HetaliaENGTranscript In reply to ShaakTi1138 [2014-08-06 00:10:36 +0000 UTC]

Wow, you really are so knowledgeable about this stuff!  I love reading your comments; they always give me new information I doubt I could really find on the American web or books.

And yeah, most of us who don't have gender-specific last names would probably look at you like you were crazy.  They do it in other Eastern European countries too, right?  I remember that in Czech they have different endings for gender and pluralization in their surnames.  And Poland's own last name ends in "wicz," right?  So there's an example of a surname that doesn't end in "ski!"

I think the problem with explaining the surname thing to foreigners (especially English speakers; we already assume the rest of the world will just speak English) is that they assume the rules for their language applies to every other language as well.  This really makes things hard for both teacher and student, haha.  I don't know about other languages, but as an English speaker learning Italian, here are some common problems I've noticed amongst my classmates.

1. The differences in verbs.  I think this applies to everyone learning a European language, though.  If you weren't at least a little confused when establishing that "znać" and "wiedzieć" were both "to know," and that "robić" could be translated as "make", "do", "have", "take", etc. based on what the specific thing you're doing is, then you are like a prodigy.  I don't know what these sentences are in Polish, but "Fare una doccia" means "take a shower" in Italian, but "fare colazione" means "eat breakfast."  "Make breakfast" would be "cucinare colazione," or "cook breakfast".

2. Pluralization.  Mostly for the "you" form.  We don't have a different form for if you're talking to more than one person vs. just one.  You have "ty" and "wy," right?  For us it's just "you."

3. This one is kind of broad, but we don't have a word for answering negative questions (example: don't you like cats?) in a positive way.  So we can say "yes," and it could either mean "Yes, I do like cats" or "yes, you are correct when you say I don't like cats."  We used to have a word for is, and it was actually "yes," while answering positive questions ("do you like cats?") was the job of "yea."  But "yea" died out like hundreds of years ago, I think.  I know they have a special word for it still in French.

4. (This is probably the biggest one) We don't have formalities.  There's absolutely no way to address someone in a more formal way than the way you would talk to your friend.  Obviously, you would be more polite and all, but we don't have a verb tense for being polite.  I know in Italian they use the "he/she/it" form of a verb to be formal, but we use the you form, which like I said before doesn't even have a plural ^^  Like with "yes," "you" used to be the formal form (and actually the plural form too), I believe, with the informal being "thou."  Obviously, nobody says "thou" anymore.  The conjugation for "thou" was "(e)st."  So singular formal or plural would be "you do," while singular informal was "thou dost."  Also, apparently we used to abbreviate thou by writing "þͧ," which looks so Icelandic it's scary.

Haha, I responded to your comment with an equally long one almost entirely about why the English language has problems.  But anyway, those horse pictures were gorgeous, Polish tea sounds very good and I will have to try making it that way, and thanks as always for your support!  Also, for a non-native speaker, your English is amazing!  I'm sure I made some sort of mistake in my tiny bits of Polish, so I apologize if I did~

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ShaakTi1138 In reply to HetaliaENGTranscript [2014-08-06 14:39:07 +0000 UTC]

Thanks! I love reading your comments too! I watch "Hetalia" with my sister and thanks to you I'm able to explain to her many things.

Yup, there are gender-specific surnames in other slavic languages as well. But some of our surnames are not like that; for example, my own surname - Rafał - is not gender-specific - there's Mr. Rafał and Mrs. Rafał. Because it's just Polish version of name "Raphael". It's male name and I'm female... I had very interesting social life in primary school ("You're half-boy!").

As for Poland's surname - Łukasiewicz - in old Polish it means "son of Lucas" (pl:Łukasz), but it's not obvious to most modern Poles. It's probably an allusion to Ignacy Łukasiewicz , the guy who invented kerosene lamp. And here's a great comic about it . Oh, and another side note - Poland's name, "Feliks" (we don't use letter "x" very often) means "happy" or "lucky" in Latin. But it probably refers to "phoenix".

Last thing about Polish surnames - here you can watch absolutely hilarious clip from the movie "Jak rozpętałem drugą wojnę światową" ("How I uleashed WWII"). It's a comedy about Polish soldier, Franciszek Dolas, who is convinced that he started the whole conflict. In this scene Nazi officer needs to fill some papers and Franciszek introduces himself - on purpose, of course - as Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz. It's well-known Polish tongue-twister .

1. Ah, yeah, the differences in verbs are in every language. Sometimes it's matter of so-called "connectivity of words" (I'm sorry, I don't know the English term). You mentioned "znać" and "wiedzieć". "Znać" applies more often to people - "Znam Annę" ("I know Ann"). And "wiedzieć" is more often used with... non-material stuff, such as "Wiem jak to zrobić" ("I know how to do this") or "Wiem dużo o historii" ("I know a lot about history"). In other words, you can't say "Wiem Annę". Most Poles would understand that, but it sounds weird .

In Polish we say "brać prysznic" (literally: "take a shower"), "jeść śniadanie" ("eat breakfast") and "przygotowywać/robić śniadanie" ("prepare/make breakfast"). So it it similar to English.

2. Yeah, "ty" is singular, "wy" plural .

3. Aww, the negative questions! You know, we have them in Polish too - for example, "Don't you like cats?" is "Czyż nie lubisz kotów?". And answering with simple "tak" ("yes") could mean "Yes, I do" or "yes, you are correct when you say I don't like cats", just as in English. Maybe that's why we don't use negative questions very often and we say just "Lubisz koty?" ("Do you like cats"?).

4. I think it is well-known that English does not have formalities, while other languages have. You know, during my studies I did glottodidactics specialisation (teaching Polish as a foreign language) and my lecturers often emphasised that it's essential to teach formalities. For example, you can use "ty" form only with people you know well, like your friends or familiy, or someone who is younger than you. When adressing someone who is older or is your superior, you should use "pan" ("sir" or "mr.") for males and "pani" ("lady" or "mrs.") for females. When people get to know each other, they sometimes say "Przejdźmy na ty" ("Let's use ty [form]"). It's actually more complicated, because there are separate verb forms... As I said, hell .

Oh, I forgot about Poland's voice actor! I think Ryan Bijan imitates Polish accent pretty good (but I like more Joel McDonald from future episodes), but I noticed he pronounces "war" as "var" or "wicked" as "vicked". I'm not an expert, but it sounds Russian to me. We have phoneme that is similar to your "w" - it's "ł", so we say "war" just as in English.

Talking about language is so inspiring! Thank you for all you compliments and you didn't make any mistakes in Polish!

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HetaliaENGTranscript In reply to ShaakTi1138 [2014-08-06 17:10:32 +0000 UTC]

Yaaaaay I didn't make mistakes!
I've had my own problems with my last name too~ it's "Hahn," which is German, but since it's pronounced the same way as "Han," people tend to think I'm Asian before meeting me.  Someone even swore I was AFTER meeting me.
Haha, and isn't Norway's human name Lukas?  So it's almost like Poland's last name is making him Norway's kid.  And looking back, his first name really does fit his personality!
And that video was hilarious.  The look on the soldiers' faces...

1. One is used solely for knowledge on a subject, while the other is for being familiar with a person or place, right?  In Italian it's "sapere" and "conoscere," respectively.  So you can't say "so Roma" because that would be kind of like saying "I know how to Rome."

(I also have no clue what connectivity of words is in English).  And maybe Italy's the weird one for using "fare" for everything!

3. I don't really hear negative questions unless we're upset.  It's like the difference between active and passive.  Normally we don't use passive, which would be "the pen was thrown by Mike" instead of "Mike threw the pen."  But if there's bad news, we seem to use it, like "Mike was hit by a car!"  It must be kind of confusing for the sentence structure to suddenly change, even though it's in pretty much every other language too.

4. My Italian teacher always gets really annoyed when someone refers to her as "tu" instead of "Lei."  She always tells my classmates "I'm not your sister!"  But the separate forms is something different, since like I said, we take the "he/she/it" form for formality in Italian.  The only country I can think of that has totally different endings for formalities is Japan, but I don't think they conjugate depending on who they're referring to or how many, just formalities and when it did or didn't happen.  But I love verb conjugations for some reason.  They're really fun.

Of course, there are always people speaking just as strangely as us out there.  Let us not forget China, who has absolutely no gender differences to the point where both boys and girls are referred to as "he."

Maybe the voice actor was saying it like he would if he just read the script?  Although, it must have been helpful that "v" isn't really a common letter in the English language.  If you listen to season 5, Spain makes his "j"s sound like "h"s and his "y"s sound like "j"s.  I'm not sure where the latter came from; maybe it's a Spain thing.  We learn Latin Spanish here, so there's a lot of pronunciation differences (i.e. in Spain, "Gracias" is pronounced "Grathias," while in Latin America it's "Grasias.")  He might also switch his "b"s and "v"s, but I haven't heard it.

This is totally random, but I've heard lots of English speakers say that Slavic languages (especially Polish) have so many consonants next to each other it should be impossible to pronounce (which sounds really ignorant on their part).  But they forget that we have words like "catchphrase."  "tchphr."  That must look like hell to a foreigner, even if "tch" is one sound alone and "ph" is another.  Also, we have the word "tsktsk."  I have no idea how to explain the pronunciation of that.  It's a sound of being disappointed in someone.  I think referring to it is "tisk tisk," but the sound itself, no clue how to explain it.  Since it's a sound, you guys probably have something like it too?

It makes me really happy to hear that I'm helping you and your sibling out!  Talking to you is really insightful too!

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ShaakTi1138 In reply to HetaliaENGTranscript [2014-08-08 20:08:05 +0000 UTC]

So it seems I'm not the only one having problems with my surname! But at least it's is fun .

Ha, ha, Poland and Norway don't have much in common, but who knows ? You know, in "Hetalia" we have Rome, Mama Greece and Germania - now we need Slavs ancestor! (Imagine: someone who combines features of Poles, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and others. Like this ). In my headcannon Poland is younger brother to Czech (we need to see him/her finally!), because their language had great influence on Polish. Besides, it'd make sense - Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are siblings, because they are so-called Eastern Slavs. Poland, Czech and Slovakia are Western Slavs, and there is also large group of Southern Slavs. And our first non-legendary prince, Mieszko, was married to Czech princess Dobrava and she convinced him to christanise the country (*cough*baptism of Poland*cough). It happened in 966 and that's symbolic date of Poland's "birth".

1. Yes, exactly!

2. Italy is using "pasta" for everything .

3. Oh, that's a new one to me. I was told by every teacher that passive voice is used often in English. In Polish we have it, but in most cases it sounds unnatural. I'll never forget when my German teacher ordered us to write "You can't smoke here" in German passive voice. German is, in general, not that hard, but their passive voice... And of course I forgot almost everything, except for stuff like "Ich bin..." or "Ja wohl, Ja wohl, Ich liebe Alkohol" .

4. Oh yeah, there are many things that seem "strange" to non-native speakers. I was told that in Greenlandic languages they use 30 words to describe snow. Because it's important in their lifes . And I never knew that Chineese is not using gender-specific forms .

I know Spanish a bit. Yes, their "v" and "b"... it sounds as something in between these two phonemes. I can hear it, but I'm unable to pronounce it. My colleague from Spain, Diego - I had Polish lessons with him - told me that Spanish has many dialects. He was born near Portugal border, so he was pronouncing "tortilla" completly different than people from, let's say, Madrid.

Yeah, Polish has many consonants (Brzęczyszczykiewicz!) and I often hear that it sounds like rustling . But, on the other hand, we have very little vowels. a, e, i, o, u, y, that's all. I remember when I was in middle high school, my teacher played a game with us: he was saying "ship" and "sheep" and we had to guess whether he means "a boat" or "an animal with wool". Back then, there was absolutely no difference for me between these two words. I think I hear it now, but I'm sure I say "ship was eating grass".

Again, take care .

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HetaliaENGTranscript In reply to ShaakTi1138 [2014-08-11 00:23:59 +0000 UTC]

"Ship was eating grass."  That's so adorable.

From what I've seen, the only real connections Norway and Poland have besides basic diplomacy is the Baltic Pipe, which is a proposed pipe from Denmark to Poland, where Norway would send natural gas to Poland via Denmark.

I believe Himuraya said that he pictured Czechoslovakia as Czech being a young girl, and Slovakia being an older man.  He also said he preferred them as a duo, but I see them as siblings, since their countries were one for so long.  So I guess Slovakia would be their older brother, and the Eastern Slavs would be like cousins!

I also headcanon that Poland holds his alcohol really well.  You guys have some serious booze over there, so I can't imagine that he wouldn't be used to it.

1. Yay!

2. I'm trying to imagine replacing "fare" with "pasta."  Pasta breakfast.  Pasta a shower.  Haha...

3. Hee hee, "Ich weiß nicht wie Alkohol."  I think that's right... I'm not taking German until next year.

4. Wow Greenland.  Well, Germany can create totally new words by contracting a bunch of already existing ones.  And I believe China writes he and she differently, but pronounces them both the same.

Accents have always fascinated me, so it's interesting to hear about Spain's different ones.  I learnt from my teacher that in Northern Italy, to say "what?"  They say "Cosa?" while in Southern Italy, they say "Che?"  Both mean what, but I always found it kinda cute.  I think Central Italy might have said the whole "Che cosa?" but I'm not sure.

From what I've seen, you have 32 natural letters in your alphabet, correct? (counting out Q V and X)  So that's a lot of consonants.  The only variations of letters I've ever seen in English are é and ç, and I believe those were on words we took straight from the French.  So our 26 letter natural alphabet is a lot smaller!  The only other alphabets I know of is Korean (24 letters), Spanish (28) and Italian (22).

~~

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ShaakTi1138 In reply to HetaliaENGTranscript [2014-08-11 21:38:01 +0000 UTC]

Or maybe Czech and Slovakia will be twins? Hima should really show their story .

Oh, Poland and alcohol... yeah, we drink it a lot (too much, I'm afraid. I once imagined drinking contest between "Hetalia" characters. Russia was first, but Poland second. And Britain last ). We have żubrówka, okowita, gorzałka, spirytus... and cider. Super-popular lately .

The best words in German are their numerals. They are (almost) always written together. For example, "7432" is "siebentausendvierhundertzweiunddreißig"  .

Yeah, accents are fascinating! That's why I prefer English dub of "Hetalia" . Maybe in South Italy there are Spanish influences? Although "what" in Spanish is "que"...

Yup, 32 letters (q,v and x are used, but in foreign words). We have those weird ź, ć, ó,, ą, ę and so on .

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HetaliaENGTranscript In reply to ShaakTi1138 [2014-08-11 23:17:47 +0000 UTC]

Maybe, maybe!  Well, twins or not, one of them would be older either way ^^

Haha, I'm imagining Britain taking like one sip and then just collapsing into a fit of sobs.  In America, we actually have pretty strict drinking laws.  Not only it the legal age 21, but alcohol was illegal here for 13 years (1920-1933 Probition).  Even nowadays, many alcoholic beverages that are legal in places like Britain are illegal here for having too high of an alcohol concentration.  So hearing about foreign drinks makes us a little excited.

Oh my... wow Germany.  Wow.  In Italian, it'd be "settemila quattrocentotrentadue."  At least they separate the hundreds and thousands.

This is random, but it always interested me how in Europe, you guys use commas and periods in the opposite way that we do when it comes to numbers.  While we write "3,333.44" I see Europeans write "3.333,44" and I really have to wonder if that was just America or Britain wanting to be different again or if it was something else.

Also on numbers, Denmark's are also messed up .

Pretty similar, but I think it's from the Latin root.  "What" in Latin should be "quid" if Google Translate is good at Latin, and it's "quoi" in French, so they're all pretty similar.  It's "ce" in Romanian, so all the Romance languages have a similar way of saying it.

We're totally spamming the comment wall, but whatever.  I'd love to draw out or write a fanfic for that drinking contest, haha

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ShaakTi1138 In reply to HetaliaENGTranscript [2014-08-13 14:35:52 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, we write like that: "1.238,4". In my country we also use space to separate numbers higher than 9999: 10 000, 120 000. I have no idea why .

Yep, I know Americans are more strict when it comes to alcohol - I heard that our żubrówka is forbiden in your country . In Poland legal age is 18, but sadly many (stupid) immature teenagers buy it illegally. And drunk-driving is a serious problem too . 

Germans also read their numerals like in Denmark - "52" is "zweiundfünfzig" - literally "two and fifty".

Aww, it's not spam, it's very fruitful and interesting conversation! And I count on you, one day you should write and/or draw it!

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HetaliaENGTranscript In reply to ShaakTi1138 [2014-08-13 15:29:28 +0000 UTC]

I totally forgot to mention this before, but according to the Baltic Times, Russia banned imports of powdered milk and powdered fish from Latvia.  All the news on Latvia right now is depressing or worrisome and about Russia.  Lithuania apparently is requiring Russians to get special permission to go in and out of the country... and Estonia rented a new electric bike!  Plus, there'll be some traffic in Tallinn!
The differences in news stories is astounding.  Of course, Estonia's also looking into buying anti-tank defenses.

Żubrówka is the bison grass vodka, right?  (It makes me sad to look a map of where European Bison still live)  It sounds seriously interesting!  I'll have to look for some when we finally go to Canada, since it's still legal there.  Of course, I'm not old enough to drink alcohol in either country...   But my parents would enjoy it, I bet!

I think drunk-driving is a problem everywhere, unfortunately.  The problem is that adults expect videos and assemblies to convince those teenagers to not drink and then drive.  Honestly, I think the only real way to convince them is if they had a personal experience with it, but that's too cruel to wish upon every stupid immature teenager...

Oh, you countries in that area and your numbers.

You'll have to tell me more about it!  You probably have more knowledge on European alcohol consumption than I do~ Canada's alcohol laws are way less strict, as I mentioned before (in Canada, the alcohol content in whiskey is allowed to reach 90%, while in the state of Ohio, the alcohol content in beer can't exceed 12%.)  I'm not sure how Canada would play out in the contest, but for America, I feel like he'd do totally fine, and then the moment they bring out the stuff that's banned in his country, he fails miserably

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ShaakTi1138 In reply to HetaliaENGTranscript [2014-08-16 20:29:18 +0000 UTC]

Today Russia is banning everything :/. Yeah, in Poland most news are about Russia too. Probably because Ukraine is our neighbour and we are really worried . Or maybe because of such comments .

Yeah, żubrówka is the one with grass. But warn your parents, it's pretty strong . I don't drink alcohol - it's unhealthy and stuff - so I don't have much personal experience . 

As for the drinking contest... yeah, I think Canada is quiet only on the outside .  I imagine America would be pretty excited about banned stuff (like in the episode when he was trying blowfish ). From canon we know that akvavit is popular in Denmark (and he's often depicted with beer), France has champagne, Germany beer, Italy wine and Latvia is said to be heavy drinker. As far as I know, Czech beer is almost as popular as German and finnish vodka called Finlandia is quite famous too. Although I'm not sure why they choose to name it "Finalndia", because it means "Finland"... but in Polish . And I heard that statistically French and Italians drink more than Poles, but they have different culture: they drink, let's say, a glass of wine with dinner every day. We drink, let's say, once a week... but more than just a glass. You know, there are people who believe that party is not real when you're not drunk till you're sick. I recently heard that in XV-XVII century during parties statistical Polish noble drank 2 liters of alcohol. But it was customary to drink it at once. In order to, *cough*, "achieve" that, mugs had many little holes, so when someone was drinking from them, he ended up drenched in alcohol. Aww, those nobles .

Hmm, maybe I'll try to do a little research and find out what we know about alcohol in "Hetalia" canon .

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HetaliaENGTranscript In reply to ShaakTi1138 [2014-08-17 02:24:24 +0000 UTC]

Ah, yeah, that comment would do it.  I really hope that Russia's bark is far worse than their bite, and I also hope that China won't support those claims.  Stand strong, Eastern Europe! 
And Zhirinovsky forgot that Siberia and Alaska are only 82 km apart.

I can't get past the smell of alcohol plus I'm too young to drink here.  I tried one sip of wine once and my mouth burned for like half an hour.  They aren't lying when they say it's an acquired taste, but I'm not sure why people drink it enough to acquire the taste.

Czechs I believe were voted the heaviest drinkers in Europe, along with Austrians.  At least when it came to beer consumption.  I remember that we were offered wine every night on my tour in France (Shirley Temples replaced the wine for me), so the glass of wine with dinner every day is accurate.  In a drinking contest, though, Poland would win, since he has more than one glass when he drinks~ and wowwww Polish nobles...

Maybe Finland was looking for advertisement when he named his vodka?  At least he didn't name it "Suomi!"

This will be a statistically accurate and beautiful doujinshi filled with drunk Hetalia characters!!

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ShaakTi1138 In reply to HetaliaENGTranscript [2014-08-18 20:21:13 +0000 UTC]

God, we're really spamming in here . Zhirinovsky is a clown, seriously. Enjoy .

Austria a heavy drinker? Wow . Oh, I already see it... Austrian noble vs. Polish noble...  

I think Poland would be no match for Russia (although Feliks would fight till the very end). In popular culture russian glass - so-called stakan - is often associated with vodka and pickled cucumbers. My father ordered me to tell you this joke:

Someone asked Russian man:
"Ivan, would you drink a stakan of vodka?"
"Da."
"And two stakans?"
"Sure."
"And a bottle?"
"No problem."
"Three bottles?"
"Well... I think so."
"What about a bucket?"
Ivan starts to count.
"No."
"Why?"
"Cuz there is not enough cucumbers here."

Explanation: Russians like to drink vodka and eat cucumbers at the same time. Because vodka alone is rather untasty and strong, most people drink it with appetizers (we call it "zakąski". Wow, I even found a cookbook only with zakąski). I must e-mail this to Hima .

I stared my research, but it'll probably take me some time. I have to browse through all published and un-published webcomics, songs, character profiles... But I'll make it!  

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HetaliaENGTranscript In reply to ShaakTi1138 [2014-08-18 21:27:27 +0000 UTC]

Wow... that's honestly really amusing.  I'm surprised anyone can take him seriously.

Heehee~ I assume Austria would have a Germanic drinking style, whatever it is.  I also read somewhere that Germans are becoming more health-conscious, so they're drinking less alcohol than they used to.  Maybe Germany's trying to cut down too!  Beer sales are at a serious low in Germany.

Ha, that joke... it's funny thinking about Russia having a cabinet filled with cucumbers... and I want that cook book now.  Making appetizers for vodka sounds seriously fun, even if I can't drink the vodka.

While you work on canon Hetalia, I'll do my browsing for other sources!  Best of luck to both of us!

And tell your dad and sister I say hi~

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ShaakTi1138 In reply to HetaliaENGTranscript [2014-08-20 20:18:52 +0000 UTC]

I'll tell them! Good luck~!

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HetaliaENGTranscript In reply to ShaakTi1138 [2014-08-21 10:42:40 +0000 UTC]

You too!  I'll be looking forward to your results and feedback!

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