Staying, stopping and living

By Simon

I noticed recently that in Scottish English and Scots people use the word stay to mean that you live in a place, i.e. that you live there on a permanent or long-term basis.

When I hear this I usually know what is meant from the context, but it can be ambiguous at times, as to me a stay usually a short-term thing, such as holiday. I would use live to indicate a long-term stay – e.g. I live in Bangor, but am currently staying with a friend in Lerwick in Shetland.

According to the Online Scots Dictionary, stey [stəi] means “To stay, to remain, tarry. To dwell, reside permanently, to make one’s home.”

Related words include:
– bide [bəid] = to dwell, reside, wait, stay, await, stay for, remain
– stap [stap] = to live or stay at an address (among many other meanings)
– wone [wɔn, wɪn] = to dwell, live, stay habitually. To accustom oneself to, be reconciled to.

I can’t find an equivalent Scots words for a short-term stay, though I think bide is used in this context, particularly in Shetland.

In other varieties of English and in other languages is there a distinction between a short-term stay and a long-term one?

Partners, other halves and significant others

By Simon

There was some discussion last night at the polyglot conversation group about the words boyfriend and girlfriend and their equivalents in other languages, particularly in Dutch. In English the words boyfriend and girlfriend seem to indicate someone who is relatively young, so don’t seem quite appropriate for use by more mature couples when referring to each other. There are many alternatives, including partner, life partner, other half, better half, companion, gentleman/lady friend, soul mate, significant other, sweetheart, lover, paramour and so on. Do you use or do you know others?

In Dutch it’s much easier – a special male friend is referred to as mijn vriend (my (male) friend), and a special female friend is referred to as mijn vriendin (my (female) friend). A non-intimate friend is simply een vriend(in) (a friend) or een vriend(in) van mij (a friend of mine).

In Welsh it’s straightforward as well – cariad covers both boyfriend and girlfriend, and cyfaill or ffrind is used for ordinary friends.

Les mots de le semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg Brezhoneg
le mine (de charbon) (coal) mine mwynfa (glofa; pwll glo) poull-glaou
le mine (explosive) mine ffrwydryn min
se venger (de qn) to take one’s revenge (on sb) dial (ar rywun) venjiñ
ingénieux; astucieux clever (device, system) dyfeisgar; medrus ijinek; barrek
à double vitrage double-glazed dwbl-wydrog gweradur doubl
le double vitrage double glazing ffenestri dwbl; gwydro dwbl
le store (window) blind cysgodlen; bleind rideoz
le volet (window) shutter caead stalaf
le rideau curtain llen; cyrten rideoz
le valeurs mobilières; les titres stocks and shares stociau a chyfrannau teulioù
toxicomane; accro addict adict drammgaezhiad
l’ardoisière (f) slate quarry chwarela llechi meinglazeg
la déesse goddess duwies doueez
la lance spear gwaywffon goaf
la hanche hip clun lez
nier; refuser to deny gwadu nac’hañ
creuser; bêcher to dig cloddio; palu kleuzañ; palarat

New server

By Simon

Currently I’m in the middle of moving Omniglot to a new web server provided by Kualo. This is going smoothly so far, but if you notice any error messages of other strangeness, don’t panic! The new server is managed, so any problems that might occur should be fixed quickly. My current server is ‘managed’ by me, and I’m no expert in running one. I chose Kualo because they offer a good deal, and because they are a green company who run on renewable energy.

My home runs mainly on renewable energy, supplied by Ecotricty, and I am planning to switch to a broadband and phone provider that is run on a co-operative model and uses renewable energy. I support renewable energy because it seems like a sensible thing to do.

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?