Monday, October 31, 2011

Dzongkha labney gi denlu, charno baynung. Di gotchee mo?

Title Translation: Please help me learn Dzongkha, friend. What is this called?
To learn Dzongkha, use the above phrase to get strangers to teach you many nouns. Put these on a poster in your living room. Then, memorize your colours and numbers by writing them on index cards and going on multi-hour walks identifying everything you see. But mind your sentence structure! It is verb last as in "Bhutanese Yoda was." except that, like in French, subjects preceed their adjectives in Dzongkha, so actually "Yoda Bhutanese wasn't."











4 comments:

  1. I had been starting to wonder how you were making out with learning the language. Glad to hear it's coming. After all, we're depending on you. Neither Babelfish nor Google Translate has a Dzongkha option.

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  2. Nga gi che lu ga!

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  3. Hi, So glad to seeyou back, just found you this morning. Not sure that i can learn the new words bu t I could try. Sooo glad to know your back, love G.

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  4. Fascinating!

    Thinking waaay back to Karate in grade VI, the numbers seem to have a Japanese connection-

    1 ichi
    2 ni
    3 san
    4 shi
    5 go
    6 roku
    7 shichi
    8 hachi
    9 kyu
    10 ju

    But if the apostophe in doin' indicates a nasalized sound, that is something also seen in Hindi.

    You may indeed be at the centre of the lingual world!

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