Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Do you know, or can you guess, the language?
Author: Simon
I am a linguist, web developer and musician. I live in Bangor in Wales and run Omniglot - the online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages, as well as making the Radio Omniglot Podcast.
Squally Showers
One of the words that came up in my Spanish lessons recently was chubascos, which it translated as (rain) showers. I wondered where it comes from, and thought I’d investigate.
In Spanish, chubasco [tʃuˈβ̞as.ko] means downpour, squall, heavy shower, setback or a rain shower, particularly one associated with heavy wind. In nautical usage, it refers to a dark cloud which suddenly appears in the horizon, potentially foretelling rough sailing conditions [source].
Related expressions include:
- chubascos dispersos = scattered showers
- chubasquero = a waterproof raincoat
- aguantar el chubasco = to weather the storm
Chubasco comes from Portuguese chuvasco (downpour, shower), or from Galician chuvasco (downpour, shower), which both come from Old Galician-Portuguese chuvia (rain), from Latin pluvia (rain, a shower), from pluit (to rain, be raining), from Proto-Italic *plowō, from Proto-Indo-European *plew- (to flow, float, wash) [source].
The word chubasco [tʃuːˈbɑːskəʊ] also exists in English and refers to a violent squall with thunder and lightning, encountered during the rainy season along the Pacific coast of Central America and South America. It was borrowed from Spanish [source].
Words from the same roots include chuva (rain) in Portuguese, choiva (rain) in Galician, lluvia (rain, rainfall, stream, barrage, shower, spray) in Spanish, and pioggia (rain, shower) in Italian pluie (rain) in French, and pluvious (involving or related to rain, rainy) in English [source].
By the way, someone who loves rain, and/or finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days, or an organism that thrives in a rainy environment is a pluviophile and is pluviophilious, and another name for a rain gauge is a pluvioscope [source].
Other rain-related words in Spanish include:
- llover = to rain
- llovedizo = rain, leaky
- llovizna = drizzle
- lloviznar = to drizzle, mizzle
- lluvioso = rainy
- pluvioso = rainy, pluvious
- pluvial = rain, pluvial (of, pertaining to, or produced by rain)
Incidentally, the English word rain comes from Middle English reyn (rain, shower), from Old English reġn (rain), from Proto-West Germanic *regn (rain), from Proto-Germanic *regną (rain), possibly from pre-Germanic *Hréǵ-no-, from Proto-Indo-European *Hreǵ- (to flow). It’s cognate with Regen (rain) in German, regn (rain) in Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish, rõki (drizzling rain) in Lithuanian, and regar (irrigate, water, scatter, hose, ruin) in Spanish [source].
Language Quiz
Breeze-Stoppers
One of the words that came up in my Spanish lessons today was limpiaparabrisas, which means windscreen / windshield wiper, and struck me as a relatively rare multi-word compound in Spanish.
Unlike the Germanic languages*, Spanish doesn’t seem to have a lot of words like limpiaparabrisas made up of several words joined together, at least that’s my impression. It’s made up of limpia, from limpiar (to clean, wash, wipe), and parabrisas (windscreen, windshield), which is made up of para, from parar (to stop), and brisas (breezes) [source]. A related word is lavaparabrisas (screen wash, windshield washing fluid) [source].
*For example, in German there are words such as: Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung (Regulation on the delegation of authority concerning land conveyance permissions), and Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (Beef labeling supervision duties delegation law), which are of course used in everyday conversation. If not, they should be [source].
Spanish does have plenty of words made up of a stem plus prefixes and/or suffixes, or compounds of two words. For example, the word mesa means table, desk, bureau or committee. Related words with affixes include mesero (waiter), mesilla (bedside table, stall), and mesita (small table). Related compound words include sobremesa (tablecloth, desktop) and tornamesa (turntable, record player) [source].
Other two-word compounds in Spanish include abrebotellas (bottle opener), cortarcésped (lawn mower), cortafuego (firewall), lavaplatos (dishwasher), portaaviones (aircraft carrier), quitamanchas (stain remover), sacacorchos (corkscrew) and salvavidas (life jacket) [source].
In fact, limpiaparabrisas and lavaparabrisas are really two-word compounds, but look like three-words compounds. So, maybe they’re not that unusual.
Do you know of any interesting multi-word compounds in Spanish or other languages?
Language Quiz
Strong Strings
Are the words string, strong, strength, strait, stretch and strict related? Let’s find out.
String comes from Middle English streng (rope, cord, line, thread, string, ribbon, muscle, tendon, ligament, filament), from Old English strenġ (string, rope, cord), from Proto-West Germanic *strangi (string), from Proto-Germanic *strangiz (string), from Proto-Indo-European *strengʰ- (to twist; rope, cord), possibly from *sterh₃- (to spread, extend, stretch out) [source].
English words from the same roots include constrict, constrain, restrict, strong, strength, strain, strait, stress, strict, stricture and stringent.
Words from the same roots in other languages include stringere (to clasp, grasp, squeeze) in Italian, étreindre (to hug, clutch, grip) in French, streng (strict, severe, rigorous, unbending, cruel) in Dutch, sträng (strict, stern, severe) in Swedish, strangs (brave, brisk, fresh) in Latvian, rankka (burdensome, hard, intense, harsh, tough) in Finnish [source].
So, the odd one out in the list above is stretch, which comes from Middle English strecchen (to stretch out, spread, extend), from Old English streċċan (to stretch, extend, spread out, prostrate), from Proto-West Germanic *strakkjan (to stretch, make straight), from *strak (stretched, straight), from Proto-Germanic *strakaz (stretched, straight) from Proto-Indo-European *(s)treg- (stiff, rigid).
Words from the same roots include stark in English, stark (strong) in German, strak (taut, tight) in Dutch, strække (to stretch) in Danish, and shtriqem (to stretch) in Albanian [source].
Here’s a tune from the music session I went to last night called The Bishop of Bangor’s Jig. It’s played on string instruments (fiddle, guitar and banjo), so is sort connected to the theme of this post.
You can find the dots: https://www.folktunefinder.com/tunes/94828
Language Quiz
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Do you know, or can you guess, the language?
These quizzes are normally published every Sunday, and the answers are given the following Saturday here in the comments.
Go Climb a Tree
Was the b in climb ever pronounced? Or was it added by interfering busybodies to make it more like a Latin root? Is it related to clamber? Let’s find out.
Climb comes from Middle English climben [ˈkliːmbən] (to scale, scale, soar, extend, reach), from Old English climban [ˈklim.bɑn] (to climb), from Proto-West Germanic *klimban (to climb), from Proto-Germanic *klimbaną [ˈklim.bɑ.nɑ̃] (to climb), possibly from *klibaną/*klibāną (to stick, cleave), from Proto-Indo-European *gleybʰ- (to stick, cling to) [source].
So the b was pronounced in Middle and Old English, and maybe it became silent when the word lost its en ending.
Words from the same roots include climbing, cleave, cliff and maybe clamber in English, klimmen (to climb) and kleven (to stick, glue, be sticky) in Dutch, kleben (to glue, stick) in German, and klífa (to climb) in Icelandic [source].
A word for to climb in Latin was scandere / scandō, which also means to ascend, mount or clamber. It comes from Proto-Indo-European *skend- (to jump, dart, scale, scan). Words from the same roots include ascend, descend, transcend, scale, scan, and possibly scandal and slander in English, ascendere (to go up, ascend, rise) in Italian, skandera (to chant) in Swedish, and esgyn (to ascend) in Welsh [source].
One of the tunes that was played at the music session I went to last night is called If you do not love me, go climb a tree (it may have other names) and goes something like this:
It inspired me to write this post. If you recognise the tune and know it by another name, do let me know.
Language Quiz
Swallowing Camels
This week my Danish lessons have been focusing on idioms, and an interesting idiom that came up is sluge en kamel, which literally means ‘to swallow a camel’, but what other meanings does it have? Let’s find out.
According to Wiktionary, this idioms means ‘to accept a change or amendment (to a proposal)’ or ‘to agree to something one would not have if one had fully understood the implications from the beginning’.
According to Den Danske Ordbog, it means ‘acceptere eller gå med til noget der egentlig strider imod ens idealer og ønsker’ (to accept or agree to something that actually goes against one’s ideals and desires), and another version of the idiom is sluge kamelen (to eat the camel).
According to SpeakAndLearn.dk, it means ‘to admit that you are wrong, even though you have clearly stated that you were absolutely sure, that you were right’.
So it seems it has a variety of meanings. Are there similar idioms involving camels in other languages?
In English, you might liken doing something unpleasant or undesirable to swallowing a frog – Mark Twain is sometimes quoted as having said or written “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” There’s apparently no evidence that he did in fact say or write this. The idea of eating a frog in the morning possibly comes from Nicolas Chamfort, a French writer, who wrote in the 1790s:
… il faudrait avaler un crapaud tous les matins, pour ne trouver plus rien de dégoûtant le reste de la journée, … (it would be necessary to swallow a toad every morning so as not to find anything else disgusting during the rest of the day)
[source]
Other interesting Danish idioms involving animals include:
- klap lige hesten (‘just pat the horse’) = shut up, relax, take it easy
- det blæser en halv pelikan (‘it’s blowing half a pelican’) = it’s very windy and the weather is awful
- Jeg har ikke en rød reje (‘I don’t have a red shrimp’) = I’m skint, I have no money
- ingen ko på isen (‘no cow on the ice’) = everything is okay – whatever the problem is, it’s not a big deal so don’t worry about it
- så er den ged barberet (‘then the goat is shaved’) = the work has been done, or the problem has been resolved
Source: https://ling-app.com/da/funny-danish-phrases/