Category: Language

The land of rabbits

By Simon

Photo of a rabbit

When adding more animals to the Celtic Connections section on Omniglot the other day, I started wondering about the origins of the Celtic words for rabbit – connín (Irish), coinean (Scottish Gaelic), conning (Manx), cwningen (Welsh), conyn (Cornwell), c’honikl (Breton). They appear to be related to each other, and also to the English word coney, which was used for rabbit until the 18th century, while rabbit was used for the young of the coney from about the 14th century.

Rabbit apparently comes from the Walloon robète, which is a diminutive of the Flemish or Middle Dutch robbe.

Coney comes from the Anglo-Norman conis, the plural of conil “long-eared rabbit” (Lepus cunicula) from the Latin cuniculus, which means burrow and comes from the Greek κύνικλος (kýniklos), which is thought to come from an Iberian word for burrow. Related words in other languages include kanin (Danish), konijn (Dutch), bunny (English), Kaninchen (German), coniglio (Italian).

There’s a popular theory that the Roman name for Spain, Hispania, which became España and Spain, comes from the Phoenician name for Iberia i-shepan-im, the land or coast of rabbits. When the Phoenicians first visited Iberia in around 500 BC they saw lots of rabbits there which they named after a similar animal, the hyrax of North Africa.

Daily food

By Simon

At a Christmas party this week I was chatting to some Vietnamese people about food and one of them asked whether the meal we were having (chicken, potatoes, veg, etc) was what we have as our “daily food”. I couldn’t work out what she was talking about as the phrase “daily food” was pronounced so quickly and was unusual anyway. At first I thought it was a word or phrase in Vietnamese, so I asked her to repeat it several times and eventually she explained that she was asking about food we eat every day. That was when I realised what she was saying. Even slight differences in pronunciation and novel constructions can throw you like this.

When you’re speaking a foreign language it can be frustrating when people don’t understand what you’re saying, even though you think you’re pronouncing things correctly. When people realise what you’re trying to say and repeat it, you often think, “Isn’t that what I said!?”

Basa Jawa

By Simon

According to this report, people in Blora Regency in Central Java will be obliged to speak Javanese on Thursdays (Kemis) from January 2010. This applies to civil servants, officials in state-owned enterprises, teachers and students, and the students should use the kromo inggil (formal) forms with their teachers. The aim is to preserve the Javanese language in all its forms.

A related report mentions that no sanctions will be imposed on those who do not speak Javanese in Blora on Thursdays.

Earlier this year the Surabaya Education Department in East Java apparently made it compulsory for students and teachers to speak Javanese on Mondays and Tuesdays in city schools. Not all students were happy with this as they don’t speak Javanese.

Even though Javanese is spoken by about 80 million people (45% of the population of Indonesia), it seems that there are worries about the future of the language, and of Indonesian taking its place.

Falling in the apples

By Simon

Last night in the French conversation group the idiom “tomber dans les pommes” (to fall into the apples) came up. As it was in the context of somebody actually falling I took it literally at first and pictured the person falling into some apples or into an orchard. Then it was explained that it means “to faint / loose consciousness / pass out”. The origin of this idioms is uncertain.

Related idioms include “rester dans les pommes” – to remain unconscious”; “tomber dans l’eau” (lit. “to fall in the water”) – to fall through (projects, etc); “tomber bien/mal” – to come at the right/wrong moment.

Conlangers Anonymous

By Simon

Are you sometimes, or indeed frequently gripped by the urge to create languages?

Do your doodles often become new alphabets?

Do you feel compelled to create worlds in which your languages and alphabets might be used?

If so, help is at hand in the form of Conlangers Anonymous, an organisation founded by Francis Lodwick in 1694 and discussed in the Speculative Grammarian, the premier journal of satirical linguistics.

Conlangers Anonymous apparently helps “conlangers see the agonizing human cost—and professional cost—of their obsession. The hours spent constructing a language could be better spent in real human interaction with friends, family, and your World of Warcraft guild. The effort poured into creating fake language data for fun could be expended on falsifying data for papers in refereed journals, leading to tenure.”

Tibetan mobiles

By Simon

A mobile phone which can send and receive text messages in Tibetan has been developed in China, according to this report. Such phones have apparently existed for a few years, but the new phone is a bit different as it can recognise handwritten input in Tibetan.

A useful Tibetan-related site I came across today is a English-Tibetan dictionary, which displays the Tibetan words in Wylie transliteration and in the Tibetan script.

Are any of you learning Tibetan?