France-eesti Română :-)

[france-eesti]

Hi!
So I am not really thinking about taking Romanian... Just wanderlusting... And playing on 50 languages!
And here is my first questions - "the children" is it really copiii with triple i?
Is that because of a particular case or something?
Thanks!

[Michael]

Hi!
So I am not really thinking about taking Romanian... Just wanderlusting... And playing on 50 languages!
And here is my first questions - "the children" is it really copiii with triple i?
Is that because of a particular case or something?
Thanks!

-iii is truly merely Double I, and -ii is really only Single I. The first <-i->, or one <-i> by itself, is almost always quasi-silent and in many cases accompanies cases of palatalization.
copii = /kopʲi/
copiii = /kopʲiː/

[france-eesti]

thanks!

And can someone explain to me what's the use of "să"?
I see it everywhere but I don't get perfectly when it must be used and for which situations...
Mulțumesc mult!

[Michael]

And can someone explain to me what's the use of "să"?
I see it everywhere but I don't get perfectly when it must be used and for which situations...
Mulțumesc mult!

Să is the subordinative conjunction, used where we'd use que in French/Spanish/Portuguese and che in Italian after verbs of thought, opinion, desire, etc. It's a weird evolution of the Latin sī "if", so its cognates are the Spanish/French si and the Italian/Portuguese se.

[Saim]

And can someone explain to me what's the use of "să"?
I see it everywhere but I don't get perfectly when it must be used and for which situations...
Mulțumesc mult!

Să is the subordinative conjunction, used where we'd use que in French/Spanish/Portuguese and che in Italian after verbs of thought, opinion, desire, etc.

Or where we'd use the infinitive.

Je veux partir.
Vreau să plec. ("je veux que je parte")

Est-ce que tu veux avoir un corps sain?
Vrei să ai un corp sănătos? ("tu veux que tu aies un corps sain?")

[Michael]

Să is the subordinative conjunction, used where we'd use que in French/Spanish/Portuguese and che in Italian after verbs of thought, opinion, desire, etc.

Or where we'd use the infinitive.

Je veux partir.
Vreau să plec. ("je veux que je parte")

Est-ce que tu veux avoir un corps sain?
Vrei să ai un corp sănătos? ("tu veux que tu aies un corps sain?")

Don't know how I neglected to mention that. Although the infinitive can and often does replace să+subj., as is the case in Serbian vs. in Croatian, that applies more so to verbs like a putea "can, to be able to" than to a vrea "to want". As far as I've seen, I've only seen să+subj. used with a vrea. (It's also equivalent to the situation in Tosk Albanian, which prefers të+subj., versus in Gheg, which prefers me+past part. [i.e. the infinitive]).

[voron]

Je veux partir.
Vreau să plec. ("je veux que je parte")

Vrei să pleci dar nu mă, nu mă iei.

(it's a line from O-Zone's famous Dragostea Din Tei)

[Saim]

Don't know how I neglected to mention that. Although the infinitive can and often does replace să+subj., as is the case in Serbian vs. in Croatian, that applies more so to verbs like a putea "can, to be able to" than to a vrea "to want". As far as I've seen, I've only seen să+subj. used with a vrea. (It's also equivalent to the situation in Tosk Albanian, which prefers të+subj., versus in Gheg, which prefers me+past part. [i.e. the infinitive]).

Interesting. I'm not sure if there's a similar distinction in Serbian... at least there doesn't seem to be. I wouldn't be likely to use the infinitive form for either moći (can) or hteti (to want). (By the way in Croatia they do have da-constructions, just not in as many contexts and it has different stylistic connotations than in Serbia; some people hypercorrect it out of their speech but it's not technically incorrect).

Je veux partir.
Vreau să plec. ("je veux que je parte")

Vrei să pleci dar nu mă, nu mă iei.

(it's a line from O-Zone's famous Dragostea Din Tei)

So that's what that means! I've known the verb pleca for a while but somehow I never connected it to the lyrics of Dragostea Din Tei. It's weird looking back at Dragostea Din Tei now and having it not be gibberish.

[voron]

So that's what that means!

Yeah, and for me it was more suprising to realize that even the Numa Numa part is not gibberish either:
Nu mă iei - You don't take me.

The verb here is lua.

[Michael]

Don't know how I neglected to mention that. Although the infinitive can and often does replace să+subj., as is the case in Serbian vs. in Croatian, that applies more so to verbs like a putea "can, to be able to" than to a vrea "to want". As far as I've seen, I've only seen să+subj. used with a vrea ‘to want’. (It's also equivalent to the situation in Tosk & Standard Albanian, which prefers të+subj., versus Gheg, which prefers me+past part. [which together compose the infinitive]).

Interesting. I'm not sure if there's a similar distinction in Serbian... at least there doesn't seem to be. I wouldn't be likely to use the infinitive form for either moći (can) or hteti (to want).

The part highlighted in red is where I meant to write, "I've only seen să+subj. used with [verbs like] a putea ‘can/could, to be able to’." Once again, "D'oh!"

I have to correct the part where I only mentioned Tosk and not Standard Albanian as well, for a seemingly hairsplitting reason. An Albanian or two on a FB group I'm in whose theme is Albanian-language prescriptivism (I fit right in  ) were quick to "correct" me when I said I spoke Tosk Albanian (and not Standard Albanian [as well]), IIRC. Keep in mind the majority of the group's members are ostensibly liberal, although it too has its fair share of "avocadians". "Advocadians", in case you're not in on the inside joke, are pop linguists or amateur linguists, always toxic nationalists, who make up etymologies as they go and tend to deny claims of any Albanian words having come from a foreign language. not just the plethora of words of Late & Vulgar Latin origin, which can range anywhere between 800, 1000 or 1500 years old (which, in turn, is understandable, since oftentimes you couldn't even tell these words came from Latin and could only possibly know their etymology after looking it up), but also the ≤600-year-old words from Ottoman Turkish and the even-more-recent ≤100-year-old loans from Italian! (Please excuse the brief tangent, Saim, and please excuse the off-topic discussion, france-eesti!)

And, to be honest, these people made a solid point. Lest you didn't already know this, the literary Albanian language pre-WWII was Gheg-based, with the Southern Gheg dialects of important cities like Elbasan and Tiranë/Durrës holding the highest prestige. It is Gheg dialects that are the more conservative, after all. Although Tosk was used in written language as well, it was only Southern Albanians who ever used it as a literary language, and Tosk dialects held absolutely no prestige, being regarded as vulgar and of the working class. This is the motivation at the core of Enver Hoxha's putting Tosk on a pedestal and modeling the new Standard Albanian language on it, although this was only limited to morphology—there are a few Gheg nouns, adjectives and phrasal adverbs which are permissible to use or have also been encoded into the Standard language, since Tosk dialects were characterized with the working class. However, I'm sure "northern envy" played a part in Hoxha's linguistic policy as well, given that development, modernization and industrialization in Socialist Albania favored the South somewhat more than the North, and Northerners (i.e. Southerners) faced a considerable amount of discrimination.

In addition, they claim that Gheg Albanian is richer in words of both indigenous [Proto-Albanian] and Latin stock, and thus that the post-WWII standardized Albanian language would've consisted of much fewer borrowings and neologisms from Italian or English. From the dozen-or-two minutes I've spent reading the poetry of the more famous and revered poets, I'd say they're pretty damn spot on.

(PS, some post hoc edits highlighted in blue.)

(By the way in Croatia they do have da-constructions, just not in as many contexts and it has different stylistic connotations than in Serbia; some people hypercorrect it out of their speech but it's not technically incorrect).

I was not aware. Thanks for elaborating on that for me. My knowledge of BSC is cursory (as I'm sure you know), the product of a cursory read of a Wikipedia article. Now that you've mentioned it, the Croatian situation sounds like it's comparable to Romanian's, minus the part about the feature being hypercorrected out of popular speech (I'm not sure if it's hypercorrected in all the same places in Romanian). Which leads me further inquire: How accepted is the infinitive in Serbian, if it is at all?

[Saim]

although it too has its fair share of "avocadians".

Where does this expression come from?

In addition to the above, they claim that Gheg Albanian is richer in words of autochthonous Proto-Albanian stock, and thus that the post-WWII standardized Albanian language would've consisted of much fewer borrowings and neologisms from Italian or English. From the dozen-or-two minutes I've spent reading the poetry of the more famous and revered poets, I'd say they're pretty damn spot on.

Would you be able to recommend any resources for getting to know Albanian's dialectal diversity? Is much media in Gheg (songs, TV shows, etc.) or is it all close to the standard?

Which leads me further inquire: How accepted is the infinitive in Serbian, if it is at all?

Completely accepted. In fact, in the written language it's considered bad style to overuse da-constructions ("dakanje"); you should instead alternate between da-constructions and the infinitive. In the colloquial language there is a tendency towards the da-constructions, although the infinitive is still present.

Furthermore, the use of a da-construction to create the future tense is proscribed even though it's used by almost everyone:

ja ću da idem (I will that I go, proscribed)
vs.
ja ću ići (I will go, standard)

In colloquial speech in N. Serbia and Vojvodina you'll hear both constructions in complementary distribution, although I've heard that the da-construction can sometimes have more emphatic connotations.

AFAIK there are areas in Serbia where the infinitive doesn't exist (i.e. Torlakian) or is much rarer than up north but these are regional dialects. I've seen descriptions of Serbian that state that in the Vojvodinian-Šumadijan dialect area the infinitive is more common than da-constructions but I'd argue that at least nowadays the da forms have become slightly more common in colloquial speech even in northern Serbia and Vojvodina, except in the case of the future tense (where it's nonetheless quite common to use ću/ćeš/će + da + present tense).

[Michael]

Where does this expression come from?

It's from the Facebook pages Steve the vagabond and silly linguist and The avocadians are at it again. It went viral and has gained currency in FB polyglot circles.

Would you be able to recommend any resources for getting to know Albanian's dialectal diversity? Is much media in Gheg (songs, TV shows, etc.) or is it all close to the standard?

The textbook I've been using, Discovering Albanian, does a good job of incrementally introducing learners to the most fundamental phonological and lexical differences between Gheg and Standard Albanian, although it's far from exhaustive. However, once you know what to expect phonologically, you already have half your work cut out for you, as they mostly share the same grammar, with a few distinctions. The course I have listed for Gheg on my TAC, teaches what I presume to be the Southern Gheg dialect of Tiranë. (Southern Gheg, which includes most of the Albanian dialects of Macedonia, is what I call "light" or "mild" Gheg, while the Northern Gheg dialects characteristic of Kosovo are "heavy".)

Most of the Albanian music out there is, in fact, in Gheg, as quite a lot of Albanian musicians come from Kosovo and Macedonia. Gheg speakers make up 70% of all Albanians, after all. From what I've read, even Southern Albanian musicians try to imitate Gheg in their songs these days, as it's considered "hip" or "cool". Most of the older music, however, like the soft-rock of the 80's, is in Standard Albanian, even though all of those musicians were from Kosovo (then-Yugoslavia).

Albanian TV shows? Hahaha, most "Albanian" TV series, at least post-2000, are just Turkish soap operas subtitled into Albanian (there's a wealth of them available to watch for free on YT), although there's a considerable amount of Albanian films as well.