Moderator:Sol Invictus
Why would one need four different words for "sorry", for example?
Sol Invictus wrote:Why would one need four different words for "sorry", for example?
Four? I only know two
Viņš vēl nav mājās. (I couldn't use joprojām here, right?)
- Es esmu vēl universitātē, bet drīz es iešu mājas. (would joprojām be correct in this sentence?)
And if you use both of them together - vēl joprojām - what effect would that have? Does it emphasize the meaning even more? I wonder if it's similar to German immer noch
Lai jums laba Lāčplēsis diena!
Sol Invictus wrote:Viņš vēl nav mājās. (I couldn't use joprojām here, right?)
- Es esmu vēl universitātē, bet drīz es iešu mājas. (would joprojām be correct in this sentence?)
You could use both in both sentences. Also word order in second sentence feels mildly awkward, placing 'still' after 'I' would be better
I think joprojām relates to action that still keeps on going and vēl is action that still hasn't stoped, but kind of with suggestion that it could. Say, I looked up some examples and there are cases about something happening "vēl" before something else did or could happen, in those cases substituing it with joprojām doesn't work. And, of course, you can't use joprojām instead of it when it means 'more'.
And if you use both of them together - vēl joprojām - what effect would that have? Does it emphasize the meaning even more? I wonder if it's similar to German immer noch
I'm 80% sure your guess is correct
Lai jums laba Lāčplēsis diena!
Thanks, but it should be Lāčplēša
Lumilintu wrote:Sol Invictus wrote:Viņš vēl nav mājās. (I couldn't use joprojām here, right?)
- Es esmu vēl universitātē, bet drīz es iešu mājas. (would joprojām be correct in this sentence?)
You could use both in both sentences. Also word order in second sentence feels mildly awkward, placing 'still' after 'I' would be better
I think joprojām relates to action that still keeps on going and vēl is action that still hasn't stoped, but kind of with suggestion that it could. Say, I looked up some examples and there are cases about something happening "vēl" before something else did or could happen, in those cases substituing it with joprojām doesn't work. And, of course, you can't use joprojām instead of it when it means 'more'.
Now I'm confused. If I say "Viņš vēl nav mājās", isn't there this thought behind that he'll come home at some point, which is when his not-being-at-home will stop? So I'm actually suggesting that the action will stop, which is why I use vēl and not joprojām?
Would there be a difference in the use of vēl and joprojām? For example in these two sentences:
1) Viņš vēl ir mājās.
2) Viņš joprojām ir mājās.
If I understood your explanation correctly, then 1) implies that he's still at home, but about to leave somewhere and 2) implies that he has been at home for a longer time and still is there, but I have no clue if he's about to leave home or not?
And word order... Our teacher claimed that it's a lot more free in Latvian than in other languages, but I'm actually not so sure about that. You usually put adverbs between the subject and the predicate, it seems?
Sol Invictus wrote:EDIT: Looking back maybe saying that it could stop was not the best way to describe it. It can stop in both cases, but with vēl it's kind of less expected that it hasn't and joprojām kind of implies a bit longer duration. It's hard to explain such nuances in meaning, if it doesn't directly translate. Latvian-Estonian dictonary translates joprojām as endiselt or endistviisi or jätkuvalt, not veel, maybe that is more helpfull to you
Here's something that seems to cover some special cases, but it seems to mostly be things like placing adjective before noun.
h34 wrote:As far as I know, another Latvian equivalent to the German "immer noch" ("noch immer") is "vēl aizvien", perhaps expressing the idea that an ongoing situation is expected to change or has been going on for longer than expected. Would it make sense to put it like this?
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