Linguaphiles

The Oxford Etymologic Dictionary (OED) considers Ego / I as if it were a self-standing word developed within the Germanic and 'Indo-European' languages with a mere meaning of 'I / me / self, myself':[Spoiler (click to open)]

I (pron.)
12c., a shortening of Old English ic, the first person singular nominative pronoun, from Proto-Germanic *ek (source also of Old Frisian ik, Old Norse ek, Norwegian eg, Danish jeg, Old High German ih, German ich, Gothic ik), from PIE *eg- "I," nominative form of the first person singular pronoun (source also of Sanskrit aham, Hittite uk, Latin ego (source of French Je), Greek ego, Russian ja, Lithuanian aš).
Reduced to i by mid-12c. in northern England, later everywhere; the form ich or ik, especially before vowels, lingered in northern England until c. 1400 and survived in southern dialects until 18c. It began to be capitalized mid-13c. to mark it as a distinct word and avoid misreading in handwritten manuscripts.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/I

ego (n.) by 1707, in metaphysics, "the self; that which feels, acts, or thinks," from Latin ego "I" (cognate with Old English ic; see I); its use is implied in egoity.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/ego

местоим., укр. я, др.-русск. язъ, я (и то и другое – в Мстислав. грам. 1130 г.; см. Обнорский – Бархударов I, 33), ц.-сл. азъ ἐγώ, реже ѩзъ (см. Дильс, Aksl. Gr. 77), болг. аз, яз (Младенов 702), сербохорв. jа̑, словен. jàz, jâ, чеш. já, др.-чеш. jáz (совр. чеш. форма – с начала ХIV в.), слвц. jа, др.-пол. jaz, пол., в.-луж., н.-луж. jа, полаб. joz, jо.
Праслав. *аzъ отличается своим вокализмом от родственных форм, ср. др.-лит. еš, лит. àš, лтш. еs, др.-прус. еs, аs, др.-инд. ahám, авест. azǝm, др.-перс. аdаm, арм. еs, венет. еχо, гр. ἐγώ, лат. еgо, гот. ik "я". Наряду с и.-е. *еǵ- (гр., лат., герм.), существовало и.-е. диал. *eǵh- (др.-инд., венет.). Недоказанной является гипотеза о существовании *ō̆go наряду с *еgō на основе слав. аzъ и хетт. uk, ug "я" (Мейе – Эрну 342 и сл.; см. Вальде – Гофм. I, 395 и сл.). Не объяснена еще достоверно утрата конечного -z в слав.; весьма невероятно, чтобы она совершилась по аналогии местоим. tу (напр., Ягич, AfslPh 23, 543; Голуб – Копечный 147), а также чтобы долгота начального гласного была обусловлена долготой гласного в tу (Бругман у Бернекера, см. ниже). Более удачна попытка объяснения аzъ из сочетания а ězъ (Бернекер I, 35; Бругман, Grdr. 2, 2, 382), но см. против этого Кнутссон, ZfslPh 12, 96 и сл. По мнению Зубатого (LF 36, 345 и сл.), в этом а- представлена усилит. част. *ā, ср. др.-инд. ād, авест. āt̃, ср. также др.-инд. межд. ḗt "смотри, глядь!" из ā и id; Педерсен (KZ 38, 317) видит здесь влияние окончания 1 л. ед. ч. -ō; сомнения по этому поводу см. у Бернекера (I, 35). Для объяснения -z привлекают законы сандхи (Сольмсен, KZ 29, 79); ср. Бернекер, там же; И. Шмидт, KZ 36, 408 и сл.; Вакернагель – Дебруннер 3, 454 и сл.
http://www.classes.ru/all-russian/russian-dictionary-Vasmer-term-17126.htm

ich (Ger.), Εγώ [ego] (Gr.), ego (Lat.), io (Ital.), yo (Sp.), I (Eng.), jag (Sw.), я [ja] (Slavic)...

However, should one look beyond the hypothetic *constructions, established by the German philologists in the 19th Century, one would see an obvious Nostratic relation of the above words with the meaning of ' I ' to the following words with the meaning of ' 1 (one)':

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Which languages are these?

(1) History of Different Slavic Peoples by J. Rajic (1823)
(2) Bulgarian History by Chrysanth of Dupnitsa (1844)

I'd classify both as Church Slavonic. However, the former seems to be influenced by Russian, and the latter has typical Bulgarian grammatical features similar to those of Modern Greek («за да видите вы» = «για να δείτε εσείς») though retaining all nominal inflection mostly lost in Standard Modern Bulgarian.

Am I right, or is it somewhat more complicated? Thank you in advance.

I've decided to be more serious about my occasional attempts to learn Russian. I have taken it in school, but continuing formal study isn't really an option at the moment, so I'm just going to self-study.

This probably doesn't really count as a problem, but I already speak Bulgarian (FWIW, I'm a native English speaker), and I find that it both helps and hinders my Russian. I can definitely read Russian a lot better than you would expect from someone without a lot of schooling in it, but I also find myself confusing the two and being overly dependent on cognates (which sometimes leads to, uh, super wrong and hilarious result when the cognates turn out to be false). But basically, my ability to understand Russian is much, much, much better than my ability to express myself, and I'm not quite sure of how to correct this imbalance.

I'm sure that some people in this comm have dealt with this issue before and was wondering if anyone had any tips for how to learn a language without letting a related language interfere too much.

Thanks!

In the book series A Song of Ice and Fire by G.R.R. Martin there's a red priestess called Melisandre. She worships some red god called "R'hllor". The book doesn't say anything about the fictional language of Asshai (the place where she's from), but even so... how the fuck do you even pronounce it? Any ASOIAF fans in this comm.? Come out, come out, wherever you are. :D More importantly... would that name even be phonetically realizable? (Assuming ‘r’ is a trill or tap, ‘h’ is a velar, uvular or glottal fricative, and ‘ll’ is a liquid).

Do we know of any language that allows /r/ + /h/ + /l/? If I recall correctly, I believe Ancient Greek had /r/ + /h/ (or /x/?), hence 'rh'. And there was /h/ + /l/ in Old Norse. At any rate, I've never heard of a language that allows /r/ + /h/ + /l/ in word-initial position. I haven't a clue what that apostrophe in R'hllor stands for, but I don't reckon it's a glottal stop. I mean, /r/ + /ʔ/ + /h/ + /l/ = LOL. Do any Slavic languages allow this consonant cluster? I know Czech and Polish have 'ch' [x] + 'l', and /l/ or /r/ can be the nucleus of a syllable...

Anyways, I can almost pronounce "R'hllor", but it just sounds off and unnatural. So I guess you could say that maybe it's phonetically realizable but I'm more interested in knowing whether there's a language that does, in fact, allow this sound sequence. Would the trill being voiceless help? I've no clue how to make that, but apparently Icelandic and Welsh have a voiceless /r/, so there's that, lol.

It turns out that out of four possible English spellings for ЦАРЬ - tsar, tzar, csar, czar, the latter is the perennial favorite:



Where does that fake Polish-looking spelling come from?

when i learned that in Fenno-Ugric languages, after a number the Singular form of the noun is used and not the Plural, i [and i was not alone] found it strange but after a while i realized that the number itself brings enough information and there is no need to underline it by putting the noun in Plural form.

and i had another thought, also. i realized that Polish [and probably Slavic in general] system is even more "strange". we put the noun in different grammatical case, depending on what number stays before it.
e.g.:
1 krowa = 1 cow [Sg. Nom.]
2-4 krowy [Pl. Nom.]
5-21 krów [Pl. Gen.]
_2-_4 krowy [Pl. Nom.]
__ krów [Pl. Gen.]

[it depends also on the grammatical gender of the noun, but it's another issue]

i know there are languages that do not have grammatical number, so i'm not asking about them now, i'd just like to know what grammatical number and case is used after numbers.

P.S. thanks to everyone who answered my question concerning Hebrew and wrote many interesting notes!

For those of you who have studied a Slavic tongue as a foreign language, how did you master the verb system? I'm currently studying Bulgarian, and this native English speaker is drowning in a sea of verb aspect pairs.

I know that I need to learn the verb pairs by heart, and I'm searching for something (perhaps in vain) to ease the process. Are there a reasonably finite number of patterns/groups that these pairs fall into? Apologies for the potentially unsophisticated question, but the Bulgarian language learning materials I have do a mediocre job of illuminating the issue. Any tips for a mental map to impose order on the chaos? Thanks :)

Does Arabic use articles?

I'm editing an academic paper, a journal article, in English, written by an Arabic native speaker (Tunisian), who also has a native fluency in French. The one set of mistakes I'm seeing regularly is matching number on adjectives and nouns (he keeps pluralising the adjectives - a clear map from French - such as *browns dogs). The other is one I tend to expect from Slavic native speakers, which is omitted articles - a distinct lack of "a" and "the" and their variants.

I'm always interested in the clash of languages - how languages conflict, both on a social level and on an intellectual and/or linguistic performance level.

Edit: DUH. Of course it does. Shows how deep in my work I am, to have forgotten something so obvious, and a word so much a part of our world in the last several years. Thanks, muckefuck. :)

A few questions from me... I know that I mostly read instead of post (and I hardly answer at other peoples posts, because I don't know much about all those languages...) but I hope someone can help me out with this:

1~What's the difference between the Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian languages? They seem pretty much the same to me but I don't know much about the languages. I read that there's no actual Bosnian language, and that they either speak Serbian or Croatian, but I'm not sure if that's true. And how's that in the rest of former Yugoslavia? Are the languages (almost) the same or does it differ per country?

2~And in addition to that: would it be difficult to learn those languages? Please note that I'll be a beginner, but I'm really interested. If anyone knows a free internet course, I'd love to have a link.

3~Same goes for Russian (the basic language). Would it be hard to learn? There's a Russian bookstore in our city, so I might wanna ask there, but I've been there only once and the man is... ehh... a bit frightening XD. Plus, I don't wanna look stupid.

4~I'd almost forget this: I am searching for a Roman/Cyrillic transliteration alphabet thing, but I can't seem to find a good one that I can understand. There's a lot of explanation at Wikipedia, but there seem to be different kinds of Cyrillic... is that like how the basic roman alphabet (as used in English or Dutch) differ from other countries where they have more letters (like ß, å, ø, æ, ñ, ç)?

Wow, lots of questions... I hope anyone can help me out, especially with the first question. It's been bothering me for a few weeks now XD.

Can anyone ascertain to the origin of the Polish letter /ł/ ? It appears to not be used in any other Slavic language, and appears to be a loan. But from what language?