Omniglot - the blog

Image you’re at a party to celebrate a friend’s birthday. It’s a Saturday or Sunday, the party’s been going on for quite a while and you’re starting to feel somewhat fatigued. In English and most other languages it would take a whole sentence to explain this situation.

In Estonian however, there’s a word that covers just such an eventuality - Sünnipäevanädalalõpupeopärastlõunaväsimus, which according to Corcaighist, means “The tiredness one feels on the afternoon of the weekend birthday party”. Or if you break it down into parts “birth.day.week.end.party.after.lunch.tiredness”.

I came across the word clustfeinio yesterday while reading a novel in Welsh. At first I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, apart from having something to do with ears, clustiau. From the context though I was able to guess its meaning:

Wy’n clustfeinio am bob gwich a sgrech.
I’m [verbing] to every squeak and shriek.

From its position in the sentence, you can tell that clustfeinio is a verb. Can you guess what it means? The character who says this sentence is lying in bed trying to get to sleep.

Related words include:

clust - ear
clustdlws - ear-ring (lit. “ear brooch/jewel”)
clusten - (ear) lobe
clustew / clustrwm - hard of hearing (lit. “fat ear” / “heavy ear”)
clustfyddar - deaf
clustiog - eared
clustog - pillow, cushion
clustowlad - buffer-state (lit. “pillow state”)

The words for trees in Míkmaq, an Algonquin language spoken in parts of Canada and the USA, are apparently based on the sounds the trees make in the wind. More specifically, according to this page, the names come from “the sound that the wind makes when it blows through the leaves during autumn about an hour after sunset, when the wind usually comes from a particular direction.” The names can therefore change over time depending on the wind and the age and size of the trees. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any of the actual names of trees in Míkmaq.

Míkmaq words for animals are also based on sounds - the sounds made by those animals. For example, kitten is miaojij. The same happens to some extent in other languages. For example, the Mandarin Chinese for cat is 猫 (māo).

In English the names of some birds are onomatopoeic, including cuckoo, whippoorwill, morepork, chiffchaff, chickadee, whooping swan and peewit.

Can you think of other examples of onomatopoeic birds, animals or other creatures?

Poklop is a Czech word I came across today which means trapdoor or hatch. I’m not sure of its etymology, but I just like the sound of this word.

An alternative word for the same thing is padací dveře (lit. “falling door”). Related words include padací most drawbridge, (lit. “falling bridge”) and padací mříž portculis, (lit. “falling bar/grating/grid”).

While looking through Language Log today, I came across the unusual words, grawlix, which is apparently a spiral used by cartoonists to indicate a character is swearing or cursing, along with other typographic symbols - for example @$£*&%!! (Here the ampersand (@) stands in for the grawlix).

According to Wiktionary, grawlix means “A string of typographical symbols used (especially in comic strips) to represent an obscenity or swearword.” It was apparently coined by American cartoonist Mort Walker.

Walker also coined a number of other terms for symbols used in comics, including jarn and quimp, which are also used as alternative names for typographic swearing; phosphene, which describes the stars that form over characters’ heads after they’ve been knocked out; and squean, which might float around a drunken character’s head.

Here’s an example of a comic character saying the cartoon-style swear squiggles.

Grawlix dollar sign jarn asterisk hash quimp!

The other day I heard that one of my colleagues had been “signed off”. As this was the first time I’d heard this expression in this context I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Later I discovered that she had been signed off by her doctor due to carpal tunnel syndrome and would be spending a week or two at home resting.

Have you heard this expression used in this way before?

I’ve heard of radio and television stations signing off at the end of the day, though many stations no longer do so as they broadcast 24 hours a day. I’ve also heard of projects, expenses and budgets being signed off.

There are a number of other English idioms involved signing here, including sign on, sign up (for), sign over and sign out. I suspect such expressions, and similar ones like get on/off/up/down, etc. might be quite tricky for learners of English.

Today’s word, nomophobia, is a recent coinage that means the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. It’s a contraction of “no moblie phobia”.

Something like half the mobile phone users in the UK might suffer from this condition, according to a recent survey undertaken by the Post Office. A lot people apparently feel anxious if their phone out of charge or credit, if they lose their phone or if they can’t get a signal.

Are you a nomophobic?

What do the above have in common?

Well, believe or not they’re different sizes of paper in the English Imperial system. An emperor is the largest size - 72 × 48 (all measurements in inches), an antiquarian is 53 × 31, and an elephant is 28 × 23. There are also double elephants (40 × 27) and grand eagles (42 × 28 ¾), while the smallest size of writing paper is the pott (15 × 12 ½). A bit more interesting than A4, A3, etc!

Quantities of paper also have special terms to describe them:

• quire = 24 sheets of paper
• ream = 480 or 516 sheets of paper, or 20 quires
• bundle = 2 reams
• bale = 5 bundles

Quire comes from the Latin quaternī, set of four, four each, via the Vulgar Latin quaternus, the Old French quaer and the Middle English quayer.

Ream comes from the Arabic rizma, bundle, via Old Spanish resma, Old French reime, and Middle English reme.

Sources: The Free Dictionary and Paper measures

“Well”, “there you are then”, “Oh dear!” and “That’s life!” are all examples of phatic expressions, which are used as conversation openers, to establish and maintain contact with people, to show that you’re listening, and/or to give you time to think of something else to say. They don’t usually have much meaning in themselves. Greetings and farewells are also examples of phatic language.

The term phatic was coined by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in the early 1900s and comes from the Ancient Greek φατός (fatos) ‘spoken’, from φάναι (fanai) ‘to say’. Other terms for these types of expressions include small talk and grooming talk - one theory is that humans developed phatic language to replace grooming, an activity that takes up quite a lot of time for our ape relatives and ancestors.

If you’re able to use the common phatic expressions in languages you’re learning, you will sound much more fluent. The actual content and usage of phatic expressions various from culture to culture, so just translating such expressions from your mother tongue won’t necessarily work. You need to find out which expressions to use and when to use them.

For those of you learning Chinese, this blog post on phatic communication between Chinese people and Westerners will probably be of interest.

I came across the term timeboxing today on this blog. When I first read it, it conjured up images of someone boxing with a clock. Now I know that it’s a technique for managing your time that’s often used for software development projects. It involves setting yourself set ‘boxes’ of time to do things, but not worrying about completing them. Instead you just do as much as you can as well as you can in the time available. Then you use as many more timeboxes as you need to complete the tasks. The aim is to curb perfectionist tendencies by setting a time limit and to avoid overcommiting to a task.

The author of the blog post mentions that he finds it easier to make a start on tedious tasks because he has decided in advance that he’ll stop after a set time. Once he’s conquered the initial inertia of getting started and becomes more focused and interested in the tasks, he might spend longer than originally intended working on them.

This technique could be applied to language learning. You could set yourself a box or boxes of time each day when you’ll study, and study as much as you can manage in that/those time(s). While you might find it difficult to study a whole lesson in the time available, studying part of a lesson is still a useful thing to do.

One of the commenters on the post mentions that he rewards himself each time he completes a period of study. He finds that he rewarding himself in small doses at regular intervals helps him get a lot more done. This idea could be applied to language learning as well - the rewards could be doing something you really enjoy in the language, such as listening to or singing a song or watching a video.

More information about timeboxing.