Feeling at home in a language and culture

By Simon

The other day a friend of a friend asked me whether I’d found a language and/or culture in which I felt ‘at home’. She told me about someone she knows who has studied many languages and is always looking for a language community (other than his native one) where he fits in and feels comfortable – he has yet to find one. I hadn’t really thought about language learning in this way before. Have you?

I suppose that whenever I visit other countries and communities I kind of try them on for size and imagine what it would be like to live in them in the medium to long term. Each one has aspects that appeal to me, and others that I’m not so keen on – things like language, food, climate, scenery, music, etc. I’ve felt reasonably at home in various parts of British Isles and Ireland, in Taipei and Hong Kong, and in Australia and New Zealand.

Visitants

By Simon

In an email I received today the word visitants jumped out at me. The email is from a someone keen to exchange links with Omniglot as apparently their site “could be a helpful resource for your visitants”. The email is from a German speaker, I think, who seems to have coined this word, or got it from somewhere. Have you come across this word before?

I like making up words and am interested in seeing words other people have made up. Recently I’ve been playing with variations on the word uke, an abbreviation of ukulele, and coined a couple of words for ukulele playing – to uke and to ukelise, as in “Will anybody else be ukeing/ukelising tonight?”

Have you coined any new words?

Emergent con-scripts

By Simon

A while ago I had an idea for trying to construct a script with symbols based on representations of natural phenomena – animals, birds, plants, features of the landscape, etc – which would be linked to the sounds via acrophony. Then to simplify the images a number of times until I have a set of letters, a bit like the Alphabet Synthesis Machine.

Most writing systems currently in use are derived ultimately from Egyptian Hieroglyphs, which developed from pictures of objects, people, animals, etc, and I thought would be interesting to try to simulate that process and see what emerged. I haven’t come up with anything very interesting yet, but am still working on it.

Have any of you tried something like this?

Bouder

By Simon

I learnt a new word in French today: bouder, which means to sulk; to pout; to avoid; to turn one’s nose up at (sth); to refuse to have anything to do with (sb).

Related expressions include:
– boudant = sulking; pouting
– bouder son plaisir = to deny oneself a good thing; to sulk one’s pleasure (never heard this one before – have you?)
– ne pas bouder son plaisir = to enjoy fully; to enjoy without restraint
– se bouder = not to be on speaking terms
– on ne boudera pas = we shall not complain (about); we shall not avoid

It came up in my Breton course – the Breton equivalent is mouzhat – and appears in the sentence, Perak ‘ta, klañv eo pe o vouzhat emañ? (Why? Is she sick or is she sulking?).

The origins of the English words pout and sulk are unknown, according to the OED.

Are there any interesting expressions featuring the equivalents of these words in other languages?

Royal turkeys and other birds

By Simon

Pavo real

Last night I discovered the Spanish word pavo real, which means peacock, or literally ‘royal turkey’, and which conjured up an image of a turkey in ermine robes wearing a crown.

It also reminds me of the Mandarin Chinese word for swan, 天鵝 [天鹅] (tiān’é), which could be translated as ‘heavenly/celestial goose’. The Mandarin word for peacock is 孔雀 (kǒngquè) or ‘great sparrow’. [source]

The word pavo comes from the Latin pāvō (peacock), from the Ancient Greek ταώς (taōs), and thought to be ultimately from Tamil தோகை (tōkai).

The words for peacock in many European languages come from the same root: Aromanian: pãun; Breton: paun; Catalan: paó; Cornish: payon; Dutch: pauw; French: paon; Friulian: pavon; Galician: pavo, pavón; German: Pfau; Italian: pavone; Occitan: pavon; Old English: pāwa; Portuguese: pavão; Romanian: păun; Romansch: pavun, pivun; Sardinian: paboni, paone; Serbian: paun; Welsh: paun [source]. However in Manx a peacock is a kellagh aalin (‘beautiful cock(rel)’) or a kellagh eairkagh (‘peaked cock(rel)’) [source].

Are there interesting words for peacocks, or other birds, in other languages?

The word pavo has quite a few other meanings in Spanish, including:

– silly thing, idiot; five peseta coin; sucker (in Spain)
– stowaway (in Chile)
– large kite; big shot; evil-looking person (in the Andes)
– youngster, kid
– cold turkey
– silly – e.g. ¡no seas pavo! = don’t be silly!

From: Reverso

Iban alphabet

By Simon

I thought that almost all the world’s writing systems were on Omniglot, but today I discovered another one: the Iban alphabet, which was invented in 1947 by Dunging Anak Gunggu.

Iban alphabet

It’s a partly syllabic, partly alphabetic script that never really caught on, mainly because there was no tradition of writing among the Iban-speaking community. During the past few years there have been efforts to revive it mainly by Dr Bromeley Philip at the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) in Sarawak, Malaysia – I’ve written to him to ask about the current situation.

Iban is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, but I’m sure you knew that.

For me it’s always exciting to discover a previously unknown (to me) writing system like this.

Pantoufler

By Simon

Yesterday I discovered the interesting French word pantoufler /pɑ̃.tu.fle/, which, according to Reverso means to “switch from civil service to the private sector (French elite jargon, usually to make more money)”.

According to Wikpedia the related word pantouflage refers to high-level French civil servants, usually former students of the École Polytechnique or the École nationale d’administration, going to work in private enterprise. It also applies to politicians doing the same thing. Someone who engages in pantouflage at known as a pantouflard, which is also translated as stay-at-home.

The word pantoufler come from pantoufle (slipper), which combines pan (a piece of cloth) with the suffix -oufle, which denotes mbloated objects and muffled sounds. A pantoufle was originally a cloth shoe [source].

Apparently the term revolving door is used for this practice in the USA.

In Japan this practice is known as 天下り [amakudari] (“descent from paradise or the sky”).

Are there similar expressions and practices in other languages?

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg Brezhoneg
la surabondance superfluity gormodedd gourfaoter
superflu superfluous gormodol didal; diouverus
le pari a bet bet; mentro arian pariadenn
parier to bet betio; mentro; chwarae hap pariañ
les futilités; les bagatelles trivia pethau dibwys/diwerth raneoù
la dune de sable sand dune twyn tywod tevenn (traezh)
le gage pawn (in chess) gwerinwr gouestl
le paon [pɑ̃] peacock paun paun
la paonne [pan] peahen peunes paunez
la pantoufle slipper sliper; llopan; esgid nos pañtoufl
pantoufler to switch from civil servant to the private sector   luduenniñ
pantouflard stay-at-home cartrefol; diantur; difenter ludu
se relaxer to chill out ymlacio dibrezañ; dizalc’hen
le soap; le feuilleton soap opera sioe sebon; opera sebon heuliadenn
tour à tour alternately bob yn ail a bep eil
l’échange exchange cyfnewid eskemm
intermédiaire go-between canolwr hanterour
le relais; l’auberge hotel, inn llety, gwesti leti; ostaleri
le relais (electronic) relay relái relae