Category: Italian (italiano)

Spincop

By Simon

Spider / Spincop

William Caxton introduced printing into England, and also translated a number of literary works from French, Latin and Dutch. Within his translations he used words he picked up while learning and practising his trade in Germany and Belgium, including spincop, from the Dutch spinnekop (spider), and okselle, from the Dutch oksel (armpit).

The English word spider comes via the Middle English spither and the Old English spiþra from the Proto-Germanic *spenthro, which comes from *spenwanan (to spin). Another Old English for spider was gangewifre (a weaver as he goes). In other Germanic languages the words for spider retain the link to spin: Spinne (German), spinnekop / spin (Dutch), spindel (Swedish) and שפּין (shpin) – Yiddish.

When I came across the word spincop it set me wondering whether it might be related to a Welsh word for spider, copyn (also cop, pryf cop(yn), corryn). Does anyone know the etymology of these words?

The Proto-Indo-European root word for spider is *araKsn, and the words for spider in the Romance languages come from this root: aranea (Latin), aranya (Catalan), aranha (Portuguese), araña (Spanish), ragno (Italian).

While okselle didn’t really catch on in Standard English, a related word, oxter, is used in dialects of Northern England, and in Hiberno English and Scots. This word is thought to come from the Old English ōxta, which is probably related to the Old English word axle or axis – eax. The medical term for this part of the body is axilla, which comes from Latin and is diminutive of ala (wing).

Word of the day – ig

By Simon

The Welsh word ig (plural: igion) means hiccough. The verb, to hiccough / sob, is igian, igio or igion.

When I’m singing or playing the tin whistle or other wind instruments I often get hiccoughs, and the other day I was trying to explain this to a Welsh friend in Welsh, but didn’t know the Welsh word for hiccup. So I looked it up.

The English word hiccough (also spelt hiccup) is thought to be an imitation of the sound of hiccoughs, and the Welsh word ig probably is as well.

In other languages hiccough is:
Czech: škytavka
German: Schluckauf
Dutch: hik
French: hoquet
Irish: snag
Italian: singhiozzo
Spanish: hipo

The medical terms for hiccough are synchronous diaphragmatic flutter (SDF), or singultus, from the Latin, singult, “the act of catching one’s breath while sobbing”.

Do you have any good cures for hiccoughs?

I usually hold my breath and/or drink water.

Leaght y Ghaaue

By Simon

Last night I went to a fascinating lecture in Manx about Venice which covered the city’s history, architecture, transport and much more. It was given by Bob Carswell, a Manx speaker, translator, poet and broadcaster who regularly talks with great enthusiasm about a wide range of topics on his radio programme, Claare ny Gael.

The type of language used and the information discussed was university level, and while I didn’t understand every word, and got a bit lost when he was explaining some of the technicalities of how the city was built, I was able to understand most of the lecture.

One thing he mentioned was the many different terms there are in Venice for streets, lanes, alleyways, etc, including via (street), calle (a walkway between two buildings), calleta (a narrower calle), salizada (a broader calle), ruga (a calle with lots of shops -from French, rue), rio (small canal), rio terrà / terà (filled-in canal), fondamenta (a walkway that runs along a rio or the lagoon), and sotoportego (a covered walkway through a building).

There are also quite a few terms used in street names in English – street, road, lane, alley, passage, close, drive, place, green, croft, way, grove, gardens, end, crescent, bank, and so on.

Is the same true in other languages?

Languages and jobs in Spain

By Simon

According to an article I found the other day, a knowledge of languages is required for 27% of jobs in Spain, and the language most in demand is English. So if you speak English and Spanish and would like to work in Spain, there should be plenty of jobs you could apply for.

The article, which is based on information from Infoempleo, a site where you kind find jobs in Spain, also shows that French, German, Italian and Portuguese are in demand in Spain, although to a much lesser extent than English.

The article also mentions that 28% of jobs in the Basque country require a knowledge of Basque, that 13% of jobs in Catalonia require Catalan (this seems quite a low figure given the strength of the language), and that 10% of jobs in Galicia and Valencia require knowledge of the local languages.

I don’t have stats for how many jobs in Wales require a knowledge of Welsh, but I do know that Welsh is needed for many jobs in the public sector.

Bilingual Radio

By Simon

Today we have a guest post from James P. in Chile:

I was listening to Catalan radio the other day (long story: short version, I’m thinking of whether to live in Spain and if I can be bothered with learning Catalan or whether it would just get mixed up in my Spanish).
They had interviews with people about the Madrid Spanair crash, and the people were talking in Spanish. No big deal really, as all Catalan speakers in Spain will know Spanish too. However , I’ve just been listening to Radio España 5, and they had clips of untranslated Italian, which assumes mutual intelligibility in all listeners. That reminded me of one time on Colombian Radio Caracol, when they had untranslated (Brazilian) Portuguese in an interview with a footballer. Again, they assumed that all listeners would be able to understand the Portuguese.

Do others have examples of bilingual radio, which assumes mutual intelligibility at a general level?

(I have strange half memories of listening to Italian radio and hearing an interview when one person spoke in French, and the other in Italian, but I may be hallucinating.)

———————–

I’ve heard people on Irish language radio (Raidió na Gaeltachta) speaking Scottish Gaelic without translation.

Word of the day – macaronic

By Simon

At the end-of-course ceilidh at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, one of the Irish guys read a story which was half in English and half in Irish. It was very funny, if you understood both languages; those who didn’t missed quite a lot. Even speakers of Scottish Gaelic found it quite difficult to understand all the Irish bits, which suggests to me that Irish and Scottish Gaelic aren’t as mutually comprehensible as some claim.

This type of story is called macaronic, a word coined in the 16th century by Teofilo Folengo, an Italian poet, to refer to a type of verse he invented in which he mixed Italian and Latin for comic effect. He based the name on macaroni, which he described in Latin as pulmentum farina, caseo, botiro compaginatum, grossum, rude, et rusticanum (a savoury dish bound together with flour, cheese [and] butter, [a dish] which is fat, coarse, and rustic).

The word was first used in English the following century and was used to refer to any type of verse which mixes two or more languages together.

Source: http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-wei1.htm.

Here are links to a few examples of Macaronic songs in English and Irish:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/w/williams/macaronic.htm

Word of the day – panettone

By Simon

A photo of a panettone

This week we’ve had a Secret Santa style exchange of gifts at the office. Quite a few of those involved asked for the money to be donated to charity, but there were a few actual presents. Someone very generously gave me what I thought was a large cake, but have since discovered is a kind of cake-shaped bread from Milan called panettone.

The name panettone comes from the Italian word panetto, a small loaf bread. The -one end indicates it’s large, so is a “little big loaf”, and very tasty as well. Here’s a recipe, if you want to try making a panettone yourself.

Peeling the library

By Simon

Today’s word, library, comes from the Old French librairie, a ‘collection of books’, which is a nominal use of adjective librarius, ‘concerning books’, from Latin librarium, ‘chest for books’, from liber (genetive of libri), ‘book, paper, parchment’, originally the ‘inner bark of trees’, probably a derivative of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) base *leub(h) – ‘to strip, to peel’.

In French the word librarie means bookshop. A French library is a bibliothèque, which comes via the Latin bibliothēca, from the Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothêkê), ‘a place to store books’, which breaks down into βίβλος (biblos), ‘book’, and θήκη (thêkê), ‘chest’.

Variations on the theme of bibliothèque are used in a number of other languages, including:

Dutch – bibliotheek
German – Bibliothek
Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothiki)
Italian/Portuguese/Spanish – biblioteca
Russian – библиотека (biblioteka)

In Welsh, a library is a llyfrgell, from llyfr, ‘book’ and cell, ‘cell’, while in Irish it’s leabharlann, from leabhar, ‘book’ and lann (not sure of it’s meaning*). In Chinese, a library is 圖書館 [图书馆] (túshūguăn) = ‘map book house’.

It seems that the word library, or something like it, is not used in it’s English senses in many languages. The only ones I can find are Sesotho and Tswana (laeborari), Tsonga (layiburari) and Venda (laiburari), which appear to be loanwords from English. The Basque word for library, liburutegia, might possibly have Latin or Greek roots.

[Addendum] *lann in Irish is an archaic/obsolete word that means floor, enclosure or church. It comes from the Old Irish lann (building, house, land, plot, plate), from the Proto-Celtic *landā ((open) space, land), from the Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (land, heath). It is cognate with the Welsh word llan (church, parish, monastery, yard, enclosure, village), the Spanish landa (plain), and the English words land and lawn [source].

Sources: Online Etymology Dictionary, Wiktionnaire, Yawiktionary

Word of the day – pomodoro

By Simon

pomodoro, noun = tomato

One of the things Christopher Columbus brought back from the “New World” was the tomato. People believed that tomatoes were poisonous at first, but had started to fry and eat them like eggplants (aubergines) by the beginning of the 18th century.

The Italians gave tomatoes the same nickname as eggplant, pomo di moro, which means ‘fruit of the Moors’. At that time, the Moors were often thought to have introduced new products. Over time, pomo di moro changed to pomodoro, which was mistranlated as ‘apples of gold’ (pomo d’oro) by English-speaking historians.

The English word tomato comes, via Spanish tomate, from the Nahuatl word tomatl, which means literally “the swelling fruit”. Interestingly, tomatoes were not commonly eaten in the USA until after 1830.

In Manx, a tomato is ooyl ghraih (lit. “love apple”), tomato or traase. In Irish, tomato is trátaí.

Sources
An Introduction to Language and Linguistics, by Ralph W. Fasold and Jeff Connor-Linton
www.etymonline.com

Word of the day – giovanissimi

By Simon

giovanissimi, noun = young teenagers

Related words:
gioventù, noun = youth
giovane, adjective = young, noun = youth, young man, girl, young woman
giovanotto, noun = young man
giovanile, adjective = youthful
i giovani, noun = the young

Antonyms
vecchio, adjective = old, noun = old man
vecchia, noun = old woman
i vecchi, noun = old people
vecchiaia, noun = old age

This word caught my eye today while working on a website in Italian. It demonstrates one aspect of Italian word formation: the intensifying ending -issim-, which you can add to most adjectives. For example, buono = good, buonissimo = very good.

When you learn a new word in a foreign language, it’s a good idea to learn related words and antonyms (words with the opposite meaning). This helps to build up your vocabulary.

I made the soundfiles with the text-to-speech program at:
http://www.pd.istc.cnr.it/FESTIVAL/home/demo-interactive.htm