In the Land of the Eagles

Snowdon / Yr Wyddfa

Yesterday I climbed Snowdon with other members of the Bangor Ukulele Society. We set off from Pen-y-Pass (The head/top of the pass) and took the Miner’s Track to the top, then went down the Llanberis Path. On the way up and the way down we stopped a number of times to sing a few songs, and got a bit of an audience in places.

The name Snowdon comes from the Old English for “snow hill”, and the Welsh name – Yr Wyddfa [əɾ ˈwɨ̞ðva] – means “the tumulus” or “burial mound”. According to legend a giant known as Rhitta Gawr was buried there after being defeated by King Arthur [source].

Snowdonia, the region in which Snowdon sits, is known as yr Eryri [əɾ ɛrˈərɪ] in Welsh. I was told yesterday that this comes from the word eryr (eagle) so is poetically translated as “The Land of the Eagles”. However this is apparently a folk etymology and it actually comes from the Latin word orīrī, from orīor (to rise, get up, appear, exist) and means highland or upland [source].

The Latin word orīor comes from the Proto-Indo-European *(H)r ̊-nw- ‎(to flow, move, run), which is also the root of the Middle Irish rian ‎(river, way), the Old Church Slavonic reka ‎(river), the Latin rivus ‎(stream), the Sanskrit ऋति ‎(ṛti – course, way), and the Gaulish *Renos ‎(that which flows), which is where the name of the river Rhine comes from [source].

Do we have a moving forward position?

I often receive emails from advertisers and people who run advertising networks wanting to place their ads on Omniglot. Or as they put it, they want to “buy redundant inventory” or “buy website traffic”. They talk about fill rates, CPMs, passback options, DSPs, geos, volume impressions and monetization strategies. Recently one asked me to let them know “if we have a moving forward position”, after an exchange of emails.

I know what some of this jargon means, and have looked up the rest, but I still don’t fully understand some of it, and don’t think it’s worth the effort. Usually I just say I’m not interested.

I don’t really have a monetization strategy for Omniglot – I just place ads and affiliate links that I think are relevant, and make sure they don’t get in the way of the content. This seems to work as I’m making a good living from the site.

Jargon like this develops in many fields. It’s a quick way of referring to things that you often talk about. However it is only really meaningful to others in your field. Outsiders can find it impenetrable and might need some help, not only to understand the terms, but also the concepts behind them.

Some jargon, especially business jargon, doesn’t really mean anything – blue sky thinking outside the box, and all that.

Do you use jargon?

Do you have any interesting examples of jargon you use, or have heard others using?

Hybrid languages

There is some interesting discussion about hybrid languages on episodes of the the World in Words podcast that I listened recently. One episode discuss Chiac, a combination of Acadian French and English spoken in New Brunswick in Canada.

Examples include:

– J’ai backé mon car dans la driveway
– Je prends un large double Americano pour sortir

This form of language has been around since at least the 18th century and is looked down on by many as being corrupted French. However people who speak Chiac also speak French and English and tend to do so with no Chiac-speakers.

Another episode discusses Spanglish, a mixture of Spanish and English spoken in California that dates back at least to the early 19th century, when California, and other southern US states, were part of Mexico, and it was common for people to speak Spanish and English.

You could view these forms of speech could be seen as code switching between different languages. However the switching seems to be quite systematic and not necessarily spontaneous.

Do you know of other examples of hybrid languages like this?

Les mots de la semaine

français English Cymraeg
ambulant travelling teithiol
crwydrol
vendeur ambulant travelling salesman trafaeliwr
trafeiliwr
marchand ambulant
commerçant ambulant
peddler / pedlar
street vendor
huckster
pedlar
pacmon
musicien ambulant busker clerwr
cerddor stryd
cerddor crwydrol
catastrophe ambulante walking disaster trychineb gerddol
enseignant itinérant peripatetic teacher athro peripatetig / teithiol / cylchynol
professeur remplaçant supply teacher athro llanw / athrawes lanw
péripatéticien(ne) peripatetic
streetwalker
crwydryn
putain; merch ddrwg
la cohérence consistency cysondeb
cysonder
principalement
surtout
mainly yn bennaf
gan mwyaf
souhaiter to wish (to do sth) dymuno (gwneud rhywbeth)
faire un vœu to make a wish
to wish for sth
dymuno
J’aimerais bien I wish! Mi hoffwn i
Byddai’n dda gen i
secours help; aid; rescue; relief cymorth
secourir to help; to aid; to assist cynorthwyo
helpu
aider to help; to assist cynorthwyo
helpu
la relecture proofreading darllen proflenni
cywiro proflenni
la rédaction (copy) editing golygu (copi)

Soggy days

This morning the weather app on my phone told me that it would be a soggy day today. It wasn’t wrong – it rained all morning and much of the afternoon. When I saw the word soggy I started wondering whether days could be described as soggy in other languages.

It seems you can talk about un printemps détrempé (a soggy spring) in French, according to Reverso, though I don’t know how commonly this expression is used.

How about in other languages?

Earth apple in the garden dress

Baked potato

An interesting French expression I learnt last week was “pomme de terre dans la robe de jardin” or literally “apple of the earth in the dress of the garden”, which is apparently one way French speakers refer to a baked / jacket potato.

Other names include:

– pomme de terre au four = lit. “apple of the earth in the oven”
– pomme de terre cuite au four = lit. “apple of the earth cooked in the oven”
– pomme de terre en robe des champs = lit. “apple of the earth in the dress of the fields”

Are these expressions all used in French?

Are baked potatoes popular in French-speaking countries?

How about in other countries?

In the UK a baked potato can be a meal in itself. They are often served with cheese, tuna and other fillings – my favourite is cheese and bacon. Is this a peculiarly British thing?

Learning multiple languages simultaneously

One of the talks at the Polyglot Gathering was about a way to learn several languages at the same time. The speaker, Elisa Polese, explained how she teaches up to 10 languages simultaneously by comparing and contrasting them. It sounds like this technique can work quite well for similar languages, at least at the beginning. However I’m not sure if it would work at higher levels, as the differences between the languages might become more noticeable and more difficult to compare.

Have you tried to teach or learn several languages at the same time?

Over the next year or so I might try to improve the languages I know. I’m still thinking about how I’ll do this, but have some ideas.