Czech is not for Muddled Ramblings

Here’s something that is taking some getting used to for me: In Czech, often a word late in the sentence affects all the words that come before. That may not be a bad thing at all. I remarked on this today to Iveta, my teacher, and concluded, “Maybe that makes people shut up more.” She thought that was funny, but also probably true. Perhaps some of the famous Czech reserve is simply because they have to know what they are going to say before they open their mouths.

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17 thoughts on “Czech is not for Muddled Ramblings

  1. This and the masculine, feminine and neutral nouns. WTF?!! So now I need to know that a book is feminine, a car is masculine and a clock could be both. When my teacher mentioned that book was feminine I remarked, “Of course! Cause it’s got breasts..”

  2. Wouldn’t it be nice if Shrub took a monent to think before hw spoke? Why, he’d never say nuthin! I mean, not like he does now.

  3. Hey pL, are you

    talking in code about the

    shrub’s dad H Dubya?

    /lib’ertarian

    // social lib’ralism rules

    /// gubmint leave me ‘lone

  4. I believe the needing to know the whole sentence before one begins is at the root of Pat’s difficulty with being able to construct a sentence.

    On the other hand, knowing what your’re going to say before you say it helps to avoid all sorts of problems. Something that particularly affects my students is that they start a sentence with one pattern and lose track of the beginning of the sentence before they get to the end. For example, a direct object of a sentence also gets used as a subject with another verb. (“Sammy Sosa hit the ball flew out of the park.”) The record I’ve seen of this kind of daisy-chaining is five subject-verb-obsubject linkages.

    I’m guessing that since Czech makes clear distinctions between the subject and object cases, such daisy-chaining is nearly impossible. I also know that the students I have had from Slavic language backgrounds don’t daisy-chain. The worst daisy-chaining comes from native English speakers, followed closely by Spanish speakers.

  5. Less than a hundred visits to go until the next MOH. I’m a gunnin fer it. The campaign starts now. If none of the rest of you wankers visits, I promise a chicken in every pot, and free commenting to Jer’s blog after the election. COME ONNNNNN 160001!

  6. i have no idea what anyone is talking about except Carol Anne.

    Oh, and BTW Carol Anne… Even though spanish kids daisy chain, isn’t their use of Adjectives and adverbs through the roof?! They love imagery.

  7. Spanish-speaking students’ imagery is among the best. The very best imagery I ever had was from a student whose first language was Quechua and whose second language was Spanish. Her essay on mountain climbing in the Andes was breathtaking.

  8. hey jer bear i’m back on your website, you know they cut this off at work fucking bastards! Mike says hi, hey i’ve already hada bottle of wine…….WHY AREN”T YOU HERE ok love you

  9. 4:20 a.m. EDT. jacked in to see 16000. Killed the browser. Jacked back in.

    I am the man.

    MOH16001

    Hail me.

  10. F-G-F, you are indeed 16001. By your description at first I thought you must be mistaken, because killing the browser and logging back in does not increment the counter. However, because of a quirk in sitemeter, when a visitor first comes to the site, their visit is often not reflected in the count they see. So when you first saw 16000, you were in fact already 16001.

    May you have a joyful and productive millennium.

    lew, you are now pervious. Congratulations.

  11. Hail F-G-F! Now it’s time to get moving and quiet the surly pL. As the man says, “step up and serve, jerk.”

    Congratulations lew, on serving a quiet yet prosperous dual term and attaining double perviousness.

  12. I think I will follow example and begin my administration with a nap. Followed by a month-long vacation to my ranch in Crayfish, LA.

    As promised, everyone is now allowed to comment here for free, and also, here is the chicken in a pot I promised:

    POT

    Please, don’t let my “golden age” dissuade you from cronyism and corruption.

    If things get too hairy, I will invade Fuego’s Place. There’s gotta be McSwedes of mass destruction in there somewhere.

  13. Dang, you clever F to the G of the iF. All that, and still pre-pervious. NO worries, Fuego’s place is plenty hairy, way beyond mass destruction. I wish you well in your “term.”

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