… of languages.

Ever since starting to learn Polish, I’ve had a bit of a ‘thing’ for slavic languages – not that I can speak any of them well (yet).

Macedonian is a Slavic language and so I naturally I wanted to add a Macedonian section to surface languages. If you are interested in learning a bit of Macedonian you will find them here.

It is especially cool because it is written in (a version of) cyrillic. (I think Cyrillic looks cool – ok?). Now cyrillic (in all variants) has a certain style, but not everyone knows how to read it, or indeed wants to learn how to read it.

And so the Macedonian phrases on Surface Languages also have a version transliterated into the roman alphabet – at the click of a button.

As an aside I learnt how to say lubię jesć gruszki (I like to eat pears) and nie lubię jesć groszek (I don’t like to eat pears) in Polish. This is very useful as it happens, as groszek is a genitive (plural) which is always used after negation.

Being easily distracted, I then looked on google and discovered that the translation given for I don’t like to eat pears was Nie lubię jeść gruszki. This is wrong as it ignores the genitive plural ending groszek.

You can edit and submit translations on google translate, so I did so. It will be interesting to see when and if the google translation changes. I imagine the algorithm will change the translation given after x people edit and save the translation in the same manner.

This could explain why simple and commonly used phrases are translated well, and less common phrases nie lubię jesć groszek are somewhat shonky.

Hugs & besos,

Peace,

MF