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.

Taverns, columns and caps

By Simon

What do the words in the title of this post have in common?

Well, they all originally come from Etruscan, according to Nicholas Ostler in Ad Infinitum – A Biography of Latin and the World it Created, one of the books I’m reading at the moment.

The English word tavern dates from the late 13th century, when it meant “wine shop”, and later came to mean “public house”. It comes from the Old French taverne, (shed made of boards; booth; stall; tavern; inn), from the Latin taberna (shop, inn, tavern) – originally “hut or shed”, from Etruscan [source]. The Greek word ταβέρνα (taverna) comes the Latin [source].

Column comes from the Old French colombe (column, pillar), from the Latin columna (pillar), which the Online Etymology Dictionary says is a collateral form of columen (top, summit), from the Proto-Indo-European base *kel- (to project), but which Nicholas Ostler believes comes from Etruscan.

Cap comes from the Old English cæppe (hood, head-covering, cape), from the Late Latin cappa (a cape, hooded cloak), which is possibly a shortened from capitulare (headdress) from caput (head) [source], or from the Etruscan.

Other Latin words that are thought to come from Etruscan include voltur (vulture), ātruim (forecourt), fenestra (window), caseus (cheese), culīna (kitchen), tuba (trumpet), urna (urn), mīles (soldier), Aprīlis (April), autumnus (autumn) and laburnum (shrub).

Bellies, bags and bellows

By Simon

Yesterday a friend asked me whether bellyache was considered rude or vulgar, and whether tummy ache or stomach ache were preferable in formal conversation. I thought that the word belly might be seen as vulgar and/or informal by some; that stomach ache might be better in formal situations, and that tummy ache tends to be used by and with children. Would you agree?

Belly comes from the Old English belg (bag, purse, bellows, pod, husk), from the Proto-Germanic*balgiz (bag), from the PIE base *bhelgh- (to swell), which is also the root of the Old Norse belgr (bag, bellows) and bylgja (billow); the Gothic balgs (wineskin), the Welsh bol (belly, paunch), the Irish bolg (abdomen, bulge, belly, hold, bloat), and the Latin bulga (leather sack). The English words bellows, billow, bolster, budget and bulge also come from the same root [source].

In English belly came to refer to the body during the 13th century, and the abdomen during the 14th century. By the late 16th century its meaning had been extended to cover the bulging part or concave convex surface of anything. In the late 18th century some people in England decided that belly was vulgar and banished it from speech and writing – replacing it with stomach or abdomen. [source].

Ear training

By Simon

Most days I listen to online radio stations in a variety of languages – at the moment I listen mainly to Scottish Gaelic, Irish and Welsh, and also to French and Czech, and occasionally to Mandarin and Cantonese. This keeps these languages ticking over in my head, and helps me learn more of them. With the exception of Czech and Cantonese, I can understand them all well, or at least fairly well, and can often guess the meanings of unknown words from the context. Even with Czech and Cantonese, which I don’t know as well, I have a basic idea of what they’re talking about.

Yesterday I decided to listen to some Japanese and fired up the radio player on NHK, the Japanese national broadcaster. To my surprise what came out of the speakers was first Spanish, then Indonesian, Vietnamese and Burmese. I checked the website and discovered that they cycle through 17 different languages in their international broadcasts. In each language they have news from Japan and around the world, and it’s possible to get some idea of the stories they’re covering even in completely unfamiliar languages from the names of places, people, countries.

So if you feel in need of a good linguistic workout, have a listen to NHK World or a similar multilingual radio station. Also, after listening to languages you haven’t got round to learning yet, the ones you’re studying will seem much easier to understand.

On the tip of my pyramid

By Simon

Last night I spoke quite a bit of Mandarin with some people from China, and while I was able to have a good conversation with them, though there were some things I couldn’t remember or didn’t know how to say. Usually when this happens I try to find another way to express the same idea, or if the people I’m talking to speak English, as was the case last night, I might say whatever it is in English and ask them how to say it in Mandarin. When they tell me, I often realise that I did know the words, but they just wouldn’t come to mind.

It’s likely that there’ll be gaps in your vocabulary, both in languages you’re learning, and in your native language, unless you memorise dictionaries. If the gaps are things you talk about frequently, it certainly helps to learn the words for them, but for other things you could use paraphrases. For example, one of the words that came up last night was pyramid. I didn’t know how to say it in Mandarin, but one of the Chinese guys did. After I got home I thought of a way to express the idea of a pyramid in Mandarin: 人造的小山，在埃及可看到的 (rénzhào de xiǎoshān, zài āijí kĕ kàndào de) – “man-made little hills that can be seen in Egypt” – not perfect perhaps, but it should get the message across.

In case you’re wondering, the Mandarin for pyramid is 金字塔 (jīn​zì​tǎ​), which could be glossed as “tower shaped like the character 金”.

Cat got your tongue?

By Simon

Cat, Chat

The English idiom “Has the cat got your tongue?” is used when someone remains silent in situations where they are expected to say something. It could be glossed as, “Why don’t you say anything? Your silence is suspicious.” Possible origins of this phrase are discussed on this page. The French equivalent of this idiom is “Tu as perdu ta langue ?” (Have you lost your tongue?”).

In French there is a similar idiom involving cats and tongues: donner sa langue au chat (to give one’s tongue to the cat), but this means to give up or stop guessing when you don’t know the answer to something, or don’t know what someone is asking of you.

Apparently this idiom developed from the phrase jeter sa langue au chien (to throw one’s tongue to the dog), which originated in an era when leftover food was thrown to the dogs, and meant that you no longer felt like finding an answer to a question, so you might as well throw it to the dogs. Over time the phrase became donner sa langue au chat, as cats were considered secret keepers, and you gave your tongue to the cat in the hope that it would be able to answer the question [source]. An equivalent idiom in English is “to throw in the towel” or “to throw in the sponge”, expressions which come from boxing.

Are there any similar idioms in other languages?

Learning a New Language – How Easy (or Difficult) is It?

By Simon

Today with have a guest post by Abby Nelson

I have a friend who can speak four different languages; and he’s not the kind who gets by with a few strategic words and sentences, he’s fluent in them too. If at all I envy anything in him, it is this multilingual ability which I know I can never emulate. Now while eternal optimists would tell me to never say never, and offer additional advice that anything is possible if you set your mind to it, those who are more realistic understand that learning a new language involves many different variables. For example:

– Popular belief has it that children pick up a new tongue faster than adults; but that’s not really true. What’s true is that kids who learn a new language before they reach puberty speak the tongue without the accent that makes it easy to identify non-native speakers. Adults and children are equally good at picking up new languages when exposed to it on a prolonged basis.

– Learning a new language is fastest when you try your hand at the spoken lingo, and the easiest way to do this is to spend time around native speakers who don’t speak any other language. This is why most of us pick up a new tongue within a few months of settling down in a foreign country where the local language is different from the one you speak. Necessity is the biggest motivator when it comes to picking up a new language – your survival instincts kick in and you initially pick up the basics necessary for communication; and with the passage of time, you learn more of the tongue and become more fluent in the language.

– When you learn a new language by listening to and speaking it, you pick up the vernacular slang and not the grammatical version of the tongue. So while you may be a proficient speaker after a while, you may not understand other aspects of the language.

– It takes effort to learn how to read and write the native script of a language. Some languages are easier than others if you already have the foundation laid to facilitate learning the script. For example, if you know how to read and write English, it’s easier to learn how to read and write languages that use the same script. You may have some difficulty with the pronunciation, but with a fair amount of practice, you can soon pick up this aspect of the language as well. Languages with complex scripts are the hardest to master to read and write.

So in conclusion, I think it’s safe to say that the ease or difficulty with which you master a language depends on personal necessity and motivation to learn the new tongue; so what’s a breeze for you may end up becoming an uphill climb for me and vice versa.

About the writer
Abby Nelson writes on the topic of Masters in Counseling. She welcomes your comments at her email id: abby.85nelson< @>gmail< .>com

Pelf

By Simon

Pelf noun, money or wealth, especially if dishonestly acquired; lucre. Also a slang term for money.

Etymology: from the Old French pelfre (booty); related to the Latin pilāre (to despoil).

[Source]

I came across this word today in The Times in an article about a British supermarket starting a pawn broking service, or more specifically a gold exchange service. I hadn’t encountered it before and thought at first that it was a typo. The context is:

Most of the other alchemists promising to turn gold into cupro-nickel are doing so at a rate so miserly that even a richly embossed heirloom would barely provide a widow’s pelf.
From: The Times, 3rd January 2011