Ku rupapuro rw'ibirimwo
Kwishura

Learning correlatives and affixes

ca, kivuye

Ubutumwa 32

ururimi: English

RiotNrrd (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 26 Gitugutu 2011 21:55:08

erinja:"Utterly confusing. I thought this was supposed to be an easy language to learn"
You mean you didn't respond with something like "We're so sorry. The person responsible for that feature has been fired, and we'll remake the language just for you at ONCE!"?

Snort. I really wonder what kind of reaction they expected? Honestly. Some people.

erinja (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 27 Gitugutu 2011 03:54:03

They clearly expected no reaction at all, because they left no contact information for a response.

It does bother me when people submit comments but don't include a username or e-mail address. Perhaps they don't think that a response is possible or necessary. But very often I do wish to respond, giving a simple answer to their question, and if they left no contact information, then I have no option but to mark the comment as read and not to do anything further.

sudanglo (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 27 Gitugutu 2011 11:07:36

Any perceived difficulty in the 'tabel-vortoj' might be because they are customarily presented in tabular form as though one had to learn them all in one go.

The relative frequency of the individual 'tabel-vortoj' varies markedly. As others have suggested, the thing to do is to concentrate first on the ones you really need to know - like kiu, which I would guess might be the one most frequently found.

cFlat7 (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 27 Gitugutu 2011 12:52:03

The Akademio identified 33 of the 45 in Group 1 of the Baza Radikaro, which was created from a study of usage frequencies. The list of the first 33 can be found here:

Baza Radikaro

darkweasel (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 27 Gitugutu 2011 16:40:24

sudanglo:
The relative frequency of the individual 'tabel-vortoj' varies markedly.
Detailed information is available in this study:
La oftecoj de la Esperantaj korelativoj

ceigered (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 28 Gitugutu 2011 09:42:51

erinja:Below is an "English table of correlatives"; the logical structures that aren't words in English, or that mean something else, are crossed out

wh/at = ki/o / th/at = ti/o
wh/o = ki/u / th/o = ti/u
wh/ich = ki/u / th/ich = ti/u
wh/y = ki/al / th/y = ti/al
wh/en = ki/am / th/en = ti/am
wh/ere = ki/e / th/ere = ti/e
wh/ither = ki/e/n / th/ither = ti/e/n
Nice, looks cool too! Doesn't help that in English the way to create the equivalent of correlatives (from PIE *kw-) is no longer productive, thus rendering the system incompletible malgajo.gif

Guess I'll never see tho [thu:]!

--Interesting tidbit--

Many languages like using k as a question word - for example:

-ka = japanese*
-kah = Indonesian
kw- and its descendents = Indo-European languages
-mi = Turkish.... ? Hnh?!
Nonetheless, there's certainly the impression that "what words" are often something to do with "k-" in many languages.

*Japanese question words normally start with d- though, "ka" is formal.

Kalantir (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 28 Gitugutu 2011 11:02:09

ceigered:Many languages like using k as a question word
Hindi also likes using k-words for questions.

who – kaun
what – kyaa
when – kab
where – kahaan
why – kyon
how – kaisaa
how much – kitnaa
whose – kiskaa

It's kind of interesting. I wonder what it is about k-words?

sudanglo (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 28 Gitugutu 2011 11:20:12

Very interesting, DarkWeasel. As I suspected 'Kiu' is the clear winner in the frequency stakes - followed by tiu, kiel, and kiam.

erinja (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 28 Gitugutu 2011 12:59:46

Kalantir:Hindi also likes using k-words for questions.
Unsurprising, since Hindi is Indo-European. Though Finnish is not Indo-European, and its question words are also k's. (Hungarian, another non-Indo-European language, seems to have only one question word with a k)

ceigered (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 28 Gitugutu 2011 15:19:18

erinja:
Kalantir:Hindi also likes using k-words for questions.
Unsurprising, since Hindi is Indo-European. Though Finnish is not Indo-European, and its question words are also k's. (Hungarian, another non-Indo-European language, seems to have only one question word with a k)
I'm guessing it's got something to do with human instinct - after seeing a spider crawling on my roof as I was reading this thread, I let out a "hm?" sound (wasn't sure if it was a small bull ant or spider at the time).

The "h" element might have lead to "what" words starting with an emphatic velar/guttural element in some languages, with that hum of curiosity perhaps leading to the nasal sound in Hebrew and Arabic and some other languages. And then things like Turkish seem to have a blend of nasal sounds and k and things that aren't any of those, and that latter group of random sounds probably shows that early homo sapiens weren't particularly aware of the origins of their language and thus didn't put any effort into keeping this sort of onomatopoeic word derivation a productive part of their languages - it either stuck or they came up with other words by analogy etc.

My hypothesis anyway until I've got a time machine or someone else has okulumo.gif (or simply pries around in the brain enough!)

Subira ku ntango