Misc-y stuffs-y

[ysobel]

1) Any suggestions for good resources on learning Bulgarian? (There are no classes locally.)

2) I can has SHOE. (this is the first time in a week that my left foot has been able to fit into a proper shoe. the big clunky black full-calf moon boot is not the most fun in the summer) \o/

3) Need writing mojo kickstart. Hence, meme:

Post the first line of a story here, and I'll write the next five. No context or prompts, just a line, and if I don't twig who it is then you'll get something slightly surreal back!

...and I am going to splurge and add the following to the meme: for any responses I make, if you write the *next* up-to-five sentences, I'll keep it going. \o/

Comments

[ysobel]

(... I am so much more used to reading cyrillic; this looks too much like spam subject lines *snicker*)

za6toto az neq na b1lgarski i ... that's the limit of my online-translation-fu. *laugh* And it's probably mangled as hell anyway. Because I sing in Bulgarian and want to know what it is I'm singing. We get general translations for the stuff we sing, and I've vaguely picked up a scattering of random words here and there, but I want more.

[pthalo]

I *know* I think Bulgarian latin is the funniest thing ever. i feel like i'm writting in 1337, but it doesn't read that way in Bulgarian... it just reads as a normal way of communicating when you don't have the correct keyboard installed. it's so bizarre *snickers*

i'd like to learn enough Bulgarian to be able to speak it instead of just understanding it because the words are similar enough to the Macedonian ones. (If I can get 90% of the language for free because I already know Macedonian, why not learn that extra 10%?) anyway, if you wanna partner up or anything, we can stare at dictionaries together :) (and don't turn me down because you think i'm way ahead. i might have an advantage, but i did have to look up every single in word in an english-bulgarian dictionary to write you that comment, because I don't know which words are different in Bulgarian).

your 1337 bulgarian (that's what i'm going to start calling it) is readable and understandable to me, though I think you meant peq for sing (that's an understandable typo if you're used to seeing cyrillic, because n looks like п :)

[ysobel]

... oh dear I am going to get *so* mixed up. *laugh* The p/n thing is a sadly common thing for me, but also I want to read 6 as b, q as k, 4 as ja...

And I would love to partner up! ... at least once I get a basic grasp of grammar, syntax, etc. heh. :)

[pthalo]

Getting used to typing can take a while too. Even though I don't look at the keys, I was forever typing ц when I meant с, because I would think "sssss" and know that "sssss" looks like с, and I knew I had a button on my keyboard that had a с on it, so I'd press that and get ц. Crazy :)

Also annoying: Serbian and Macedonian keyboard layout is almost the same, but ѕ (macedonian "dz", з and ж are in different places.)

I don't have Bulgarian keyboard installed, but I might if I get serious about it.

You should learn at least the Macedonian alphabet too (it's only a few extra letters), so that you can understand my Macedonian posts (via your knowledge of Bulgarian) :D

I can understanding wanting to read 6 as b. The reason 6 is sh is that 6 is шест, so they took the first letter. q I want to read as "ku" myself, but it does look kind of like the backwards R if you squint. 4, not the computer one but the kind you write without making the hat (the football post one...) looks like ч kinda, so that's where that comes from.

Another thing with Bulgarian, though you probably already know the alphabet from singing, is that a lot of the letters look like the Russian ones but they are pronounced differently.

[ysobel]

My knowledge of Bulgarian extends mainly to being able to memorize songs. *snicker*

And yeah, I get why those letters are the way they are -- especially given that the sensiblest of the lot (4 for ч, given handwritten sorts of 4) means that 4 can't be used for я, even though 4 (in computer type) and q both have the same legless-backwards-R look, but my brain keeps seeing it as, well, q/k in english. (it takes me several readings, for example, to read 'peq' as something other than 'peck'.)

Re pronunciation differences... I actually don't know how much exposure I have to bulgarian cyrillic. We usually get the lyrics in transliterated form -- not 1337garian, although that would amuse me to no end, but transliterated for people who don't speak bulgarian -- and so while I more or less know the pronunciation of what we sing (except for word stress, which is more affected by rhythm and pitch than by how people would speak it), I don't know the spelling correspondences.

[pthalo]

*dies laughing at 1337garian*

yes, but memorising songs is a good start. Your knowledge will grow, presumably :)

the thing with transliterated for people who don't speak Bulgarian...depending on how they do it, I usually have trouble pronouncing those things, is that it's not really transliterated letter for letter, or it's transliterated with a set of assumptions that don't apply to me. So "gyöngy" (Hungarian word for pearl) might be spelled "jerndge" (*squirm*) and yeah er is kinda-sorta-not-really a decent approximation of ö (it's the same as german), but the gy is much softer than the english j)....

I might be able to help with figuring out the spelling correspondences for the transliteration method you're using, though. I could try at least and it sounds kinda fun :)

[pne]

The reason 6 is sh is that 6 is шест, so they took the first letter.

Ooh fun!

Especially since in Arabic 1337, 5 can be ح because the word for 5 starts with that letter (حمس or something like that).

Though I've also seen 7, due to the shape of the top part of the Arabic letter.

[pthalo]

oh, and Duška and me used to try to write in cyrillic with our phones (so ascii). let's see if i can remember how we did it:

а - a
б - 6
в - B
г - r
д - g
ђ - h,
е - e
ж - *
з - 3
и - u
ј - j
к - K
л - /\
љ - /b
м - M
н - H
њ - |b
о - o
п - n
р - p
с - c
т - T
ћ - h
у - y
ф - %
х - x
ц - u,
ч - 4
џ - i dont think it ever came up
ш - w

So "Ја сам змија а ти си жаба жаба" (I'm a snake and you're a frog frog -- first thing that came to my head) would be "Ja caM 3Muja a Tu cu *a6a *a6a"

I once tried to make a password like that, but I couldn't for the life of me type it the same twice.