Archive for the 'Languages' Category

Celtas Cortos - Retales de la Vida

A friend of mine sent mi a link to the MySpace of this Spanish band today. I listened to some of their songs and I liked this song the most. Now I want to share it to others. Listen and enjoy some Spanish celtic pop/rock.

RETALES DE LA VIDA

De los retales de una vida,sale una canción,
y de los sueños rotos en el corazón
de ese amor perdido,del que no queda ya nada.

De las batallas perdidas,sale un ganador.
De las batallas ganadas,sale un perdedor.
De las sonrisas al viento,hay lágrimas derramadas.

Y los recuerdos al aire me besan la cara.
Sólo recuerdo lo bueno,de lo malo nada.
Aún queda tiempo pa´ el viento,vaya donde vaya,
y que me lleve volando,a tocar a otra guitarra.

De los grandes subidones,siempre hay un bajón.
De las grandes amistades,siempre hay un traidor.
De los acordes mayores, es el más grande y menor.

De las grandes ocasiones,alguna hay mejor.
De los grandes perdedores,hay un ganador.
De sí el mejor del equipo el latido del corazón.

Y los recuerdos al aire me besan la cara.
Sólo recuerdo lo bueno,de lo malo nada.
Aún queda tiempo pa´ el viento,vaya donde vaya,
y que me lleve volando,a tocar a otra guitarra.

Y los recuerdos al aire.
Sólo recuerdo lo bueno.
Aún queda tiempo pa´ el viento.
Y que me lleve volando,a tocar a otra guitarra.

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/celtascortos

Nek - Instabile / Vértigo

INSTABILE

from Nella Stanza 26 (In Room 26)(2006)
Lyrics and Music: Nek - Andrea Amati

Sai in questa vita tutto sembra breve,
anche i nostri momenti spesi insieme.
Dai camminiamo un po’: è tardi si, lo so,
ma non lo facciamo mai.

Sei la voce che nessuno sa ascoltare,
la luce del lampione in questo viale:
soffusa eppure c’è…ma resta qui con me:
sediamoci se vuoi.

E dimmi come stai e nei tuoi giorni cosa fai;
parlare è facile sotto questa finta luna.
Ed io ti ascolterò e se cadrai ti prenderò:
sei meno fragile dentro questa notte scura.

Sai, a volte penso che tu sia inerme
e tutto il mondo intorno ti sorprende
come questa neve che sta cadendo lieve
ma restiamo ancora dai.

E dimmi come stai e nei tuoi giorni cosa fai;
parlare è facile sotto questa finta luna.
Ed io ti ascolterò e se cadrai ti prenderò:
sei meno fragile dentro questa notte scura.
Mostrati e vedrai che nel tuo cielo volerai,
apri le ali e poi con un salto vola

E dimmi come stai e nei tuoi giorni cosa fai;
parlare è facile sotto questa finta luna.
Ed io ti guarderò e se vorrai ti seguirò
se sarai instabile tu non aver paura,
tu non aver paura
tu non aver paura

 

Translation: UNSTABLE

You know everything in this life seems short,
even our moments we spend together.
Let’s talk a walk: it’s late yes, I know,
but that doesn’t bother us.

You are the voice that no one can hear,
the light of the lamp in this street:
spread and yet it is…but stay here with me:
let us sit down if you want,

And tell me how you are and what you do in your days;
it’s easy to talk under this feigned moon.
And I listen to you and if you fall I will catch you:
you are less fragile in this dark night.

You know, sometimes when you are unarmed
and the entire world surprises you
like this snow which is falling lightly
but let us stay.

And tell me how you are and what you do in your days;
it’s easy to talk under this feigned moon.
And I listen to you and if you fall I will catch you:
you are less fragile in this dark night.
To show you and you’ll see that you’ll fly in you heaven,
open your wings and then fly with a jump

And tell me how you are and what you do in your days;
it’s easy to talk under this feigned moon.
And I will watch you and if you want I will follow you too
if you get unstable don’t be afraid,
don’t be afraid
don’t be afraid

 

VERTIGO

from En El Cuarto 26 (2007)
Spanish version of Instabile
Live recording here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX7XgJZSFSI

Ves todo parece breve en esta vida
escapan los momentos día a día
vente a caminar es tarde para hablar
quizás nos pueda ayudar

Tú, la voz que a mí me llama y nadie oye
la luz de este farol en nuestra calle
que luce pero es muy tenue a la vez
si quieres siéntate

Y dime como estás y cada día dónde vas
hablarte es fácil hoy que la luna no nos mira
y yo te escucharé y si te caes te ayudaré
la fuerza encontrarás dentro de esta noche oscura

Ves yo pienso que tú a veces seas inerme
y todo el mundo entero te sorprende
como está nieve que está cayendo leve
tú conmigo quédate

Y dime como estás y cada día donde vas
hablarte es fácil hoy que la luna no nos mira
y yo te escucharé y si te caes te ayudaré
la fuerza encontrarás dentro de esta noche oscura

Atrévete verás que por tu cielo volarás
abre tus alas y con un salto vuela
y dime como estás y cada día dónde vas
hablarte es fácil hoy que la luna no nos mira
y yo te miraré y si querrás te seguiré
si tendrás vértigo me quedaré contigo
allí estaré contigo
allí estaré contigo 

Nek - Noche de Febrero

This is another good song in Spanish. Listen to it here!


 

NOCHE DE FEBRERO

from En El Cuarto 26 (2007)

Quédate que es pronto para volver
y ves fuera del coche ya llueve y no para
y cada vez hay más ganas de una casa unas velas que enciendas tú
y nos den luz

Y como una ilusión que arrastra ríos de rencores tu eres
todo lo que puedo desear esplendida visión en un desierto
sin colores siento dentro escalofríos si tú estas

Abrázame y yo haré lo mismo
tómame que estoy indefenso y pienso
háblame de ti la vida que soñaste
era esta junto a mí, o quizás no? dime que si (no digas no)

Y como una ilusión que arrastra ríos de rencores tú
eres todo lo que puedo desear
esplendida visión en un desierto sin colores
siento dentro escalofríos si tú estas horas te hablaría
mientras el mundo gira no te dejare sola jamás
y tu cuerpo ahora todo el resto vuela

Y en la nada tú y yo
lejana una luz nos da poesía y llega el día

Y como una ilusión que arrastra ríos de rencores
tú eres todo lo que puedo desear esplendida visión en un desierto sin colores
siento dentro escalofríos si tú estas horas te hablaría 
mientras el mundo  gira no te dejare sola jamás
y tu cuerpo ahora todo el resto vuela

Nek - Solo

This is a good song. It is actually inspired by The Police (Nek’s favorite band).

 

Lyrics:

Io oggi sto
per i cavoli miei
un perché non c’è
io ho staccato
già la spina e sono via
e che farò non so
mi lascio vivere
sdraiato nudo, così
e c’è chi solo non può
io invece no, io no, io no, io sto

solo
consideratemi sparito per un po’
ho cancellato questo giorno e gli altri no
e voglio scordarmi tutto
non fare nessun progetto
solo
consideratemi blindato a casa mia
sotto la doccia che i pensieri porta via
a cantare dietro la radio
o a fermare un’idea

e io così
mi ricarico un pò
si però
non è con voi che ce l’ ho
uno non è niente
se l’altra gente non si accorge che c’è
e ed io questo lo so
ma oggi no, io no io sto da

solo
consideratemi sparito per un pò
ho cancellato questo giorno e gli altri no
pensatemi che disegno
o semplicemente sogno
solo

e poi camminare scalzo
sui resti di un giorno perso
un morso di vita è andato via

solo
consideratemi sparito per un pò
ma non ci sto a guardare il mondo da un oblò
e voglio scendere per strada come sempre
cercare la gente

solo
consideratemi sparito per un pò
ho cancellato solo un giorno e gli altri no
che rinunciare neanche a un ora non si può
io no, io no.

 

Translation:

Today I will be
on my own
there is no reason why
I have already pulled out
the thorn and I am gone
and what I will do I do not know
I will let myself live
lying, naked like this
and there are those who cannot be alone
but not me, not me, not me, I am

alone
consider me all vanished for a little while
I have cancelled this day, the others not
and I want to forget about everything
not to work on any project
alone

consider me all shielded in my house
under the shower that takes away the thoughts
singing to the radio
or stopping an idea

and I, in this way,
recharge myself a bit
yes, but
it is not because of you
a person is not anything
if others do not take notice of him
and I know this
but today no, not me, not me, I am

alone
consider me all vanished for a little while
I have cancelled this day, the others not
think of me as I am drawing
or simply dreaming
alone!

and then walking barefoot
on the remains of a lost day
a bit of life has passed

alone
consider me all vanished for a little while
but I am not looking at the world out of a porthole
and I want to go into the streets like I always do
to look for people

alone
consider me all vanished for a little while
I have cancelled this day, the others not
it is not possible to renounce just one hour
not me, not me.

 

More lyrics at http://thebifurcationpoint.com/portal/nek/

Orbis Latinus

This is one of the best resources when learning a romance language. Here you’ll find everything from grammars to the history of the languages. A good site for lang geeks like me.

http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/

El síndrome del acento extranjero

This is a funny clip from a Spanish televison program called “El Intermedio”.

Language resources

Here’s a good link for those who like to learn a language the fun way. The University of Texas has started some really good projects for learners of Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and German. At their webpages you can listen to interesting podcasts about different topics. As you can see, you find a lot of things on the universities’ webpages, especially the American. Hope you will enjoy this little tip. Cheers!

http://tltc.la.utexas.edu/tltc/projects/index.html

 

Swedish language

This is a brief presentation of my mothertongue.

The Swedish language is a North Germanic language spoken primarly in Sweden and some parts of Finland. It has its origin in Old Norse, like Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic.

The Swedish language is closely related to Danish and they are both classed as East Scandinavian languages. The other languages are West Scandinavian. A person who speaks Swedish can communicate with people that are speaking Norwegian and with some difficulties even Danish-speakers. Due its influences from Low German during the Hansa trading era it has, like the Danish language, borrowed a lot of words. However, the pronounciation and spelling of these words differs a lot. The pronunciation is more similar to Norwegian (nynorsk) and it retains many other North Germanic features you find in the for example Icelandic (very close to Old Norse).

Influences

Many words come directly from Old Norse, but some are mainly borrowed from other languages, like German, Latin, Greek and of course English.

Structure

Swedish is less inflected than for example German and Icelandic, and similar to the other Scandinavian languages. It has two genders (or four) and no grammatical cases (older definition is Nominative and Genitive). The definiteness is marked by adding suffixes complemented by eithert definite or indefinite article in some cases. The same principles occur in Danish and Norwegian.

Declensions

These are two examples of declensions of words in the two existing genders in Swedish. The plurals may differ but the singular pattern usually stay the same. These are not the only declensions. There are five declensions,

Common

en vacker kvinna - a beautiful woman
den vackra kvinnan - the beautful woman
flera vackra kvinnor - many beautiful women
de vackra kvinnorna - the beautiful women

Articles en (a) and den (the/it) and suffix -n /-en are typical features of the common gender.

Neuter

ett stort hus - a big house
det stora huset - the big house
flera stora hus - many big houses
de stora husen - the big houses

Articles ett (a) and det (the/it) and suffix -et are typical features of the neuter gender.

Verbs

Verbs are also quite simple because there is just one form in each tense. These forms must of course be accompanied with a personal pronoun.

att springa - to run

Present: spinger - run/runs/is running
Preterite: sprang - ran
Past: har sprungit - have/has run
Future: kommer att/ska springa - will/ist going to run

There are other conjugations and compound tenses but this example is just to show you so you get an idea of how it is working.

This was a short introduction to the Swedish language. There are of course much more, but this shows that it is not a hard language to learn.

You find more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_language.

Cheers!

Essentialists explainations on languages

I googled around the Internet and by accident I found a really funny page on languages. The page is full of quotes on languages. I really enjoyed reading them. Here’s some of my favorites!

Italian is essentially English with vowels added to the ends of words.
Lombard is essentially Italian with vowels removed from the ends of words.
Ergo, Lombard is essentially English.

–And Rosta/Marco Cimarosti

Italian is what happened when Romans tried to learn Latin and said “screw it.”

–Charles Lavergne

French is essentially Latin spoken by a drunken Roman soldier.

–Elliotte Rusty Harold

All Romance languages are essentially the same. Except French.

–Andreas Johansson

Swiss German is German spoken with a Swedish accent.

–Frann Michel

Swedish is essentially the strangest dialect of Dutch I ever heard.

–Christophe Grandsire

Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are actually the same language. It’s just that the Norwegians can’t spell it, and the Danes can’t pronounce it.

–Chlewey

Danish is essentially Swedish spoken while eating porridge.

–Peter Landgren

Old English is essentially mispronounced Modern English spoken while wearing armor and carrying a roundshield and sword.

–Dan Seriff

English is essentially bad Dutch with outrageously pronounced French and Latin vocabulary.

–Eugene Holman

English is essentially Norse as spoken by a gang of French thugs.

–Benct Philip Jonsson

You’ll find more on: http://mercury.ccil.org/~cowan/essential.html

Romance copula

This is my first article about languages. I’m going to tell you more about the origin of the romance copula (the verb ’to be’ in the romance languages). The article will be presented from a historical view and I will also bring forth different uses in  modern languages like Spanish and Italian.There are actually two words in each language (except French) that can be translated as ‘to be’. Both are derived from the latin words sum and sto, the first means ‘to be’ and the latter ‘to stand’. These are ultimately derived from Proto-European *h1es- and *steh2-. Those are the basic words. Now let us go back to the latin language and take a closer look at the evolution.

Like we said sum means ‘to be’ and sto ‘to stand’, both are also known under their infinitive forms esse and stare. Just to inform, sum (SVM in ancient times) actually means ‘I am’ rather than ‘to be’ and sto means ‘I stand’.

The uses and spelling of these two words have changed a bit since latin. Let us take a quick look at each of the romance languages and see how they use them today.

Italian

The Italian Language differs from the other Romance Languages because it has preserved the Vulgar Latin infinitives, essere and stare, as well as many other linguistical features which I won’t write about in this article.

Essere is used in almost every case in English where you use ‘to be’.

  • Sono svedese. - I am Swedish.

However the stare referes to a state rather than an essence but not like in Spanish or any of ther other languages. Therefore we are going to conenctrate on the usage of this word.

  • Stare means ‘to be’, ‘to be feeling’, or ‘to appear’ with  word like bene, male, meglio or come?. 
    • Come stai? - How are you?
    • Sto bene. - I’m well.
  • Stare is used to form the continuous forms of tenses: Sto parlando con…, Stavo studiando.
  • The participle ’stato’ has replaced the participle of essere which means ‘been’. Non è stato facile.
  • Stare can mean ‘to stand’ (stare a piedi) in some cases. But is not commonly used anymore.
  • Starci means ‘to fit’ or literally ‘to stay in it’.
  • Stare can be an alternative to ‘restare’ (to stay) which is derived from the same word.¨
  • Stare is often used as “to be located”. Mostly in southern Italy.

The Italian word ‘rimanere’ (from latin remaneo) is used like Spanish ‘quedar’ when taliking about something which is a result of something. È rimasta incinta - She became pregnant.

Spanish

In Spanish there are ser and estar:

stare -> estare -> estar

esse -> essere -> ser

There are many theories about the evolution of ’ser’ (to be). Some say that it is partially derived from sedere too, but it’s not our purpose to talk about that right now.

Usage of ’ser’

  • Ser is most commonly used as ‘to be’ refering to e.g. personality and nationality.
    • Soy sueco. - I am Swedish.
    • Ese hombre es bueno. - This man is good.
  • When the complement is a pronoun and a verb
    • Soy la víctima. - I’m the victim

Usage of ‘estar’

These are the most common uses of estar in Spanish.

  • Indicating a state.
    • Estoy aburrido. - I’m bored.
    • Estoy bien. - I’m well.
  • Forming continuous forms of a verb.
    • Está hablando sus padres. - He is talking to his parents.
  • Refering to a physical location.
    • Estoy aquí! - I’m here!
    • Están en Madrid. - They are in Madrid.

Other uses of ’ser’ and ‘estar’

Many adjectives change their meaning depending on whenever they is complemented by ser or estar.

estar aburrido - be bored
ser aburrido - be boring

estar listo - be ready
ser listo - be clever

estar bueno - be tasty/sexy
ser bueno - be good

As you may have noticed estar is almost always used together with words (mostly adjectives) that derive from past participle.
A person who is fundamentaly happy is said to ’ser feliz’.

French

In the French Language there is only one copula because somewhere along the history the two then existing copulae became one. It became être. 

  • Je suis… - I am…

Other Romance Languages

Here are the copulae of some of the other Romance Languages:

  • Catalan: (és)ser, estar
  • Romansh: esser
  • Romanian: a fi/fire (derived from ‘facere’, to make).
  • Portuguese: ser, estar
  • Sicilian: siri, stari

You can find all declensions and more to read here! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_copula


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