Category: Language

Finnish Nouns

The declension of Finnish nouns is more complicated that conjugating Finnish verbs. The reason is that the number of verbs is more limited in Finnish, and even loan words are formed to verbs with specific endings.

Nouns on the other hand can take (almost) any shape. And loan words can be used as such, with the Finnish noun endings of course. So you could take the English word ‘sting’, and apply inflectional endins to it.

Try declining Finnish nouns:

Defective Verbs in Scots Gaelic

Scots Gaelic has — like many other languages — verbs that are not conjugated in all forms. These verbs are called defective.

For instance, the following Scots Gaelic verbs are defective:

History of the Romance Languages

Youtube suggested me a video with History of the Romance Languages. I watched it and liked it. Starting from Proto-Italic it shows on the map the spread of the languages along with a time-line. So much information in so comressed format.

And Verbix conjugates the verbs of much of the Romance languages shown in the video:

Moreover Verbix docs has a lot of information of the other languages mentioned.

See the video here

Derivation of Finnish Verbs

Last time I dropped a few lines about inseparable and separable prefixes in German as a mean of deriving words with a new meaning.

In Finnnish, verbs with a new meaning a derived from the base verb by adding affixes (suffixes) to the base word

E.g. maalata (to paint), maalauttaa (to have something painted). Here maalata is the base verb, and maalauttaa is derived from it by adding -uttaa to the verb stem.

Starting from December 2019, Verbix shows derived verbs in the conjugation tables.

Continue reading Derivation of Finnish Verbs

Separable and Inseparable Verbs in German

Separable verbs and inseparable verbs in German are verbs whose meaning is altered by the addition of a prefix. So in its infinitive the prefix is added before the root verb. Inseparable verbs keep the prefix before the root verb in all tenses, thus being inseparable. Separable verbs have the prefix separated from the root verb in most tenses.

  • Inseparable verb: bekommen (to receive), ich bekomme (I receive)
  • Separable verb: ankommen (to arrive), ich komme an (I arrive)

Both verbs have the same root verb kommen (to come).

So the prefixes are used to change the meaning but the verb conjugation follows the pattern of the root verb.

Starting from December 16th, Verbix online conjugator shows in German verb conjugation tables the prefixes (inseparable/separable) and other verbs with the same prefix. In addition the root verb is shown along with different prefixes.

Continue reading Separable and Inseparable Verbs in German

Võro Language

Võro is a language belonging to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. It is spoken in the South-Eastern part of Estonia, where also Seto is spoken.

Võro and Seto languages on the Estonian map

Võro has preserved the system of vowel harmony that was present in Proto-Finnic. The vowel harmony system distinguishes front, back and neutral vowels, much like the system found in Finnish. A word cannot contain both front and back vowels.

From its closest Finnic language neigbours, Estonian doesn’t have vowel harmony but Finnish has.

Continue reading Võro Language

Adopt a Word, Adopt a Verb

There was an article about word that will “disappear” from the Swedish language. (The article in Swedish can be found here). In practice disappearing means that the word has fallen in disuse; either the word is old-fashioned and not used anymore, or there is a synonym that has replaced the old word.

Moreover disappearing means in the article that words won’t be incorporated in the next edition of the SAOL (Svenska Akademiens ordlista, Word List of the Swedish Academy).

In order to keep the old words in speech, Språktidningen proposes that we should “adopt the words” by keep using them.

In this context Verbix should adopt these verbs:
abradera,
absolvera,
accedera,
aducera,
afficiera,
affinera,
afrikanisera,
agglomerera,
aggravera,
allegorisera,
amalgamera,
appa,
atrofiera,
bemänga,
beriktiga,
bettla,
bissera,
bloppa,
bornera,
bräma,
cedera,
chargera,
deducera,
demissionera,
denotera,
denudera,
dirra,
disambiguera,
eklärera,
elektrolysera,
elidera,
emendera,
etymologisera,
evalvera,
excerpera,
expatriera,
explicera,
furnera,
fyka,
förfäas,
förpakta,
gendriva,
glindra,
glisa,
hasardera,
hundsfottera,
hypostasera,
hypotisera,
illudera,
inmänga,
judaisera,
klimatneutralisera,
kollationera,
kondemnera,
kongruera,
konterfeja,
krepera,
kujonera,
kvintilera,
lustvandra,
marodera,
merkantilisera,
missfirma,
misskänna,
munläsa,
niellera,
nitälska,
nobilisera,
oskära,
panikera,
parcellera,
probera,
prokotta,
prononcera,
proskribera,
protegera,
prusta,
påyrka,
redubbla,
reifiera,
rektifiera,
remisera,
remplacera,
resolvera,
rilla,
rubatera,
rulta,
sagla,
sakföra,
sauvera,
skalkas,
skillra,
skranka,
skula,
smygkontorisera,
strangulera,
subsumera,
supponera,
sämska,
tordera,
urgera,
vadeinlaga,
vindicera,
åtra,
åvägabringa,
ärna,
överidealisera

Cognates

In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin.

For instance today’s Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, Catalan, etc.) all share the same “parent” language, the Latin. And therefore these languages have a lot of cognates.

Starting from October 2019, there are verb cognates on the Verbix website. On the cognate pages you can check out how the Indicative present looks like in different Romance languages.

As can be seen, sometimes the differences are relatively big. And what’s more, sometimes the meaning of the word may have changes.

Slavic Tribes Living Far in the West

Today Slavic languages are spoken in Eastern Europe, in countries like Russia, Poland, Czech, and Serbia, to name a few. But almost a thousand year earlier there lived Slavic speaking tribes close to today’s Netherlands. See the map below and compare it with today’s political borders.

Links: