Somali?

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Meera
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Somali?

Postby Meera » 2009-09-29, 22:26

Hey just wondering if anyone has heard anything about Somali? I was just thinking about it today and wondering about it. Does anyone know how hard it is?
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Re: Somali?

Postby eskandar » 2009-09-30, 5:09

Somali is a notoriously difficult language to learn. There are some materials for it on uz-translations and on Google Books. I recommend the Colloquial Somali book (which is on uz-translations); it's very good, and also seemingly the only text available geared towards teaching Somali in relatively plain language for non-specialists.
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Re: Somali?

Postby Meera » 2009-09-30, 15:47

eskandar wrote:Somali is a notoriously difficult language to learn. There are some materials for it on uz-translations and on Google Books. I recommend the Colloquial Somali book (which is on uz-translations); it's very good, and also seemingly the only text available geared towards teaching Somali in relatively plain language for non-specialists.



aah oka. I met someone at Uni who speaks Somali and said it was very easy to learn. Is Somali like Arabic or very different? I have downloaded that book on UZ Translations and it seems very good!
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Re: Somali?

Postby YngNghymru » 2009-09-30, 18:44

Quite different. They became separate languages long before Hebrew and Arabic diverged, if that's any clue. :P There're a few similar things but as far as I know it doesn't really use the root pattern or anything...
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Re: Somali?

Postby Meera » 2009-09-30, 21:52

YngNghymru wrote:Quite different. They became separate languages long before Hebrew and Arabic diverged, if that's any clue. :P There're a few similar things but as far as I know it doesn't really use the root pattern or anything...


Oh have u tried to learn it?
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Re: Somali?

Postby eskandar » 2009-10-01, 3:49

Meera wrote:aah oka. I met someone at Uni who speaks Somali and said it was very easy to learn. Is Somali like Arabic or very different? I have downloaded that book on UZ Translations and it seems very good!

They must have been Somali themselves and learned it as a first language. There's no way anyone else would call Somali "easy to learn" :lol: Yes, Somali and Arabic are very different, though there are quite a few Arabic loanwords in Somali.

YngNghymru wrote:Quite different. They became separate languages long before Hebrew and Arabic diverged, if that's any clue. :P There're a few similar things but as far as I know it doesn't really use the root pattern or anything...

You are aware that Somali is Cushitic, not Semitic, right? Somali as such was never part of any common family with Hebrew and Arabic.
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Re: Somali?

Postby Sean of the Dead » 2009-10-01, 3:51

What makes Somali so hard to learn? Are the verbs irregular? Irregular plurals? :hmm:
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Re: Somali?

Postby csjc » 2009-10-01, 5:57

Sean of the Dead wrote:What makes Somali so hard to learn? Are the verbs irregular? Irregular plurals? :hmm:


Somali is agglunative, with 4 cases, a complex affix and particle system, as well as tone (3 tones to be exact) which aids the cases and particles to determine the role of a word in a sentence. It's typically SOV. Also, peculiarly enough, the gender of a noun is different between the singular and plural. As for verbs, they don't look too complicated, but all in all, seems... on the difficult side for a native speaker of an Indo-European language with no particular background in a Cushitic or any other agglunative language.

That's just my summary of this. (I really know nothing about Somali, and I don't claim to know anything, but Cushitic languages are fascinating.)
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Re: Somali?

Postby Meera » 2009-10-02, 1:56

csjc wrote:
Sean of the Dead wrote:What makes Somali so hard to learn? Are the verbs irregular? Irregular plurals? :hmm:


Somali is agglunative, with 4 cases, a complex affix and particle system, as well as tone (3 tones to be exact) which aids the cases and particles to determine the role of a word in a sentence. It's typically SOV. Also, peculiarly enough, the gender of a noun is different between the singular and plural. As for verbs, they don't look too complicated, but all in all, seems... on the difficult side for a native speaker of an Indo-European language with no particular background in a Cushitic or any other agglunative language.

That's just my summary of this. (I really know nothing about Somali, and I don't claim to know anything, but Cushitic languages are fascinating.)


wow! It makes it very interesting though.
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Re: Somali?

Postby YngNghymru » 2009-10-04, 18:22

Yes, it's Cushitic, but Cushitic is Afro-Asiatic like Semitic. Presumably at some point there was a proto-Semitic (when Hebrew and Arabic were mutually comprehensible) and a proto-Cushitic which were not mutually-comprehensible. That was my point.

Oh have u tried to learn it?


I did at one point, we had a Somali guy with very little English who came over here. I didn't get much past greetings, though.
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Re: Somali?

Postby Meera » 2009-10-04, 19:20

YngNghymru wrote:Yes, it's Cushitic, but Cushitic is Afro-Asiatic like Semitic. Presumably at some point there was a proto-Semitic (when Hebrew and Arabic were mutually comprehensible) and a proto-Cushitic which were not mutually-comprehensible. That was my point.

Oh have u tried to learn it?


I did at one point, we had a Somali guy with very little English who came over here. I didn't get much past greetings, though.


Lol what made you stop?
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Re: Somali?

Postby YngNghymru » 2009-10-15, 19:23

He went home (or somewhere else), I had no use for the language, it was quite difficult and I had nowhere to practise and few learning materials. :P
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Re: Somali?

Postby księżycowy » 2010-12-23, 22:32

Wow, was going to start a new thread. Thank God I searched first!
After a conversation with Formiko, my interest in Somali resurfaced. Not that I'm planning on learning it anytime soon. But I looked around from some stuff online and found a textbook and some readers, enjoy!
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/de ... o=ED010884 (Textbook)
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/de ... o=ED036422 (Reader Vol 1)
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/de ... o=ED036423 (Reader Vol 2)
Don't know the quality, as I haven't downloaded them yet. But hopefully they're good!

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Re: Somali?

Postby Karavinka » 2010-12-24, 0:19

księżycowy wrote:Wow, was going to start a new thread. Thank God I searched first!
After a conversation with Formiko, my interest in Somali resurfaced. Not that I'm planning on learning it anytime soon. But I looked around from some stuff online and found a textbook and some readers, enjoy!
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/de ... o=ED010884 (Textbook)
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/de ... o=ED036422 (Reader Vol 1)
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/de ... o=ED036423 (Reader Vol 2)
Don't know the quality, as I haven't downloaded them yet. But hopefully they're good!


Note these three books use somewhat unconventional spelling different from the "Standard" forms.

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Re: Somali?

Postby księżycowy » 2010-12-24, 0:28

Karavinka wrote:Note these three books use somewhat unconventional spelling different from the "Standard" forms.

Indeed they do. I remembered that after looking at the textbook (which I also remember downloading before and then dismissing because of that precise problem :whistle: )
But they might still be useful to someone (maybe :? )

Personally I recommend Colloquial Somali.

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Re: Somali?

Postby Unknown » 2011-01-06, 20:35

n/a
Last edited by Unknown on 2011-12-16, 21:36, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Somali?

Postby Meera » 2011-01-07, 22:00

how did u learn it?
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Re: Somali?

Postby Unknown » 2011-01-07, 22:26

Meera wrote:how did u learn it?

I learned it from a phrasebook.

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Re: Somali?

Postby księżycowy » 2011-01-07, 22:52

No textbook?

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Re: Somali?

Postby Kasuya » 2011-01-08, 2:20

księżycowy wrote:No textbook?

He's notorious for making ridiculous claims about his language abilities. He knows how to say a few broken sentences in a bunch of languages. That's about it.


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