Category: Spanish (español)

Babysiteáil

By Simon

Listening to Raidió na Gaeltachta today I heard the word babysiteáil, in a sentence something like “Tá sé ag Babysiteáil dúinne.” (He babysits for us). This caught my attention because I don’t seem to hear as many English words made into verbs like this in Irish as I do in Welsh. The Welsh equivalent is babysitio, or gwarchod.

There are ways of saying baby-sit in Irish: páistí a fheighil (to care for children) and aire a thabhairt do pháistí (to give care to children).

If you put baby-sit into Google Translate, the Irish comes out as leanbh-suí – a literal translation. The Welsh version, baban-sefyll, is also a literal translation. For other languages the translations are perhaps better: e.g. garder les enfants (French) and cuidar niños (Spanish).

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).

Win a Trip to Learn Spanish in Argentina

By Simon

The makers of Bueno, entonces…, a new Spanish language learning software, are trying to build their Facebook cred by reaching 10,000 Fans by March. If they get there, one lucky fan and a friend will win a trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina, for 10 days of intensive Spanish lessons, a chance to meet the cast and crew, and of course, have way too much fun.

From now until March 12th, Bueno, entonces… is offering a series of contests on the Facebook Page, which offers free daily Spanish phrases, words and grammar lessons. 100 participants will be chosen as Finalists from the series of contests and will be entered to win the Grand Prize Trip. The complete contest details are posted on the Bueno, entonces…Fan Page.

example photo for the competition

Starting today (January 28) there is an easy-to-do photo contest. To enter, just snap a picture of yourself holding a sign saying “I want to win a trip to Argentina” and post it to their Facebook wall. Then get your friends to ‘like’ and comment on it. The TEN finalists with the most ‘likes’ will be selected next Friday (February 5). So polish up your tango shoes and hurry and go check it out.

About the program:
Bueno, entonces… is like Rosetta Stone meets The Simpsons – the program is comprehensive, but at the same time hilarious and really engaging. Just released last year, it has been already featured in the iTunes App Store and on the Daily Candy website. To see more, check out their Learn Spanish website.

This post is brought to you by Bueno, entonces…

Word of the day – ortzikara

By Simon

Today’s word, ortzikara, is Basque and means “time when a storm is brewing” or in Spanish “tiempo amenazado por la tormenta”. Do any other language have a single word to express this meaning?

This word comes from a book I’m reading at the moment – Mother Tongues – Travels through Tribal Europe, by Helena Drysdale, in which the author and her family travel through Europe visiting people who speak minority languages such as Basque, Occitan, Sami and Corsican.

Related words include ihortziri (thunder), tximista (lightning), truxu (light rain), euri (heavy rain), bisuts (torrential rain), zara-zara (heavy rain), ortzadar (rainbow), haize (wind), elur (snow) and bisutsa (light snow). In fact there seems to be quite a lot words in Basque for different kinds of weather.

De bouche à oreille

By Simon

Last night we were discussing how to encourage more people to come to the French conversation group and we concluded that word of mouth is probably the most effective way – all the posters we put up around Bangor last Saturday have yet to bring hordes of new recruits. We also thought that the French version of word of mouth, de bouche à oreille (from mouth to ear), seems to be more logical then the English. Another way to say word of mouth in French is de vive voix (of live mouth).

Word of mouth in Chinese is 口耳相傳 (kǒu ěr xiāng chuán) or “mouth ear mutual spread” or 口口相傳 (mouth mouth mutual spread); in Dutch it’s van mond tot mond (from mouth to mouth) and it’s the same in German, von Mund zu Mund. In Japanese it’s 口コミ(kuchikomi) or “mouth com(munication)”, and in Spanish it’s boca a boca (mouth to mouth) or boca a oreja (mouth to ear).

What about in other languages?

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.

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.

Etymological help needed

By Simon

I’ve been asked for help in tracing the etymology of the Spanish word chedrón by Antonio from Canada.

The Spanish-speaking grandmothor of one of Antonio’s acquaintances used to use the word chedrón to refer to the colour of certain things. The problem is that she used the word quite inconsistently to refer to different shades of red, brown, pink, etc.

Antonino tried looking for chedrón, cheddrón, shedrón, chedron, cheddron, and shedron in the Diccionario de la lengua española de la Real Academia Española (DRAE) and the closest spelling he found was cedrón, but that refers to a plant (not a colour) and the plant is green anyway.

On the PROZ website there was a discussion about how to translate the word into English and the answer was “cedar red”.

A Google search for the word and variant spellings revealed some pictures of objects which, for the most part, are darker shades of red or brown.

Antonio hasn’t found an authoritative spelling or definition for the word chedrón, but the Google searches seem to indicate that the word is actually used at least by some Spanish speakers, even if inconsistently.

The question is, do any Romance languages have a word that sounds anything like chedrón to signify a colour as described above? If no Romance languages have a similar word, do any other languages?

He’s not so much concerned about what chedrón looks like, but where the word comes from and how it is spelt in whichever language Spanish borrowed it from.

Idiolects, sociolects and other animals

By Simon

This is a guest post from James P in Chile:

Two things have made me think about “vocabulary worlds” recently: reading past papers for the DELE exam and picking up a José Donoso novel (Coronación) from the library.

The vocab section of the DELE exam is going to be rather a matter of chance as significant proportions of the vocab that is used on a daily basis in Latin America – at least in Chile and on Colombian radio which are my two main sources of spoken LA Spanish – are bound to be different from the vocab used in Spain. That is certainly true of British and US English (“I like your bangs”, “Do you have any spackle?). This, rather than my joking references before, is the more substantial problem with the DELE vocab test, at least for those of us who take it as speakers of LA Spanish: even when the words might be understood by a cultured Chilean or Guatemalan, they are not used much over here as compared to Spain and so we are much less likely to have heard them, even if our total vocabulary is larger than a learner in Madrid or Seville.

José Donoso, in common with a number of other Chilean writers of the second half of the 20th Century, spent a number of years living outside of Chile (in his case in Mexico, Spain and the USA). His diction (choice of vocab) is very unusual (one of my Chilean friends says that he makes up words!). Every author has a range of words they use commonly, but for me it seems that Donoso overlaps much less with my vocab than for example García Márquez, or Roberto Ampuero. Before I get round to Coronacíon I’m reading Pérez-Reverte’s El pintor de Batallas, which also has a different vocab world, one that is new enough for me to learn new words (such as estrambótico and un chasquido), but not so alien I want to give up (which is what happened last time with Donoso when I tried to read Casa de campo about a year ago).

Can others give examples of this phenomena of different “vocab worlds”, either with specific authors or with national forms of a language which is spoken in different countries?

DELE exam

By Simon

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

I am preparing for the advanced DELE exam (just as it will be useful to have a piece of paper to say I can speak Spanish … such is life). I won’t go into how odd it is (muy suyo), but one thing that is very noticeable is that the “vocab” section is very strongly focused on Peninsular Spanish, which makes it almost impossible for all the other Spanish learners. This puts it’s standing as a world level qualification somewhat in question (even native speakers here can’t pass that section).

Let me illustrate with Chilean Spanish. If someone responds to your question about how the party was by saying “bacán won; la pasamo la raja. Había harta mina ¿cachai? Puro carreteando tóo el rato, won.” Is that good or bad? Do you have any idea what they just said to you?

Anyway, it set me thinking about languages with two (or more) “centers” (there is a proper term for this and I can’t remember it at the moment). English is the same: standard UK English is not “better” than standard USA English: there are two norms.

Are there other examples of languages with two or more “standard norms”?