TeX, LaTeX and Friends

However, TBH I always somehow translate French into English to understand it, because these two languages have a very similar structure

@tohecz That's probably not the worst strategy.

@tohecz Be careful with articles!

@AlanMunn well, it would be better to understand it directly, but that's beyond my abilities

@egreg especially "le partitif" ;)

@tohecz We have it also in Italian, but we use it much less than French.

12:06 AM

@egreg Still, it helps e.g. with conditional tenses: they're exactly the same.

@egreg it's a painful thing. Well, articles are painful, I would just get rid of them ;)

@tohecz It's a real problem for people who don't have them. But it's also a problem for Italians: articles are used in very different ways in Italian and English.

@egreg gladly the French way is AFAIK a bit closer to English

@egreg Yes, that's for sure. (We've both worked on that a lot.)

@tohecz It's the other way around. ;-)

@egreg what do you mean now? It's not like Italian ~ French ~ English ?

12:09 AM

@tohecz No, that English borrowed very much from French, including some syntax

oh yeah, you mean this. Well, don't say it loudly when @Alan is around ;)

@egreg I don't think much syntax was borrowed; on the whole English syntax is pretty Germanic. (I'm sure there's a little.)

@AlanMunn Yes, I know. That's why I don't think that using one for understanding the other is good. Probably they're nearer to each other than a Slavic language is near to English.

@egreg Yes, I would agree with both statements.

@egreg well, they are ;)

12:15 AM

@AlanMunn Something like "He said he would go" can't be "Il dit qu'il irait".

And Slavic languages are pretty (unbelievably) close to each other.

@egreg Yes, definitely. And the common mistake that Romance language speakers do (and German) of putting 'will' inside a conditional. "If I will go tomorrow ..."

@egreg well, it can, if it's supposed to mean Il a dit: "J'y irai"

@tohecz Not in indirect speech. "Il dit qu'il y serait allé"

@egreg Yes, given what they thought us in the French language school: futur simple is transformed into conditionel present

@egreg btw, "Il dit" is passé simple which is quite rarely used ;)

12:19 AM

@AlanMunn But Manzoni would have written "Disse che andrebbe" (which is Tuscan). More commonly in Italian it is "Disse che sarebbe andato".

@egreg "le futur simple devient présent du conditionnel" cited from wikipedia

@AlanMunn Strange, in French it's the same as in English: you don't use conditionnal/future in the if-clause. However, all Slavic people do that mistake ("If I will") since we have no conditional at all so we're messing it up completely no matter what ;)

@Alan "S'il plaît [present] demain, je resterai [futur simple] chez moi" -- "If it rains tommorow, I'll stay at home"

@tohecz Yes (although you want 'pleut' not 'plaît')

@AlanMunn oh yeah, my biggest problem with French (much bigger than with English): It's badly phonetic

@tohecz Having lots of silent consonants certainly makes spelling a pain in the neck.

@AlanMunn the problem is that you still have a feeling that the language is phonetic while it actually is not. With English, you give up the very first moment you meet it and then you're fine

12:29 AM

@tohecz LOL

@AlanMunn cough tough though thought taught

man woman men women

etc. etc. etc.

@tohecz spellingsociety.org/news/media/poems.php

@tohecz Blame the Germans for that.

@tohecz "uomo uomini, donna donne", just to make a comparison. ;-)

@tohecz But you Slavs have some pretty wacky declensions don't you?

@AlanMunn lol. But we'll teach you that: Aj em e Slavik persn hů wonts ej fonetik lengvič

@AlanMunn any problems with our 7 cases in (up to) 3 numbers?

12:34 AM

@tohecz With lots of syncretism if I recall.

"syncretism"?

@tohecz Sorry, overlapping forms across a paradigm.

For example in Russian 3rd person Nom and Dat pronouns, the plural forms of each are the same across genders. The same pattern is found in Nom adjectives.

@AlanMunn well, we have such weird stuff. But the worst one is counting:

@tohecz Yes, counting is pretty awful.

1 člověk (Nom), 2,3,4 lidé (Nom pl), 5 lidí (Gen pl), 11 lidí, 21 člověk, 22 lidé, 25 lidí, ..., 101 člověk, 111 lidí

And that's to the extent that the whole sentence is singular for 101: "Byl tam 101 člověk" vs. "Bylo tam 111 lidí" vs. "Byli tam 104 lidé" ("There were X people")

12:43 AM

@tohecz Yes, this is indeed a nightmare.

@AlanMunn but the biggest nightmare are the 4 persons I think

@tohecz So you have 2 first persons? (Inclusive and exclusive)?

@AlanMunn no, sorry, my bad. I meant 4 genders of course. We have only 3 persons, but in both singular and plural, with the possiblity to use the 2nd pl, the 3rd sg or the 3rd pl in place of the 2nd sg

@tohecz Oh, ok. I didn't think that Slavic had 4 persons.

@tohecz Well it could be Swahili or any other Bantu language, which have 7 (14 if you count the way the Bantuists do).

@AlanMunn it's likely a Czech special, I dunno about the others

@AlanMunn It's archaic, but you can say "they" instead of "you": "They know, Mr. Munn, they should have told us that they won't come" = "You know, Mr. Munn, you should have told me that you won't come"

12:48 AM

@tohecz Yes, these kind of polite forms are quite common across languages.

@AlanMunn As I said, it's archaic now, maybe similar to T-V distinction in English, just we dropped it more recently. We still have the T-V distinction tho

@tohecz In English I think the equivalently stilted version would use 'one'. "One should have told us that one was coming."

@tohecz So perhaps the 'they' version you have is also a kind of impersonal construction.

@AlanMunn that's different I think. That's impersonal if I get it right, like "people should have told us whether they are coming and you are are one of those who have not done so"

@AlanMunn it's not, it really used to play the role of the V-speech

@tohecz Yes, I was just guessing, though. I know nothing of this construction.

@tohecz Ok.

I actually now the T-speech in English only from the Bible ;)

12:52 AM

@tohecz Yes, it's been gone for a long long time.

@AlanMunn and TBH, it's very convenient. I found out that I use "Miloš" (the first name) in English but "Mr. Znojil" in Czech when I speak to my supervisor's husband.

oh my the ear pain is so unconvenient

@tohecz That's funny. I had great fun in Germany interacting with famous professors in English. All the T-V stuff is abandoned. Some adapt better than others. :)

@tohecz Sorry to hear that.

@AlanMunn it's quite gone amongst scientists in France, too. In general you tutoye to everyone, even as a PhD student.

However, it still quite depends on where you are. I'm gladly in a dept. where people do it.

@tohecz Yes, I think it's disappearing more generally too. Or at least being reduced to "Known to each other vs. unknown to each other".

@tohecz There was a study about the use of 'Dr' in academic institutions in the US. The use was inversely proportional to the rank of the institution.

Btw, one of the most funny moments with T-V distinction in Czech is in the church: you use "brother" as a title for reverends, but you vouvoye, so you start with "informal" Dear brother reverend Jim and then you switch to the formal writing. Of course, quite commonly they "offer you tutoyer" and that's it.

1:04 AM

@tohecz Do you also have funny gender things. In French there are cases like "Le professeur est enceinte."

@AlanMunn Used to be, he-doctor female, he-professor female etc. But now most of the profession names and academic titles have the femaler equivalents. The most recent one is likely "docent" to "docentka". However, since Czech has no articles, it's a bit more flexible in these things.

@tohecz I'm going to take off now. I hope you ear gets better. Nice chatting with you.

@AlanMunn yep, it was nice. I took some pain killers that are anti-inflammatory as well, so I should be fine. I'll consult my mom over skype tomorrow

good night