About – Sobre

What is this blog: After a lovely trip to Catalonia and la Franja in October of 2007 i started studying the Catalan language quite seriously. In this blog i plan to write some notes about these studies. My main blog is called Aharoni in Unicode, ya mama; see the sidebar for more.

Who am i and what languages do i speak: I was born in Moscow in 1980 and my mother tongue is Russian. I studied English since the age of seven. I tend to use American Spelling and i write “i” with a small letter intentionally; you are welcome to correct any other mistakes or inconsistencies that you find. I live in Israel since 1991 and i speak Hebrew fluently.

Linguistics: I have studied Linguistics formally since 2002 in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and i’ve taken courses in Latin, Italian and Spanish, and also Lithuanian and Amharic. Since 2007 i’m taking a Catalan course with Margalit Serra and since 2008 i also started studying for a first degree in Hebrew language. All this time i have also worked full time, so i haven’t finished my first degree yet. Since my studies have been rather haphazard, i may make a lot mistakes in Linguistic terms. In particular, i have only studied the basics of Phonology or Phonetics, and my studies of syntax have been very patchy. It’s my fault entirely; please correct me when i’m wrong.

Phonetic transcription: Every book on language that i have ever read to date – grammars, dictionaries, linguistic theory, etc. – says that it uses the standard phonetic transcription, but “with some changes” for the sake of simplicity, precision, or whatever. (By “standard phonetic transcription” these books refer to either the International Phonetic Alphabet or a transcription which is common in the relevant field of study – Semitic languages, Amharic, Arabic, etc.) Some books don’t even admit the changes, but still use the respective transcription system liberally. I try to do the opposite: Since every published book is different for the reasons above, i don’t accept any of them as my standard and try to use the standard IPA, as published by the International Phonetic Association. As i said above, i am not very experienced with phonology, so any help, comments and corrections will be appreciated.