Month: January 2016

Awakening forgotten languages

By Simon

Last night at ukulele club there was a new member from Spain, and I talked a bit with her in Spanish. It’s a long time since I’ve studied any Spanish, and I rarely use it these days, so I thought I’d forgotten most of it, but I found that I can still have a basic conversation, even if I make mistakes. I had similar experiences with German in Berlin last year and the year before at the Polyglot Gathering – I could understand quite a bit and found that when I tried to speak it I could at least make myself understood.

At the moment I have no real need to awaken my Spanish or German, but if I do need them, I’ll try to find ways to bring them back.

How do you brush up, bring back, awaken or revive languages you have forgotten or not used for a long time?

Totes amazesh!

By Simon

According to an article I found the other day, some people on Twitter are playing with language in interesting ways and creating new abbreviations and words like tradge (tragic), bluebs (blueberries), emosh (emotional) and hilars (hilarious) and atrosh (atrocious).

This phenomenon has been dubbed totesing by the linguists Lauren Spradlin and Taylor Jones, who have collected and analyzed many examples of totesing and discovered that such abbreviations are not random. Instead they follow a definite pattern which involves removing the parts of words after their stressed syllables, but retaining a consonant or two after it. For example, subconsciously becomes subconsh and aphrodisiac becomes aphrodeez – the spelling is also altered some times.

The favorite intensifier is totes, from totally.

Some such abbreviations have been around for quite a while, others are new.

Here are a few I found on Twitter:

– You people are so totes adorbs when you’re watching a game.
– Hey guys it’s #nationalhugday! So we’re asking, ever received a totes awks hug?
– You got me. I’m totes jelz of guys too dumb to know supporting Trump should be a point of shame instead of pride.
– totes inapprops
– it’s gonna be a totes perf weekend

Do you use these kinds of words? Have you come across any interesting ones?

Are similar things being done to other languages?

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg
le rouge à lèvres lipstick minlliw, lliwydd
le rouge, le rouge à joues rouge powdwr coch, rouge, gruddliw
la suie soot huddygl, parddu
être sur le cas to be on the case
dire qch sur un ton pince-sans-rire to say sth tongue in cheek dwueud rhwybeth â’ch tafod yn eich boch
dwueud rhwybeth â’ch tafod am eich dant
rappeler qch à qn to remind sb of sth atgoffa rhywun o rywbeth
dwyn rhywbeth i gof rhywun
l’Hôtel Matignon residence and offices of French Prime Minister
l’orchestre (m) stalls (in a theatre) seddau blaen
la fosse orchestra pit pwll cerddorfa
le balcon (dress) circle (in a theare) seddau’r cylch
cylch y boneddigion
y cylch cyntaf
la loge box (in a theatre) bocs, côr seddau
le lavabo, la cuvette de lavabo wash basin basn ymolchi
la prunelle sloe eirinen dagu
le gin à la prunelle sloe gin jin eirin
racler les fonds de tiroir to scrape the barrel crafu’r gasgen
le chevalier knight marchog
le cavalier knight (in chess) marchog
le plan d’urgence contingency plan cynllun at raid
cynllun wrth gefn

Stalls, stinkards and parterres

By Simon

In theatres in the UK the seats at ground level in front of the stage are usually known as stalls or orchestra stalls. If there are balconies above that level, the first balcony might be known as the dress circle, grand circle or balcony, the second as the upper circle, grand circle, first circle or circle, the third as the upper circle or gallery, and the fourth as the gallery. There may also be private boxes along the sides of the theatre. The exact terms vary from theatre to theatre.

In French the stalls are known as l’orchestre, les fauteuils d’orchestre or le parterre, the first level balcony might be le balcon, the second level balcony might be la galerie, and the third level might be le paradis (paradise) – ‘the gods’ is sometimes used for the highest level of balconies in English. Boxes are les loges.

A parterre in English is a “a formal garden constructed on a level surface, consisting of planting beds, typically in symmetrical patterns, separated and connected by gravel pathways.” [source]. Parterre can also refer to the ground level part of a theatre (stalls) and the audiences who congregate there. The word pit is also used [source]. The denizens of the pit or yard in Shakespeare’s Globe theatre were known as a groundlings, stinkards or penny-stinkers [source].

The French word parterre has also been borrowed into Russian as партер and is used to refer to the stalls in a theatre.

What terms are used in theatres you go to?

Dystopias and Utopias

By Simon

Why is it that so many films and novels set in the future are dystopian?

I thought about this after watching The Hunger Games last night, and tried to think of any stories of utopian futures. The only films I could think featuring non-dystopian futures of were Back to the Future II and Bicentennial Man. Can you think of any others?

The word dystopia combines the Ancient Greek δυσ (dus – bad), and τόπος ‎(tópos – place, region) with the Latin/Ancient Greek suffix ia/ία ‎(-ía). It was derived from the word utopia, which was coined by Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia. The u part of utopia comes from the Greek ou (οὐ – not) and by the 17th century was used to refer to a place or society that was considered perfect or ideal. The prefix ou possibly got confused with εὖ ‎(eû, – well, good). Dystopia was first used by J. S. Mill in a parliamentary speech in 1868 [source].

Matignon and other metonyms

By Simon

Last night I discovered that the French equivalent of “Number 10”, which in the UK refers to the British Prime Minister, is Matignon or L’Hôtel de Matignon, the official residence of the French Prime Minister.

Number 10 is shorthand for Number 10 Downing Street, is the official residence and office of the British Prime Minister, and the headquarters of the executive branch of the British Government. The British Government is also referred to as “Westminster”, from the Palace of Westminster where the British Parliament meets.

The Scottish Parliament is informally referred as “Holyrood” – named after the area of Edinburgh where it meets, while in Northern Irish Assembly is referred as “Stormont”, after the Stormont Estate where the main government buildings are. Stormont comes from the Stoirmhonadh, (place for crossing the mountains) and is named after a district in Perthshire in Scotland. The National Assembly of Wales / Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru is referred to as the Assembly in English, and y Cynulliad or y Senedd (the Senate) in Welsh. I don’t know of any particular metonyms for it.

Using the name of a place or building to refer to an institution or other organisation is known as metonymy, from the Greek μετωνυμία (metōnymía) – a change of name. Other examples include using Hollywood to refer to the US film industry, and Silicon Valley to refer to the US high-tech sector.

Are metonyms used to refer to governments, prime ministers, or other government institutions in other countries?

Hajej, můj zlatoušku

By Simon

One of my harps

Dnes jsem se naučil Česká píseň: “Hajej, můj zlatoušku”. To je záznam melodii hrál na harfu:

To je záznam mě zpívat tuto píseň:

Today I started learning the Czech song, “Hajej, můj zlatoušku”, which I think is a lullaby, as the title means something like “Sleep now my little golden one”.

I recorded the tune on the harp, and also recorded myself singing it unaccompanied.

Here’s another recording I made of this song:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/241783557″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]

This song comes from the book Třetí Výběr Českých a Moravských Písní (The Third Choice of Czech and Moravian Songs) by Helena Hasilová and Jiří Hasil, which a Czech friend gave me a few years ago.

The words are:

Hajej, můj zlatoušku hajej a spi,
zamhouři maličky očičky svý;
hajej, dadej, nynej, malej!
zamhouři maličký očičky svý.

Hajej, můj andílku, hajej a spi,
matička kolíbá děťátko svý;
hajej, dadej, nynej, malej!
matička kolíbá děťátko svý.

Another recording of this song:

Here’s a translation:

Sleep, my little golden one, sleep.
Close your little eyes and sleep.

Sleep, my little angel, sleep.
Mummy is rocking her little child to sleep.

Thanks to Kája Beránková for help with the translation. Díky!