Halo, daily life and pronouns...

For the last few mornings when I have been out walking Chuck, I have heard a cuckoo...which was initially quite exciting, but over time I came to the realisation that a wild cuckoo sounds indeed rather a lot like a cuckoo clock that doesn't stop. Unless they have another call that I don't recognise and which is completely different, this has got to be one of the single most monotonous birds on the planet.

The beach looks glorious today and I so want to go, but I must polish my halo today and get on with a bunch of tasks that are hanging over me, they are getting done, but I can just about feel my brain melting out my ears. These chores require great concentration and are simultaneously boring. Must be a bit like crop dusting. Though the payback for inattention is not quite as drastic.

Here are some silly mundane photos of my home that I took to get a break, and try to stuff my brain back in my ears...

The music I am listening to right now...they are an awesome French Canadian folk group with an amazing get your butt out of the chair and start dancing around like a fool sound. The man likes it less than I do.

The wine that gets delivered:


The last of the blankets for the living room thrown over a chair...it is headed for the wash pretty soon, we don't really need it any more. Maybe it could go on my bed, the duvet is too hot now, but one little blanket is too little, I keep waking up all sweaty.


Our doorstop that we picked up and hauled back in the mountains...a lovely bit of rock, and part of why sculptors have been coming to Catalonia for centuries...you can see that we need to sweep again...too bad, bwa ha ha ha ha


Gotta go buy fruit and veg. Normally I go today, but I had to carve this time out for the halo polishing, we'll just have to wait on the fresh veg...tomorrow's market day, so what the heck.






I have been struggling with Catalan pronouns as well as a break from other things...it wodges and constipates my brain up so thoroughly that it helps...the pronouns in this language are outrageously and offensively complicated. Not only do they have the usual run of them, but they are different for the direct and indirect objects, for reflexive and possessive, this is pretty normal, but also they through in some extras that don't exist in other languages just for the heck of it, and too confuse outsiders like me....I will give some examples so that you also can get a constipated mind...aren't I generous? Though you could easily just skip this section....

For the direct object pronouns...as in Joan saw me, me being the pronoun we have
em/m' (me)
et/t' (you) also it
el/l' (him) also it
la/l' - her
ens - us
us - you
els - them for guys - also it
les - them feminine - also it

these go before the verb generally, and the singular can be altered to the shortened form if the verb starts with a vowel or an h...

still with me?

indirect pronouns

as in, she gave the book to me

here we have em/m' -to me
et/t'- to you
li to him, her or it
ens - to us
us - to you
els - to them

these also go before the verb, and other than the first two don't seem to be abbreviated ever..why I don't know. How you handle a sentence like
I gave it to him I am not sure...

They don't use the first pronoun, it is included in the verb so we have
el dono a li???? it (I) gave to him???/

haven't gotten that far..

Then there are some extras...
en/n' is one...it is used as an article, as in the and a, but also a pronoun, when the quantity is not certain, but is more than zero...this is another form of it
Joan ate bread - En Joan va mengar pa (En=the, Joan is a name, va mengar=ate, pa= bread)
Joan ate it becomes En Joan en va mengar.

Then they also use 'ho' as a pronoun, I think again as a form of it...I haven't got this one at all...

That is only the first two of four chapters, in Catalan from this amazingly good Catalan grammar I have been lent. While this is still pretty darned opaque, there is at least a clear explanation with GOOD EXAMPLES!!!! this is what I needed....Yeah!

*phew*

Off to study more...

*gasp*