Ankap - Angry at the Mayans for a false prediction? POST YOUR GRIEVANCES HERE!

[One-Way]

Re: Ankap - Goal: 10,000 posts by New Year's Eve! Yes, we can!

All that's left is me.

[jgk3]

Re: Ankap - Goal: 10,000 posts by New Year's Eve! Yes, we can!

kezi g'@sbasenk gor

Yeraz, what were you saying about SOV? hahaha.

[yerazhishda]

Re: Ankap - Goal: 10,000 posts by New Year's Eve! Yes, we can!

kezi g'@sbasenk gor

Yeraz, what were you saying about SOV? hahaha.

[jgk3]

Re: Ankap - Goal: 10,000 posts by New Year's Eve! Yes, we can!

kezi (O) g'@sbasenk (V)(S) gor. (V tense particle)

Armenian is a highly inflected language and does not require the Subject to appear in first position as it would in SOV.

[yerazhishda]

Re: Ankap - Goal: 10,000 posts by New Year's Eve! Yes, we can!

kezi (O) g'@sbasenk (V)(S) gor. (V tense particle)

Armenian is a highly inflected language and does not require the Subject to appear in first position as it would in SOV.

"kezi g'sbasenk gor" is SOV if you expand the sentence from this abbreviated, though. The sentence really implies:

Menk kezi g'sbasenk gor.

Menk (we) is the subject
kezi (to you) is the object
g'sbasenk gor (waiting) is the verb.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm interested in why you consider the verb the subject as well. I didn't know it could be both.

I think you are correct in saying that Armenian is much more liberal with its sentence structure than say English. The sentence above could also be rendered as "menk g'sbasenk kezi" and people would understand you.

Buuuut, don't take it from me I'm not a native speaker of Armenian and could be totally wrong. You probably know better than me.

[jgk3]

Re: Ankap - Goal: 10,000 posts by New Year's Eve! Yes, we can!

exactly, you could say g'sbasenk gor kezi and that would ruin the SOV rule too, I was saving that example for later :P

You're right to try expanding the sentence in my original example to include "menk", but a common feature of inflected languages is to not require this mention of subject in first position. This free order system of words is also present in Latin for example. Old English used to be highly inflected too apparently, so was French, but now they tend to follow more analytical structures, forcing the subject to appear in front of the verb and using tense markers on verbs (such as the "s" in "He says" as opposed to "He say") that only seek to make agreement with an unbound subject particle (like I, You, etc...), even in imperatives (where the surface representation of the subject is hiding).

Uh oh... Ankap is becoming overly intellectual, say something random.... like, jgk3 shur noz his stuf, LOLz

[yerazhishda]

Re: Ankap - Goal: 10,000 posts by New Year's Eve! Yes, we can!

That's what's great if you're trying to learn Armenian: if you think you've put the words in the wrong order, it's probably right anyway.

[jgk3]

Re: Ankap - Goal: 10,000 posts by New Year's Eve! Yes, we can!

yep, definitely. I used to feel confused about that when I went to public school, learning the contrary for English and French. I think learning the grammars in school of the latter two made me less confident about my Armenian speech once I was removed from an AGBU school, I eventually started mixing french structures in there by accident and I would think later "what, what am I doing? Now I don't know which sounds right!" and I'd become less intelligible for a time when talking to Armenians. Now I'm turning all this around, like Putin is turning Russia around from the 90s :P

[yerazhishda]

Re: Ankap - Goal: 10,000 posts by New Year's Eve! Yes, we can!

I find the more I talk to Armenians, the better I become at it next time, especially if they speak my dialect. I go to church throughout the week for various things and a lot of the people there are immigrants when there used to be almost none so I have lots of opportunities to engage people in Armenian. I don't even focus on trying to remember sentence structure or whatever I just say whatever I think sounds right at this point.

[yerazhishda]

Re: Ankap - Goal: 10,000 posts by New Year's Eve! Yes, we can!

It's funny how formal language training is so inefficient at teaching languages. I took 6 years of Spanish starting in middle school and I can barely say "hola", even though I always got A's. If schools really wanted you to learn the language they would give you the basics, give you certain vocabulary each week, and for the rest of the class just have conversation in the target language.