My Course: Introduction To Basque

[lyzazel]

Hello.

I have been making introductory courses on my website and I have made one for an Introduction to Basque:

http://labs.ikindalikelanguages.com/courses.php?id=39

I have really tried to keep my sources straight and check the phrases I am using but I am only a learner of Basque and there might still be mistakes in it. Could any of the experienced Basque speakers here please check it?


Beforehand, I am aware that there are some factual inaccuracies in the course. I have described those ahal, behar and nahi verbs as ahal izan, behar izan and nahi izan but that is not entirely accurate. However, I felt that it helps understanding them and it seems to me that there is not much harm done in explaining them like that: it makes things a lot easier and it is easy to correct.

On the other hand, I am afraid there is a possibility I have included expressions in the course that are not being used or misrepresented some things. Now, that would be really bad and I would definitely need to correct that. That's why I am asking for somebody to have an eye on it.

Thanks.

[arabarra]

Hi,

great work! I´m having an eye on it. In general it is fine,but I've found some problems in lesson 2. In your sentence:

Do you have a house?

you propose as translation:

Zu etxea daukazu?

That it is not correct. First of all you need the -k ending for the subject: zuK

Secondly, using the NOR case for house in this case sounds strange. I´d rather say

Zuk etxeRIK daukazu?

Do you catch the difference? Let us use a difference word to make a clearer example: "money"
Dirurik (ba al) daukazu?
would mean something like: "I do not know if you have any money at all... do you?"
while
Dirua (al) daukazu
means "we have spoken about some money intended for some concrete purpose that you shoud have with you right now. Do you have it?"

I´ll take a look on the other lessons too.

[lyzazel]

I´ll take a look on the other lessons too.

Thanks. And please do.

I had totally missed that k.
I have also replaced the sentence you mentioned with "zuk etxerik daukazu" just like you said. I have also added an extra sentence "do you have the house" which translates to "zuk etxea daukazu" to show the difference. I hope that works better.

Thanks again for the feedback.

[pep2]

great job lyzazel , the next time I hear someone criticizing the Internet I´ll show them your website (or Unilang´s website) to prove them wrong

[arabarra]

Lesson 3

You know that the word izan is the word to be and the word ukan is the word to have (just like dauzka)

perhaps instead of "dauzka", which is a conjugated form, would be clearer for beginners to put the infinitiv: "eduki" (as done with "izan" and "ukan")


(by the way: I really like the mnemotechnics you come up with as in

It is partly English: ikusi.

I )


Lesson 4:

the first exercise is to translate: "you arrive", the solution is "zuk ikusten duzu". So, something went wrong


We also have a missing -k in this lesson. The proposed solution of an exercise is "zu hartzen duzu?", so the ergatibe mark is missing.


Additionally, in the translation
of "what are you doing?"
you propose "Zer egiten ari zara zu?"
what is grammatically right, but the "zu" somehow doesn´t sound well. In Basque you don´t need the pronouns in the sentence, so that when you actually put them, they are something like an intensive form: "I am doing my part. And you, what are YOU doing"...

You also have a typo in the sentence
"Nik ikutsi ahal izan dut."

In lesson 5... mmhm, I think I have to think about it I have the feeling that the tenses are misrepresented. What I mean is that my feeling is that the natural translation (in most situation) of the sentence of "I wanted to see it" would be "nik ikusi nahi nuen", not "nik ikusi nahi izan dut". Depending of context, it can be the right translation.

that is because the tenses of Basque and English do not map perfectly into each other. Mh, that is a tough one.


In any case, my next comment is important

Zuk ez duzu ikusi ahal.

is the intuitive way, but Basque doesn´t work like that: we have a separate verb to construct the negation of "ahal": "ezin". The right sentence would be:
"zuk ezin duzu ikusi"
(don´t worry, I promise you that is the only case where you´ll have to learn two verbs for the same concept)



Well, that was all by now. Thank you for your effort to make Basque understandable (and funny)!

[lyzazel]

Oops, I had wanted to say *you see it* instead of *you arrive* for *zuk ikusten duzu*. I have fixed that. I have also fixed "Nik ikutsi ahal izan dut." with "Nik ikusi ahal izan dut."

Since it is possible to have a context where "nik ikusi nahi izan dut" is correct, I decided that the best thing to do would just be to leave it as it is. Introducing "nuen" out of the blue could really confuse the learner and that wouldn't be a good thing to do. I was also thinking about changing "I wanted to see it" to "I wanted to arrive" which would be "nik iristen nahi izan dut" to avoid the problem altogether but I eventually decided against it.

I, however, removed the sentence "Zuk ez duzu ikusi ahal." to avoid the confusion. The negatives are tricky with these verbs anyway and teaching "ezin" at this point would be too much.

Oh, and as for the pronouns, I fully understand your concerns. I have mentioned in the first lesson of the course that one does usually skip the pronouns and we will not be doing it just so that we can master them better. That's why I choose not to leave them out anywhere.

Should there be any more things I didn't get quite right, please let me know.

And thanks a lot for taking the time to take a look at my course!
I understand that it wasn't an easy thing to do and noticing things like ikusi misspelled as ikutsi required of you to be pretty observant.

I now have moved the course out of beta and published it on the site!

And talking about Basque, it was a real fun having to deal with it. A cool language indeed. I didn't have to make it understandable - it already is (with the right attitude anyway).

[arabarra]

And thanks a lot for taking the time to take a look at my course!

no troubles. If you have the time to actually figure out, write down and web-format a Basque course (not speak about all the other languages in your website), we´ll be damned if we cannot at least give a supervising eye to it... keep on the good work!


P.D. I´m already enjoying some of your other crash-courses! You really do "kinda" like languages....

[lyzazel]

no troubles. If you have the time to actually figure out, write down and web-format a Basque course (not speak about all the other languages in your website), we´ll be damned if we cannot at least give a supervising eye to it... keep on the good work!

P.D. I´m already enjoying some of your other crash-courses! You really do "kinda" like languages....

Well, I currently have a lot of languages to work with since I want to make the site a lot bigger. It's a bit of a secret but I plan to add up to 10 introductory courses in February... But I might then go on making Introduction PART 2 or even further courses for some of the languages and I definitely liked Basque so there might be one for it too. I wish I could make a basic Basque course but I do not know the language well enough.

Making this course definitely inspired me to learn more Basque. The first time I was there, I would speak Spanish to people which was the only way to get around, but I also got a little book of Basque and tried a couple of sentences which I didn't really understand anything of then (not that I would understand much more now). I remember asking one couple how to pronounce ezkerrik asko and a couple of other things from the book and they were extremely nice and helpful to me back then. They then told me some phrase which I do not quite remember now which meant "you are learning Basque" (perhaps that was Euskaraz ikasiten duzu). The whole thing was kinda cool and San Sebastian is still one of my favorite cities in the world.

I'm glad you're finding the site useful, by the way.

[lyzazel]

Hello.

I got the following piece of feedback:

When using the verb izan in Basque you have to have an -a at the end of the word so I am Basque would be "Ni euskalduna naiz."

This would mean that I misused it in my course.

Is that correct? Might it be that it is just optional and not necessary? If this is correct, is it also used for names (Aitora da instead of Aitor da) and what is the rule governing this?

Thanks.

[marc]

Yes, I'm pretty sure you need the -a for "euskalduna naiz." You don't need it for names, though.

[lyzazel]

Could somebody explain to my the reason and rule behind that?

Also I wonder if the version without a is acceptable (although perhaps more rare)?

[marc]

The rules governing addition of -a are complex, so maybe it would be easier to say that there are only certain situations in which it isn't used: when preceded by a word like zein or zenbat, when followed by 'bat,' etc. In almost all other cases, you need to add the -a.

[lyzazel]

Well, I just wanted to let you guys know that I fixed the "a" thing. Take the course freely!