Month: April 2014

Sound instincts

By Simon

According to an article I came across today, humans possibly have innate preferences for the sound patterns found in languages which might help babes to distinguish language from non-language and to acquire language.

An experiment undertaken by the National Academy of Sciences found that even new born babies show a preference for combinations of phonemes common in human languages over rare or non-linguistic combinations of phonemes. For example, it is relatively common for words to begin with bl, not very rare for them to start with lb. This suggests that the range of sound combinations found in languages, which though large, is limited by our brains innate preferences.

I found another report on this story on Science Daily which provides more details.

Attercop

By Simon

Attercop / Lob / Cob / Spider

In The Hobbit, Bilbo uses the words attercop, lazy lob, crazy cob, and old tomnodd as insults he’s attacked by giant spiders in Mirkwood. I guessed that they are alternative names for spiders, but I thought I’d check.

Attercop is a word for spider from the Old English átorcoppe, from átor/attor (poison) and coppe, from cop (top, summit, round head), or copp (cup, vessel). It is apparently still used in North Yorkshire, though is considered old fashioned. It can also mean a peevish or ill-natured person. Possibly related words include the Norwegian edderkopp(er) (spider) and the Danish edderkop(per).

Lob is another extinct word for spider from the Old English lobbe/loppe, of unknown origin.

Cob is another extinct word for spider that features in cobweb, and is probably cognate with the Flemish cobbe/coppe (spider) and Westphalian cobbe (spider).

I can’t find any information about tomnodd. Do you know where it might come from?

Other Old English words for spider include gangewifre (‘a weaver as he goes’) spíðra, wæfergange, gongelwæfre and spigt.

Source: OED, Word Wide Words, Wiktionary, Old English Tranlsator

Towns, gardens and fences

By Simon

Last week I went to Denbigh, a small town in the north east of Wales, to sing in a concert. On the way there there was some discussion about the origins and meaning of the name Denbigh. So I thought I’d find out more. The English name of the town doesn’t mean anything, but the Welsh name, Dinbych, means ‘small fortress’ – din is an old word for fort or castle related to the word dinas (fort; refuge; city), and bych is a variant form of bach (small). Related words include dinasfraint (citzenship), dinasol (civic, municipal), and dinaswr (citizen).

Din comes from the same root as the Irish dún (fort), the Scottish Gaelic dùn (fortress, heap), the Manx doon (fort, fastness, stronghold, bastion, earth fort, dun, fortified rock), and din (fortress) in Breton and Cornish – the Proto-Celtic *dūnom (stronghold) [source], which is cognate with the Proto-Germanic *tunaz/*tunan (fortified place), the root of the Old English tuun/tūn (an enclosure; farmstead; village; estate), from which we get the word town; and of the Dutch tuin (garden), and the German Zaun (fence, hedge).

The element -dunum in Gaulish/Latin places names, such as Lugdunum (Lyon) and Acitodunum (Ahun), comes from the same root, as does the element -ton in English places names such as Workington, Ulverston, Dalton and Warton.

The root of all these words is the PIE *dhu-no- (enclosed, fortified place, hill-fort), from *dheue- (to close, finish, come full circle) [source].

Here’s a Glossary of Welsh Place-Name Elements, and a Key to English places names.

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg
la (jeu de) boules bowls bowliau; bowls
jouer aux boules to play (lawn) bowls chwarae bowls/powls
le terrain de boules bowling green lawnt fowlio; grîn fowlio
le bowling bowling bowlio
le piste de bowling bowling alley ala/ale/ali fowlio
le boule bowl bowl; powl
la quille skittle sgitlen (sgitls)
la route de contournement bypass (road) ffordd osgoi
le pontage bypass (operation) dargyfeiriad
le domaine; la propriéte estate tir; meddiant; tirogaeth
le lotissement housing estate ystad o dai
la ferme farm; farmhouse ty fferm; ffarm; ffermdy
la fermette small farmhouse ty fferm bach

Schrijfrichting / Scriptpath

By Simon

Script direction in Mongolian

Last week a visitor to Omniglot asked me whether there is a single word in English that means writing direction, i.e. the direction in which writing systems are written. The Latin alphabet, for example, is written from left to right in horizontal lines, as are many other writing systems, while writing systems like Arabic and Hebrew are written from right to left in horizontal lines, and a few writing systems, such as traditional Mongolian and Manchu, are written from top to bottom in vertical columns running from left to right – other directions are available.

On Wikipedia I found the word directionality, and I found that there are more precise words for this concept in German and Dutch: Schreibrichtung / Schriftrichtung and Schrijfrichting. On the W3C site I found the term script direction.

The lack of a single-word term in English is partly because in English noun phrases are usually written as separate words, unlike in German and Dutch, where they are often written as single words.

I came up with some alternative possible terms for this phenomenon: scribeway / scribe way, scribepath / scribe path, script direction, script path, script way, script course, script orientation, or using Greek rather than Latin/Germanic roots: graphodromos, or grammadromos (dromos = road in Greek), or mixing Latin and Greek roots: scriptodromos / grammadromos.

What is writing direction called in other languages? Are there any others which use a single word.

One language per day

By Simon

Last week I decided to try a slightly different language learning strategy. Rather than trying to immerse myself and learning bits of various languages every day, I am focusing on one language each day. This mainly involves listening to online radio and doing online lessons, and also having conversations with people when I can. At the moment I’m continuing to learn Dutch, learning more Portuguese, Italian, and brushing up my Spanish and Japanese, while trying to keep my other languages ticking over.

So yesterday was Portuguese day, today is Spanish day and I’ll probably focus on Italian tomorrow. So far it’s working quite well.