He saw you...
After my past few months of activity, I'm finally getting back into the real work of linguistics and literacy in Tete! In July I headed off to Botswana for a conference where I presented a little paper. Once back, it was regroup time and then off to Nampula for our conference. Back from a month away, September was school for the kids and painting projects to finalize our renovation that dragged on for a year! Last week I had another little trip for another meeting, and came home to kids on "spring break" this week!
So, as I'm finishing the clean-up from that painting job and swapping everyone's rooms, I've dug into old photos and stacks of papers awaiting attention. They'd been moved to the living room during the paint job and I refused to bring them back into the bedroom without sorting and filing. I'm getting to the end of that process and I can now see the floor in the living room!
Today is the day for data entry. I got Katie to help sort all the posters from a workshop back in 2009. We needed to keep them to make sure they were all archived before ditching them. One stack for Nyungwe, one for Nyanja and one for Tawara. Adjectives and personal pronouns and prefixes for direct object markers on the verbs! Ooooh, just makes you want to sing and dance, doesn't it? (If not, you are not a linguist.)
So, here is the last chart I typed up. Katie is getting the Portuguese fine, but thinks the Nyungwe is hard. What about you? Can you master the infixes of the Banthu grammar? It is one of the things that scares me about learning Nyungwe. These are the first 10 classes, but there are MORE. This is just the past tense of one verb, but there are lots of tenses and lots of modes and aspects as well and they are all marked on the verbs, strung together like beads of different colors and shapes and some shapes only come on one color, but others are rainbow bright! That makes for long verbs that sort of resemble that last sentence! Anyone who can master Banthu verbs is a phenomenon... like my husband. He sees it all clearly and it makes perfect sense to him. So, I let him understand them and I just type them up hoping that some little bit of mystery will lodge in my brain and I'll just know what sound right some day.
So, as I'm finishing the clean-up from that painting job and swapping everyone's rooms, I've dug into old photos and stacks of papers awaiting attention. They'd been moved to the living room during the paint job and I refused to bring them back into the bedroom without sorting and filing. I'm getting to the end of that process and I can now see the floor in the living room!
Today is the day for data entry. I got Katie to help sort all the posters from a workshop back in 2009. We needed to keep them to make sure they were all archived before ditching them. One stack for Nyungwe, one for Nyanja and one for Tawara. Adjectives and personal pronouns and prefixes for direct object markers on the verbs! Ooooh, just makes you want to sing and dance, doesn't it? (If not, you are not a linguist.)
So, here is the last chart I typed up. Katie is getting the Portuguese fine, but thinks the Nyungwe is hard. What about you? Can you master the infixes of the Banthu grammar? It is one of the things that scares me about learning Nyungwe. These are the first 10 classes, but there are MORE. This is just the past tense of one verb, but there are lots of tenses and lots of modes and aspects as well and they are all marked on the verbs, strung together like beads of different colors and shapes and some shapes only come on one color, but others are rainbow bright! That makes for long verbs that sort of resemble that last sentence! Anyone who can master Banthu verbs is a phenomenon... like my husband. He sees it all clearly and it makes perfect sense to him. So, I let him understand them and I just type them up hoping that some little bit of mystery will lodge in my brain and I'll just know what sound right some day.
Nyungwe direct objects with the verb "to see"
1ª pessoa sing
|
me viu
|
wandiwona
|
1ª pessoa plur
|
nos viu
|
watiwona
|
2ª pessoa sing
|
te viu
|
wakuwona
|
2ª pessoa plur
|
vos viu
|
wakuwonani
|
classe 1
|
o viu (pessoa)
|
wamuwona
|
classe 2
|
os viu (pessoas)
|
wawawona
|
classe 3
|
o viu (embondeiro)
|
wawuwona
|
classe 4
|
os viu (embondeiros)
|
wayiwona
|
classe 5
|
o viu (joelho)
|
waliwona
|
classe 6
|
os viu (joelhos)
|
wayawona
|
classe 7
|
o viu (panela
de barro)
|
waciwona
|
classe 8
|
os viu (panelas
de barro)
|
wabziwona
|
classe 9
|
o viu (cabrito)
|
wayiwona
|
classe 10
|
os viu (cabritos)
|
waziwona
|
phew, wish I could share the same excitement like u do over a new language :)......well done Jen......
ReplyDelete