Portmanteaux

photo of a portmanteau

A portmanteau is a large travelling bag or suitcase with two compartments. The word comes from the Middle French porter (to carry) and manteau (mantle). In modern French the word means coat rack.

A portmanteau word or portmanteau is one that fuses several grammatical inflections, or one that combines parts of two or more words. The first definition is the one used by linguists, who know portmanteaux of the second type as blends.

The term portmanteau was coined by Lewis Carroll and first appeared in his book, Through the Looking Glass, in 1871. When explaining the word slithy from Jabberwocky, Humpty Dumpty tells Alice that “Well, slithy means lithe and slimy … You see it’s like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

Other portmanteaux in English include brunch (breakfast + lunch), smog (smoke + fog), aquarobics (aqua – aerobics), infomercial (information + comercial), advertorial (advertisement + editorial), and of course blog (web + log).

An interesting portmanteau I came across today was snickanas (snickers + bananas) – a snack one of my friends invented.

Main source: Wikipedia

I think I’ll pass on the parsing

As children few of us know any grammatical terminology, yet we’re still able to speak grammatically. In school we might be taught the ‘grammar’ of our own language. Traditionally, in English-speaking countries at least, this has consisted mainly of parsing sentences – an exercise that involves labelling the parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc). Recently though, there’s been a trend to avoid teaching any kind of grammar at all, at least in the UK.

Those taught to parse sentences seem keen to point out that many people ‘don’t know their grammar’ these days, with the implication that this is a bad thing. However, even people who don’t know, or are not sure of, the difference between nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc. are able to cobble together grammatically correct sentences.

The origin of parsing sentences goes back to ancient Greece: the Greeks developed a description or grammar of their language in order to teach it to non-Greeks. The most famous Greek grammarian, Dionysius Thrax, established the idea of parts of speech, which he based on the ideas of Aristotle. In his Téchnē, written in the 2nd century BC, he stated that Greek had eight parts of speech: noun, verb, participle, article, pronoun, preposition, adverb and conjunction. Adjectives were a sub-class of nouns. To ‘know one’s grammar’ was essentially a matter of being able to parse sentences and name the parts of speech. Syntax was usually ignored.

The Greek model was copied by the Romans and adapted to Latin, a language different to Greek in many ways. The Latin model was later used for many other languages, few of which were much like Latin or Greek.

Were you taught grammar at school? How was it taught, and do you remember much of it?

Word of the day – gwlyb

gwlyb /’gulIb/, adjective = wet, dank, sloppy, liquid

gwlyb, ansoddair = gwleb, yn cynnwys hylif, llaith, wedi gwlychu, yn bwrw glaw

This is a lovely Welsh word that looks impossible to pronounce to non-Welsh speakers. It actually sounds something like goo-lib – both w and y are vowels in Welsh.

Related words
gwlypach, comparative – wetter
gwlypa(f), superlative – wettest
gwlybaniaeth, noun – moisture
gwlybwr, noun – liquid
gwlybyrog, adjective – wet, liquid
gwlychu, verb – to wet, soak, drench

Examples of usage:

oedd hi’n gwlyb y bore ma ym Mrighton
– it was wet in Brighton this morning (there was a big storm)

bydd hi’n wlypach o lawer yn y De nag yn y Gogledd
– it will be a lot wetter in the South than in the north

Language guessing

Whenever I hear an unfamiliar language, I try to guess which language it is, or least which language family it belongs to. I base my guesses not just on the language itself – the sounds, intontation and any words I recognise – but also on the appearance of the people speaking it, and the way they interact with one another.

There are currently many people from Eastern Europe in Brighton, particularly from Poland and the Czech Republic. As a result, I can usually identify a language as Slavic when I hear it, but can’t always work out which Slavic language it is.

Last week I met some people who were speaking a language I hadn’t heard before among themselves, and English with me. Judging by their appearance, I guessed that the language might be Hebrew or Arabic, though it didn’t sound like either. Yesterday I discovered that it was Farsi/Persian.

The lure of the unknown

Learning a language related to your mother tongue is generally less difficult than learning one that’s distantly related or completely unrelated. However, getting to grips with a language that’s very different to the ones you already know can be very interesting and exciting. Such languages can seem strange and exotic, and other people may be suprised, amazed and/or find it hard to believe that you’re studying them. Once you become more familiar with a language, the strangeness tends to diminish. Perhaps that’s when it’s time to have a go at a different, even stranger language.

What’s the most unusual language you’ve studied?

Addition: by ‘most unusual language’ I mean the language that’s most different from the ones you’re familiar with. For me it’s Chinese and Japanese – everything about them is different: the grammar, the pronunciation and especially the writing systems. This is one reason why I chose to study them at university rather than French or German, which don’t seem very exotic to me.

Language cross-training

The other day I come across the interesting idea of language cross-training (I don’t remember where though, unfortunately). The writer suggested that when learning a language, it can sometimes be beneficial to have a break to learn a bit of another language. The aim isn’t necessarily to become fluent in the second language, but the process of studying that language can help to keep your brain flexible as you grapple with different sounds, grammatical structures and word order. For example, while learning Spanish you could take a break and learn some Turkish. When you go back to the Spanish it will probably seem easier.

Have you tried this technique? Does it work?

What language is this?

Here’s another challenge for you – can you identify the following language and/or translate this phrase into English?

kalunáa baw sai pa̖a dàek

Some clues: this is a real language and is normally written with its own unique alphabet. The accent marks indicate tones. The phrase is something you might say in a restaurant.

What would you like to see on this blog?

This blog has been online for nearly four months, which is apparently the average life of a website, and I’ve been wondering whether you have any ideas or suggestions for what you’d like to see here. I haven’t run out of ideas myself, but thought asking you would be a good plan.

If any of you would like to post something here, for example details of your language learning advantures, language-related news items, stories, poems, songs, etc., please contact me at the usual address.

Pueblo Inglés

Yesterday one of my colleagues sent me a link to the Pueblo Inglés, or English Village, which sounds like is a very interesting idea. The English Village is a small, remote hamlet called Valdelavilla in the province of Soria, about four hours north of Madrid. Spanish people can go there to practice and improve their English. Native English speakers from all over the world can stay there for free in return for talking English all day to the Spanish people. English is the only language permitted there.

The organisation that runs the program in Valdelavilla, Vaughan Village, also runs similiar programs in a few other parts of Spain and Italy.

There are a number of English Villages in Korea, though they operate along slightly different lines as they pay English teachers to provide the teaching and conversation practice for the Korean students.

Does anyone know whether there are similar programs for English speakers learning other languages?