La vie de baguette

By Simon

The best-known type of French bread is the baguette, which was possibly introduced to France in the early 19th century by August Zang from Austria, though that’s another story.

Baguettes only stay fresh for a day, so what do you do with them once they start to go hard?

Here are a few possibilities:

La vie de baguette - a cartoon showing ways in which the French use their baguettes

Here’s a translation:

1. First Day: sliced with butter, sandwich
2. Second Day: toast
3. Third Day: French toast (“lost bread”)
4. Fourth Day: croutons, crumbs for the pigeons
5. Fifth Day: hammer, golf club

Image supplied by Frantastique, who can teach you all about the bizarre French cuisine, and help you to learn French.

I was told that if your baguette is a bit stale you can revive it by sprinkling a bit of water on slices and blasting them in a microwave for a short while. I haven’t tried this as I’m am microwaveless.

The French word baguette can also refer to:

– a magic wand = baguette magique; baguette de fée; baguette de sourcler
– chopsticks = baguettes chinoises
– conductor’s baton = baguette de direction; baguette de chef d’orchestre
– a drumstick = baguette de tambour

Expressions incorporating baguette include:

– sous la baguette de … = conducted by …
– faire marcher qn à la baguette = to rule sb with an iron hand

What are baguettes called in your country?

Free Language Podcast

By Simon

Yesterday I did an interview over Skype with Chapman Woodriff, who runs FreeLanguage.org, which provides a variety of language-learning material and advice. Chapman made the interview into a podcast in which I explain how I got into languages, how I started Omniglot and how people can use Omniglot to learn languages.

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Mandarin or Putonghua?

By Simon

Today I received an email in which the writer tells me that Chinese should be called Putonghua and not Mandarin. Apparently, “People don’t know, and school teachers don’t care! obviously; leaving me to inform: The name ‘Mandarin’ has been obsolete 105 years now.” The name Mandarin was used for a ‘Manchurian high official’ who spoke 官話 (official speech). However since the fall of the Manchurian Qing monarchy in 1911, “Mandarins dead as dodos” and to use the name Mandarin is “an affront to the republican nation”.

This language in fact has a number of different names in different countries and regions:

– 普通话 [普通話] (pǔtōnghuà) – “common speech” – in China
– 國語 (guóyǔ) – “national language” – in Taiwan
– 华语 [華語] (huáyǔ) – “Chinese language” – in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and the other parts of Southeast Asia.
– 汉语 [漢語] (hànyǔ) – “Han language” – in the USA and among the Chinese diaspora
– 中文 (zhōngwén) – “Chinese language” – in Taiwan, mainly
– Chinese, Mandarin, Mandarin Chinese, Putonghua, etc. in English-speaking countries
– Other names in other countries and languages

During the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties, the language used by court officials became known as 官话 [官話] (guānhuà) – “official speech”. The word Mandarin comes from the the Sanskrit मन्त्रिन् (mantrin = counselor, minister) via the Portuguese mandarim. It was first used to refer to Chinese bureaucrats, and later it was used to refer to the language those officials spoke, which was used as a lingua franca of China from the 14th century.

What is Mandarin / Putonghua / Chinese known as in other languages?

Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese

Multilingual musicians

By Simon

A Sardinian friend of mine, Elena Piras, knows six languages (Sardinian, Italian, English, Scottish Gaelic, French and Spanish) and sings in most of them, plus a few others, including Scots, Bulgarian and Georgian.

Here’s a recording of a performance from earlier this year in which she sings in Sardinian, Scots, English, Scottish Gaelic and Bulgarian.

Elena aims to sing each language in as close to a native accent as possible, and I think she does this very well.

Another multilingual singer is Jean-Marc Leclercq or JoMo, who holds the world record for singing in the most languages in one performance: 22. I heard him doing this at the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin in May this year. His pronunciation in the languages I know didn’t sound entirely native-like, and it sounded like he had a strong French accent in the other languages.

Do you know other singers who sing in multiple languages?

How well do they pronounce them?

I myself sing in various languages, and try to pronounce as well as I can, but know I could do better.

Here’s a recording of a song I wrote earlier this year in the five languages I know best (English, French, Welsh, Mandarin and Irish):

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Squibs and squabs

By Simon

When an event is not very successful, you could say that it went off like a damp squib, or even a damp squid, as a friend mistakenly said last night.

A squib is obviously something that does not work properly when it’s wet, and I had an idea that it was some kind of explosive.

According to Reverso, a squib is:

1. a firework
2. a firework that does not explode because of a fault; dud
3. a short witty attack; lampoon
4. an electric device for firing a rocket engine
5. an insignificant person (obsolete)
6. a coward (Aus/NZ slang)

And a damp squib is “something intended but failing to impress”.

Etymology: probably imitative of a quick light explosion.

An unrelated, but similar-sounding word is squab, which is:

1. a young unfledged bird, esp. a pigeon
2. a short fat person
3. a well-stuffed bolster or cushion; a sofa
4. (of birds) recently hatched and still unfledged
5. short and fat

Etymology: probably of Germanic origin; compare Swedish dialect sqvabb (flabby skin), sqvabba (fat woman), German Quabbe (soft mass), Norwegian kvabb (mud)

Source: http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/squab

Squib, squab and squid are all good words for Scrabble.

Are there equivalents of damp squibs in other languages?

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg
la fiche flash card cerdyn fflach
le dispositif d’écoute; le micro caché bug (listening device)
le bogue bug (computer) nam; diffyg
le virus; le microbe bug (germ) byg; clust
l’insecte (m); la bestiole bug (insect) pryf
mangeable edible (palatable) bwytadwy
comestible edible (safe to eat) da i’w fwyta
tremper to dunk gwlychu; trochi
trempé soaked gwlyb
trempé jusqu’aux os soaked to the skin gwlyb diferol; gwlyb diferol; gwlyb at y croen
un pétard mouillé damp squib matsien wleb
le pigeonneau squab (baby pigeon) cyw colomen
le fruit de l’imagination figment of the imagination dychmygu pethau; ffrwyth eich dychymyg

eesti keel

By Simon

Last night I had an interesting chat with an Estonian student who is studying in Bangor about Estonia and the Estonian language. I knew a little about the language already, but realised that I didn’t know any words or phrases in Estonian, apart from its native name – eesti keel – and I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce that: [eːsti.keːl].

When I meet someone who speaks a language I haven’t studied, yet, quite often I know at least how to say hello or other phrases in their language, which usually impresses them, but I haven’t met any Estonians before, as far as I remember, and on this occasion I couldn’t think of a single word. I had an idea that hello was something like terve, but wasn’t sure – this is actually hello in Finnish. In Estonian it’s tere. So now I do know a few words in Estonian.

One thing we talked about was the number of Russian speakers in Estonia – they make up about 20% of the population – and the fact that Estonia is quite a good place to learn Russian. I have considered this, and if I were to do a Russian language course there, I would try to learn some Estonian as well.

Do you try to use whatever you know of a language when you meet someone who speaks it, even if you only know a word or two?