translation

Earlier Verbix versions have translations for common verbs. One problem is, however, that the translations had no context. And when translating one word in the source language can have multiple translations according to the meaning.

The upcoming Verbix 9 will include meaning (or context, as mentioned earlier in this article) of the translation along with the translation itself. This helps the user to choose the correct translation in the desired context.

Dictionaries typically contain the dictionary entry as follows:

Headword
Meaning
Translation

So will Verbix 9, too.

As seen in the image, a dictionary entry can sometimes include the translation multiple times. This is the case with ‘escribir’, because it bares multiple meanings.

Therefore Verbix 9 will show the dictionary entry grouped in the following way:

Headword (source term)
Translation
Meaning(s)

This makes the list easier to read.

Verbix 9

Will there be a newer Verbix version? Yes, there will.

This is the first time I mention about the upcoming Verbix 9.

The aim in this new version is to make Verbix for Windows even easier to use than the previous versions. That said, I dare to attach the first screenshot of Verbix 9 verb conjugator here.

: Verbix 9 verb conjugator

The upcoming Verbix 9 will have two tabs:

Languages and
Conjugation

The languages are now represented in a list. There will be an efficient filter that makes it easy to keep just a handful of languages in the list. Or the user can also have the complete list of 200+ languages there.

For each language Verbix 9 also shows additional language related information on additional 4 tabs as seen in the screenshot. Because many of the languages are developed and maintained by others, there is copyright and contact information for each language in Verbix.

Feel free to send us feedback and wishes for the upcoming Verbix 9 verb conjugator.

Place Those Accents Correctly

Many Western European languages use the same alphabet as English, with one significant difference. There can be diacritics (or accents) above certain characters.

For a student of a foreign language, it’s important to place those accents correctly. Sometimes these tiny small markers can be forgotten, for example when conjugating a verb. If the accents are forgotten, the verb conjugation may even fail.

To check that the accents are placed correctly, have a look at the reverse conjugator. There you can write the infinitive without accents and the reverse conjugator tells, whether accents should be added or not.

Check for instance the Spanish verb ‘reir’. (Note! I misspelled it on purpose)

More info: