How short is your pastry?

While eating one of my mum’s delicious mince pies yesterday, I asked what makes them different to the ones you buy in shops. Apparently it’s the pastry – my mum uses shortcrust pastry, and shop-brought ones use sweet pastry. This got us wondering what the short in shortcrust actually means.

Shortcrust pastry is made with flour, fat and water. The fat might be lard, butter, margarine, or shortening, which is a vegetable-based fat [source].

It seems the short in shortcrust comes from shortening, which can also refer to butter or other fat used in baking, and comes from shorten, in the sense of “to make crumbly”, from short, which can mean “easily crumbled”. The same short appears in shortbread and shortcake [source].

In case you’re not familiar with British Christmas foods, a mince pie is a small sweet round pie containing dried fruit, suet and spices. Such pies did once contain minced meat and were larger, and oblong in shape, but these days they don’t contain any meat [source].

Why Weihnachten?

Have you every wondered where the German word for Christmas, Weihnachten, comes from? I have, as it is so different from words for Christmas in other European languages. So I decided to investigate.

Weihnachten comes from the Middle High German wīhenahten ‎(Christmas), from a dative plural ze den wīhen nahten ‎(in the holy nights). The oldest form (1170) is a singular diu wīhe naht (the Holy Night). It came to refer to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day collectively somewhat later.

Source: Wiktionary

Another source states that Weihnachten first appeared as ze wîhen naht in a song by the minstrel Spervogel, who lived in the 12th Century: “Er ist gewaltic unde starc (…) der ze wîhen naht gebórn wárt. (…) daz ist der heilige Krist, (…) jâ lobt in allez, daz dir ist”. It is perhaps a translation of the Latin nox sancta.

More about German Christmas vocabulary and traditions:
http://marathonsprachen.com/christmas-vocabulary-wortschatz-zur-weihnachten/

Sorry, we’re out of smiles

A french comic about smiles

Translation:
– A baguette please.
– With this?
– ?
– With a plant please
– With this?
– With a surfboard please
– With this?
– With a smile please
– Sorry. I don’t have any more of them.

The phrase avec ceci ? literally means “with this?”, but I suspect in this context it might mean something like “(would you like) anything else?”. Is that right?

This comic / cartoon was brought to you by Frantastique, who are offering French lessons with an exclusive 20% reduction to all Omniglots readers.

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That’s enough!

The Russian word всё (vsjo) [fsʲo] is a useful one that can mean various things depending on the context: everything, still, always, all the time, nevertheless.

Here are some examples:

– Вот и всё; Это всё = that’s all
– Мне всё равно = it’s all the same to me
– Я всё равно пойду туда = I’ll go there all the same
– Всё? Да, это всё = Have you got everything? Yes, that’s everything
– Всё хорошо = Everything’s fine
– всё же = all the same
– всё ещё = still
– Мне всё мало = I just can’t get enough
– а всё-таки = all the same, nevertheless

One handy tip I got from the Russian Made Easy podcasts is that when learning a new word that has a variety of meanings, like всё, it’s hard to grasp all it’s nuances straight away. Instead your understanding of what a word means and how it’s used builds up over time the more you hear it, see it and use it.

Sources: Reverso, Russian Made Easy, The Oxford Russian Dictionary

Ditties, dictation and digits

A ditty is a short, simple song, like the ones I write. It comes from the Old French dite (composition), from the Latin dictatum (something dictated), from dictare (to dictate), a frequentative of dicere (to say, speak), which is related to dicare (to proclaim, dedicate), from the Proto-Indo-European root *deik- (to point out).

Some English words that come from the same root include dictate, diction, and digit, which came to be related to numbers as a result of counting on fingers. Other words that developed from this root include the Latin digitus (finger), the German zeigen, the Greek δίκη [díkê] (custom, right, judgement), and quite a few more.

The word teach also comes from the *deik-, via the Old English tæcan (to show, point out, declare, demonstrate; to give instruction, train, assign, direct; warn; persuade), from the Proto-Germanic *taikijan (to show).

Source: Online Etymology Dictionary, Oxford Dictionaries and the Indo-European Lexicon.

Les mots de la semaine

français English Cymraeg
avoir conscience (de qch) (to be) aware (of) ymwybodol (o); gwybod (am)
se rendre compte de to become aware of dod yn gyfarwydd â;
dod yn ymwybodol o;
dod i wybod
l’intoxication (f) alimentaire food poisoning gwenwyn bwyd
souscrire à to subscribe (to an opinion) cefnogi; arddel; coleddu
l’ovation (f) debout standing ovation cymeradwyaeth sefyll
on s’est levé pour l’acclaimer he was given a standing ovation cododd pawb i’w gymeradwyo
contrebandier smuggler smyglwr
trafiquant de drogue drug smuggler smyglwr cyffuriau
draguer to dredge (a river) carthu
les ouvrages anticrues;
les ouvrages de protection contre les eaux
flood defences amddiffynfeydd llifogydd
la zone inondable flood plain gorlifdir; gwastatir; llifwaddod
être en crue to flood (river) gorlifo; llifo
occasionnel occasional ambell; ysbeidiol
la table d’appoint occasional table bwrdd bach
la flaque (d’eau) puddle pwll; pwdel