Month: February 2018

Kiev, Kyiv or Kyjev?

By Simon

I’ve received several emails from people telling me that the capital of Ukraine, Київ, should be written Kyiv in English, and not Kiev. So I thought I’d look into the history of the name.

Kiev, or Kyiv, is named after one of its legendary founders, Кий (Kyi). It was originally written Къıєвъ in Cyrillic. This was transliterated as Kyjev in the Latin alphabet.

On early maps of the region, Kiev was variously written Kiou, Kiow, Kiew, Kiovia or Kiiow. The name Kiev, based on the Russian pronounciation, started to be used while Kiev was part of the Russian Empire (from 1708), and was first used in print in English in 1804. It has also been written Kyyiv and Kyjiv.

According to the Ukrainian government’s rules for the transliteration of geographic names into English, Київ is translierated as Kyiv. This spelling has been used in all official English language documents in Ukraine since 1995, and has been adopted by the UN and other international organisations.

How is this name written in other languages?

Source: Wikipedia

Beards and chins

By Simon

Illustration of a beard

One of the Romanian lessons I did today was about parts of the body. One word that came up was bărbie [bərˈbi.e], which I guessed meant beard, but actually means chin. I suppose beards usually grow on chins, so this isn’t too surprising.

Bărbie comes from the Vulgar Latin *barbilia, from the Latin barba (beard; wool; down on a plant). Or from the Romanian barbă (beard) +‎ -ie (a noun suffix) [source].

In Spanish chin is barbilla [barˈβiʎa] – barba (beard) with a diminutive suffix, so it could be translated as “little beard” [source].

The English word beard comes from the Middle English berd, bard, bærd, from the Old English beard, from Proto-Germanic *bardaz, from the Proto-Indo-European *bʰardʰeh₂, all of which mean beard. The PIE word *bʰardʰeh₂ is also the root of words for beard in Germanic, Slavic, Romance and Iranian languages [source], and in Welsh (barf) Cornish (barv) and Breton (barv) [source].

In the Gaelic / Goidelic languages however, the words for beard are different: féasóg in Irish, feusag in Scottish Gaelic, and faasaag in Manx. The come from the Old Irish fésóc, from fés (lip; body hair) [source].

Are words for beards and chins similar in other languages?

Greetings and salutations

By Simon

Greetings and salutations

Dear Readers,

When writing an email or other message, or even a letter or postcard, how do you start it and sign off?

When replying to emails, I usually echo the greetings and sign offs used by my correspondents. If they start with “Dear Mr Ager” or “Dear Simon”, I will reply with something simliar, although I often just use “Hi [name] … “Regards”. If we have already exchanged emails, I might dispense with the greetings and the sign offs.

I have also been greeted in emails with “Dear Professor Ager” and “Dear Dr Ager” – I’m neither a professor nor a doctor, so these amuse me.

How about in other languages? Are there standard ways of starting and finishing emails? If not, what do you use?

There was an interesting discussion about this on the latest episode of the BCC Radio 4 programme Word of Mouth, which inspired this post.

That’s all for now.

May your hovercraft always be full of eels.

Simon