Category: Language

All the world’s a stage

By Simon

The title of today’s post is an example of a metaphor from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. The full version is:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances;

According to Wikipedia, a metaphor, from the Greek: μεταφεριν (metapherin) – “to carry something across” or “transfer”, is a rhetorical trope defined as a direct comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects. A trope is a figure of speech consisting of a play on words.

There are a number of different types of metaphors:

Extended metaphors, which set up a principal subject with several subsidiary subjects or comparisons. The above quote from Shakespeare is a good example of this.

Epic or Homeric similes are extended metaphors containing details about the vehicle that are not, in fact, necessary for the metaphoric purpose. An example of this from Black Adder is: “This is a crisis. A large crisis. In fact, if you’ve got a moment, it’s a twelve-story crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour porterage and an enormous sign on the roof saying ‘This Is a Large Crisis’.”

Mixed metaphors combine parts of two or more unrelated metaphors together creating a nonsensical but often amusing image. For example, “look before you bark up the wrong end of the stick”, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it spoil the broth” and “They’re biting the hand of the goose that laid the golden egg”, from Samuel Goldwyn.

Dead metaphors started life as metaphors but over time have lost their metaphoric nature and become ordinary expressions. Examples include “to grasp a idea”, “arm of a chair” and “leg of a table”.

Have you mixed an metaphors or heard any metaphoric mixing being committed recently?

As mad as a box of frogs

By Simon

The title of this post is an example of a simile, a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds, and which usually starts with as or like. Some examples of well know similes include, as slippery as an eel, as busy as a bee, as thick as two short planks, and as easy as falling off a log.

The word simile comes from the Latin simile (something similiar) from similis (like).

Here are a few less well know / freshly minted ones:

as reliable as a fox wearing a cravat
as dextrous as an octopus using seven pairs of scissors
as easy as herding cats
as spotty as a teenage leopard
as doomed to failure as a bouncy castle birthday party for hedgehogs
like a duck to custard
like lambs to the mint sauce
as big as a very big thing
as happy as a Frenchman who’s invented a pair of self-removing trousers (from Black Adder)

Have you spotted or coined any interesting or bizarre similes recently?

Word of the day – aptronym

By Simon

An aptronym or aptonym is a name that relates to its owner’s profession or personality, often in a humorous or ironic way. For example, William Wordsworth (poet), Larry Speakes (presidential spokesman under Ronald Reagan) and Anna Smashnova (tennis player).

This word was apparently coined by Franklin P. Adams, an American newspaper columnist in 1938, according to this blog. There are more aptronyms here and here.

Names of characters in Dickens sometimes reflect their personalities or jobs: Scrooge, Uriah Heep, Gradgrind, Sweedlepipe, Honeythunder, Bumble, Pumblechook and Podsnap. Other aptronymic character names include Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Sheridan’s A School for Scandal, and Mistress Quickly in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Is your name an aptronym, or do you know anyone with an aptronymic name?

Onomatophobia

By Simon

One of the things they talked about yesterday on Word of Mouth on BBC Radio 4 was onomatophobhia, the fear or dread of certain words or phrases. They interviewed people who go out of their way to avoid hearing or seeing particular words, in most cases as a result of negative and/or traumatic associations with those words. There was also a man who finds it very difficult to say his own name for fear of mispronouncing it.

Like most phobia words, onomatophobia comes from Greek ὀνομα (onoma) – ‘name’ and φοβυς (phobus) – ‘fear’.

Are there any words that you avoid and/or dislike intensely?

There are many interesting phobias listed at thefreedictionary.com, including:

  • Anatidaephobia – fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you
  • Luposlipaphobia – the fear of being pursued by timber wolves around a kitchen table while wearing socks on a newly-waxed floor.

Both were made up by Gary Larson for his The Far Side cartoons.

Word of the day – 風

By Simon

風 (kaze, fū), noun = wind, breeze, air, appearance, manner, bearing, atmosphere

Examples of usage
強い風がふている (tsuyoi kaze ga futeiru) = There’s a strong wind blowing – this is certainly true of Brighton today, hence my choice of this word.

どこからともなく風が花の香りを運んできた　(doko kara tomo naku kaze ga hana no kaori o hakondekita) = The fragrance of flowers was bourne on the spring breeze

Compounds with 風
台風 (taifū) typhoon
扇風機 (senpūki) electric fan
風潮 (fūchō) tide, trend, tendency
風俗 (fūzoku) manners, customs, public morals
風景 (fūkei) scenery, landscape, view
風車 (kazaguruma) windmill
神風 (kamikaze) divine wind, kamikaze

In Mandarin this character is pronounced fēng and has more or less the same meanings. The simplified version of the character is 风

Word of the day – glisser

By Simon

glisser, verb = to slide, slip, glide

Examples of usage
le beateau glissait sur les eaux = the boat glided over the water
ils glissèrent le long de la pente dans le ravin = they slid down the slope into the gully
le voleur leur a glissé entre les mains = the thief slipped through their fingers

Related words
glissade = slide, slip, skid
glissant = slippery
glissoire = (ice/snow) slide

I haven’t an particularly reason for slipping this word in today – I just like the sound of it.

The equivalent words in Irish are also interesting: sleamhnaigh (to slide, slip, slither), sleamhain (slippery, smooth, sleek), as are the Welsh words: llithro (to glide, slide, slip, skid, slither) and llithrig (slippery)

Relative difficulty

By Simon

On a typical day, I listen to Raidió na Gaeltachta in the morning, and Radio nan Gaidheal and Radio Cymru in the afternoon. Of the languages spoken on these radio stations – Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh respectively, I understand Welsh the best, and the other two quite well, though my Irish is stronger than my Scottish Gaelic. I find that after struggling to understand the two Gaelics, Welsh seems much easier.

Similarly if I listen to Cantonese or Taiwanese, and then Mandarin, the Mandarin seems so much easier. My strongest Sinitic language is Mandarin, followed by Taiwanese then Cantonese. Although I don’t understand much Taiwanese, I’m much more familiar with it than with Cantonese as I’ve spent a lot longer in Taiwan than in Hong Kong or other Cantonese-speaking areas.

Among my Romance languages, French is my strongest, followed by Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. Spanish becomes much easier to follow if I’ve been listening to Portuguese or Italian first.

This phenomenon applies not just to languages – after trying to juggle six or seven balls, juggling five or fewer seems like a piece of cake in comparison, and relatively simple skating moves seem much easier after attempting more complex ones.

Subtitles

By Simon

When watching films in languages I can understand but which are foreign to me, I try to follow the spoken dialogue and read the subtitles at the same time. This is quite a challenge. When the subtitles are not there, I can usually follow the dialogue better because my concentration isn’t split between listening to one language and reading another.

What is even more challenging is watching a foreign film with subtitles in a language other than English. For example, while in Taiwan I saw a few films in French and Taiwanese with Chinese subtitles. Trying to understand them was hard work.

Foreign films or TV programmes with subtitles in the same language are actually easier to follow than those with no subtitles. In China and Taiwan for example, most films have subtitles in Chinese because not everybody there can understand Mandarin.

Word of the day – seilleann-dé

By Simon

seilleann-dé, noun = butterfly – (lit. “bee of God”)

Related words:
seilleann-mòr – bumble bee (lit. “big bee”)
seilleann-nimh – hornet (lit. “poison bee”)
seilleann-seimhid – snail
seilleannach – fulls of bees, teasing, capricious

There are also some interesting words for butterfly in Welsh:
iâr fach yr haf (lit. “summer chick”)
glöyn byw (lit. “living coal”)
pila-pala
bili-balo

In Irish, a butterfly is a féileacán – sounds like “failure can”, and in Manx it’s foillycan or follican – sounds like “foily can” as in a can covered in foil.

Comprehension delay

By Simon

When I listen to speech in a foreign language there is often a delay between my hearing of what is said and my understanding of it. My brain is working hard to separate the continuous stream of sound into words, and to work out the meanings of those words, though I don’t usually translate the words into English in my head, as that adds an extra delay. It’s a bit like the delays you get on some trans-Atlantic phone lines.

Such delays are not too much of a problem when listening to the radio or watching TV/films, but I tend to miss things because I’m trying to understand previous utterances. When talking to someone though, such delays make it appear that I don’t understand what they’re saying so they repeat themselves a lot or switch to English, while I’m frustrated because I know what they’re saying, but not immediately.

Practice should reduce and eventually eliminate these comprehension delays, with any luck. In the meantime, perhaps what I need are words or noises that indicate that I’ve heard what’s been said and am considering my response. The length of time you can remain silent after somebody has said something varies from culture to culture. In many cultures , people start to feel uncomfortable after a few seconds and feel the need to say something to fill the silence.

In Japanese you say hai! frequently to show you’re listening. If you do the same in English it can sound very rude – as if you want to other person to shut up so that you can say something.