Marmosets, cheese and gargoyles

By Simon

IL y a un ouistiti sur le fromage ! (There's a marmoset on the cheese!)

When French-speaking photographers want people to smile, they might say Le petit oiseau va sortir (The little bird is going to come out) or Souriez! (smile), or might ask them to say pepsi! or ouistiti! (marmoset), just as English-speaking photographer get people to smile by asking them to say “Cheese!”

The word ouistiti [ˈwistiti] means marmoset in French, and is apparently imitative of the animal’s cry.

Another French word for marmoset is callitriche, which comes from callithrix, a genus of monkeys found in South America that includes some species of marmoset, and which comes from the Greek kallos (beautiful) and thrix (hair). The callithrix are part of the Callitrichidae family, which includes all marmosets and tamarins found in South America. The marmoset in the photo above is a Pygmy marmoset, or Cebuella pygmaea.

The word marmoset comes from the Middle French marmouset (gargoyle; small child), which probably comes from marmouser (to mumble) [source].

Other equivalents of “Say cheese!” can be found on: http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/saycheese.htm – additions and corrections are welcome (as always).

What do you say when you want people to smile?

Post-vernacular languages

By Simon

In an article I read today – Sustaining languages: An interview with Peter Austin, I came across an interesting idea – post-vernacular languages.

A vernacular language is one you use in your everyday life, while a post-vernacular language is one you may not want to use in your daily life and as means of communication, but may learn to connect or reconnect with your heritage, culture and heritage, for fun, out of interest, or for other reasons.

An example given in the article is of Jewish people in the USA who use English as their everyday language, but decide to learn some Yiddish as it was the language of their parents or grandparents. Some may just learn a few words and phrases, others may learn more of the language, but few will use it as a vernacular language.

Here is an interesting video which discusses the status of Yiddish as a post-vernacular language:

There is also a book which discuss the phenomenon: Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture by Jeffrey Shandler

My learning and use of languages is mostly post-vernacular – I learn them mainly for fun and out of interest, and while I do sometimes use them to communicate with others, that isn’t necessarily my primary goal. I have used languages in a vernacular way when living in other countries, and I do currently life in Wales, in an area where the majority of people speak Welsh, and I use Welsh quite often, though not necessarily every day.

Hmyz and Hums

By Simon

Hymz

I came across an interesting Czech word today – hmyz, which means “insect, ant, bug, creepy-crawly”.

It appears in my Czech phrasebook in the sentence, “V našem pokoji je hmyz” (There are insects in our room).

It sounds like the sounds insects make, but there are other words for hum in Czech – bzučet, vrčet, hučet (verbs); bzukot, šum, hukot (nouns).

Related words include:

– hmyzožravec = insectivore
– hmyzožravý = insectivorous
– repelent proti hmyzu = insect repellent

Sources: Wordbook.cz, Slovnik.cz, Slovniky.lingea.cz

Fosses and Sextons

By Simon

At the French Conversation Group last night one of the people had an old French language textbook from the 1950s which contains lots of stories in French. One of them contains the word “Le Fossoyeur” in the title, which is translated as “The Sexton”. As this wasn’t a word I’d come across before, I thought I’d find out more about it.

According to the Oxford Dictionaries, a sexton is:

A person who looks after a church and churchyard, typically acting as bell-ringer and gravedigger.

Sexton is a Middle English word that comes from the Anglo-Norman French segrestein, from medieval Latin sacristānus (sacristan), which comes from the Latin sacer/sacr- (sacred).

A sacristan is person in charge of a sacristy and its contents, and a sacristy is a “room in a church where a priest prepares for a service, and where vestments and articles of worship are kept.”

The French word fossoyeur can also mean “personne ou chose qui ruine, détruit” (sb or sth that ruins or destroys) [source], and comes from the word fosse (pit, grave), from the Latin fossa (ditch, trench), from fodiō (dig out, excavate) from the Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European *bʰedʰ- (to pierce, dig) [source].

The word fosse / foss also exists in English and means a ditch or moat, but is rarely used, except by archaeologist, for whom it means “a long, narrow trench or excavation, especially in a fortification.” [source]. Fosse also appears in the name of the old Roman road from Lincoln to Exeter – the Fosse Way.

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg
le fossoyeur gravedigger torrwr beddau
la fosse pit; grave pwll; twll; bedd
le fossé ditch; gap ffos; twll
la fosse d’orchestre orchestra pit pwll cerddorfa
la fosse septique septic tank tanc carthion
le canot de sauvetage lifeboat bad achub
l’aube (f) dawn gwawr
le lave-vaiselle dishwasher (machine) peiriant golchi llestri
le plongeur dishwasher (person) golchwr llestri
les couvertures et draps;
la parure de lit;
la literie		 bedclothes; bedding dillad gwely;
gwellt gwely;
gwelltach
la vipère (péliade) (common) adder
(vipera berus)		 gwiber

How to you?

By Simon

An interesting structure that came up in the Russian lesson I worked on today is Как тебе …? (Kak tebe …) or literally “How to you …”), which means “What do you think of …?”. The example in the lesson is Ну, как тебе пельмени? (Nu, kak tebe pel’meni?), which means “So, what do you think of pelmeni*?”. The reply is Очень вкусно! (Ochen’ vkusno!) = “Very tasty!”.

This illustrates the fact that you often use fewer words in Russian sentences than in other languages like English. In some ways this makes Russian easier as there are fewer words to worry about in sentences like this. Although if you’re trying to translate from English to Russian you have to remember to leave half the words out.

Do any other languages use a similar structure?

*Pelmeni are a kind of dumpling, usually filled with meat, or sometimes with vegetables or fish.

Suo Gân

By Simon

We are learning the traditional Welsh lullaby Suo Gân [sɨɔ ɡɑːn] in one of the choirs I sing in at the moment. It’s a lovely song that was first written down in 1800, but was probably composed around before then.

When I first saw the words Suo Gân I thought they might be Mandarin Chinese – I knew that gân is mutated version of the Welsh word for song, cân, but suo doesn’t look like Welsh. In fact suo is a variant spelling of sïo, which means “to hum, whizz or murmur”, so suo gân could be translated as “humming / murmured song”.

Here’s a recording of Bryn Terfel singing this song:

The words suo [suɔ] and gan [kan] have many meanings in Chinese, but there are only a couple of expressions I can find that combine both of them:

– 锁杆 [鎖桿] (suǒgǎn) = locking bar
– 所感 (suǒgǎn) = one’s impression of something

In the cold light of day

By Simon

An interesting expression I noticed recently is in the cold light of day. It is used to indicate that you are thinking about something calmly and clearly, and you might feel foolish, sorry or ashamed for thinking or doing that something. For example “The next morning, in the cold light of day, Sam realized that his ideas, which seemed so brilliant the night before, were complete nonsense.”

I hadn’t thought about it much before, but when I came across it today it struck me as slightly odd – can light be cold?

According to Dictionary.com, “This expression transfers the illumination of daylight to rational understanding and uses cold to emphasize the lack of passion.”

On AnswerBag it’s suggested that this phrase originates in Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, published in 1894-5. A similar phrase certainly does appear in that book in the following extract, from the beginning of chapter 5:

“Oh, I don’t want any! I fear I ought not to have run away from that school! Things seem so different in the cold light of morning, don’t they? What Mr. Phillotson will say I don’t know! It was quite by his wish that I went there. He is the only man in the world for whom I have any respect or fear. I hope he’ll forgive me; but he’ll scold me dreadfully, I expect!”

Do you know of any earlier uses of this phrase?

Are there equivalents of this phrase in other languages?