Bosky bosses

By Simon

A bosky part of Roman Camp in Bangor

I discovered today that bos is a Dutch word for forest or wood, and this immediately made me think of the wonderful English word bosky, which is defined by the OED as “Consisting of or covered with bushes or underwood; full of thickets, bushy”.

The OED says that bosky comes from bosk, a Middle English version of bush, which like the Dutch words bos and bosje (bush), comes from the late Latin boscum / boscus (wood).

A similar-sounding English word, boss, is not related to bosky, but does come from Dutch – from baas (boss, owner), from the Middle Dutch baes, which originally meant uncle, and was first used to mean master in America during the 17th century [source].

Fluent Forever

By Simon

Today we have a guest post by Gabriel Wyner.

An example of the app on a phone

Hi everyone! I wanted to share with you a project I’ve been working on to help folks learn languages faster. To help introduce it, let me give you some background on myself and what I do.

I’m an opera singer, and for my career, I needed to learn German, Italian, French and Russian. Over the course of studying those languages, I developed a language learning method that began to produce really phenomenal results: I was able to learn French to C1 fluency in 5 months and Russian to B2/C1 fluency in 10. This method eventually turned into an article at Lifehacker, which went viral and led to a book deal with Random House, and has basically turned my life upside-down (In a good way, fortunately! While I don’t have much time for singing, I adore writing and learning about languages!)

One of the central tenets of my methods revolves around pronunciation. I learn pronunciation before anything else, because once my ears are attuned to a language’s sounds, I have a much easier time memorizing vocabulary, and I don’t have to fight against bad, ingrained pronunciation habits when I’m ready to start speaking.

The tricky part in all of this is that effective pronunciation training tools are few and far between. For most common languages, there are some scattered YouTube pronunciation guides, perhaps a brief discussion in the front of your grammar book, but very little that’s comprehensive, systematic, and enjoyable to use. And there’s little to nothing that will successfully train your ears to hear sounds you haven’t heard before – subtle things like the differences between German’s “See” [ze:] and “Sie” [zi:], “Bahn” [ba:n] and “Bann” [ban], or German’s “mein” [maen] and English’s “mine” [maɪn].

However, there is research that describes exactly how to train ears to hear new sounds. It’s a pretty simple process: you find a pair of sounds that are tricky to distinguish (say, German’s mein and English’s mine), you play a recording of one of the words at random, guess which one you heard, and then see whether you were right. Every time you go through this cycle, your ears get better. And with a bunch of well chosen word pairs and good recordings, an app could take you through that cycle and teach you the pronunciation system of a language within a couple of weeks. I’ve made one using Anki for my own Hungarian studies, and it took me ~10 days at 20 minutes a day to get a handle on the [occasionally stupidly difficult] sounds of Hungarian (tyuk vs gyuk, kar/kor/kór, ad/add, has/hass…).

11 days ago, I launched a Kickstarter to fund development of this app. The campaign has done phenomenally well, funding in 2 days and doubling after day 7, which has allowed me to add all sorts of stretch goals and bonuses for all the backers of the project. I think this is going to be a wonderful and much-needed tool for the language learning community, and I’m excited about working on it. If you or anyone you know wish to learn languages, please do help spread the word. You can use these handy links below:

Share via Facebook | Twitter | Google+

Fudge and flapdoodle!

By Simon

Flapdoodle Dinghy

Another interesting word I came across this week is flapdoodle /flæpˈduːd(ə)l/, which the OED defines as ‘the stuff they feed fools on’, which comes from the following quote:

‘The gentleman has eaten no small quantity of flapdoodle in his lifetime.’ ‘What’s that, O’Brien?’ replied I… ‘Why, Peter,’ rejoined he, ‘it’s the stuff they feed fools on.’

Another example of use of this word is the exclamation ‘Fudge and flapdoodle!’, which I think sounds wonderfully silly, and is possible alternative to stronger exclamations.

Flapdoodle is also ‘nonsense, bosh and humbug; a trifling thing or gewgaw’, and has been used as a verb meaning ‘to talk nonsense’.

The etymology given in the OED is that it is ‘an arbitrary formation’, similar to fadoodle (something foolish or ridiculous; nonsense).

There is also a tiny, folding sailing dinghy called the flapdoodle dinghy (pictured top right).

Do you know any similarly silly words with a similar meaning?

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg Brezhoneg
se marrer (bien) to have a good laugh cael hen hwyl / cael hwyl a hanner
se marrer comme un bossu to laugh out loud chwerthin lond bol/yn foliog/yn braf dic’hargadennoù
on s’est bien marrés we had a good laugh mi gawson ni hen hwyl
en avoir marre de to be tired of / fed up with wedi hen flino bout skuizh -faezh
j’en ai marre I’m fed up dw i wedi hen flino Me ‘zo skuizh
c’est marre ! that’s it! enough already! dyna ddigon! trawalc’h !
la malaria; le paludisme malaria malariam; y crydm malaria; kleñved ar paludoù
chalereux warm (greeting; applause; person) brwd; twym; twymgalon; cynnes taer; tomm; hegarat
charrier qn to have sb on; to be kidding twyllo ober an hegig g’ ub; monet (mont) er maez eus ar park
railler; taquiner to make fun of sb gwneud hwyl/sbort am ben rhywun; chwerthin am ben rhywun godisal; nodal; tatinat; ober an hegig; risignat
le bouc billygoat bwch gafr bo(u)c’h
le chien de soleil; l’œil de bouc sun dog hwyl ffug; ci hwyl (?)

Sun dogs, billygoat’s eyes and halos

By Simon

A photo of a sun dogs or parhelion by the sun - from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fargo_Sundogs_2_18_09.jpg

The other day I discovered the wonderful word sun dog, which refers to coloured patches of light that appear beside the sun at certain times, particularly when the sun is low in the sky. The scientific name for this phenomenon is a parhelion, from the παρήλιον (parēlion – beside the sun); from παρά (para – beside), and ἥλιος (helios – sun) [source].

In French sun dogs are known as parhélie, faux soleil (“fake sun”), soleil double (“double sun”), œil de bouc (“billygoat’s eye) or chien du soleil (“sun dog). In other languages their names are mainly based on the Greek, or some variation on fake sun.

There are also such things as moon dogs, mock moons or paraselenes, which are patches of light that appear beside the moon, though they are rarer than sun dogs, difficult to see, and only appear when the moon is very bright and full or nearly full. [source].

The friend who told me about sun dogs was using it to describe a halo around the moon or lunar halo, which, like sun and moon dogs, is a result of the refraction of light through ice crystal in cirrostratus clouds high in the upper troposphere [source]. On the night when we were talking about sun dogs the moon was only half full, so I don’t think there were any moon dogs about, but there definitely was a halo around the moon.

Snails and corner shops

By Simon

I have been learning Dutch for just over a week now and am enjoying it and finding it interesting. I can guess the meanings of many of the words I encounter as they are similar to German and/or English, but some are completely different. For example, I just learnt that shop is (de) winkel /ˈʋɪŋkəl/, and that shopping is (het) winkelen, which have no similarities to shop or shopping in English, or to their equivalents in German – Geschäft/Laden and einkaufen.

According to Wiktionary, winkel meant corner in Middle Dutch and Old Dutch, and comes from the Proto-Germanic word *winkilaz (corner, nook), from the Proto-Indo-European *weng- (to bend, bow, arch, curve) [source].

Winkel is apparently cognate with German Winkel (corner), and the Old English wincel (nook, corner), which is found in the word periwinkle (a type of sea snail). The use of winkel for shop is apparently derived from the meaning “corner in which merchandise is stalled”.

Related words include:

  • ijzerwinkel, ijzerwarenwinkel = hardware store (“iron (wares) shop”)
  • platenwinkel = record shop/store
  • webwinkel = online shop/store
  • winkelen = to shop; to go shopping – also boodschappen; het boodschappen doen
  • winkelcentrum = shopping centre / mall
  • winkelwagen = shopping trolley / cart
  • winkeltas = shopping bag
  • winkelassistent = shop assistant, personal shopper, sales clerk
  • winkelier = shopkeeper, storekeeper, retailer

– winkelhaak = try square; carpenter’s square

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg Brezhoneg
le tableau noir blackboard bwrdd du taolenn zu
le panneau d’affichage noticeboard hysbysfwrdd; arwyddfwrdd; bwrdd arwyddion planell afichañ
le marron (d’inde) conker / horse chestnut concyr; cneuen gobl(i)o; coblyn kistin
le marronier (d’inde) horse chestnut tree castanwydden y meirch; marchgastanwydden gwez kistin
la châtaigne (sweet) chestnut castan; cneuen gastan; pibgneuen kistin
la tombola raffle raffl; lotri c’hoari sac’h
le billet de tombola raffle ticket ticed/tocyn raffl/lotri bilhed c’hoari sac’h
S.O.S. Amitié The Samaritans Y Samariaid
être d’astreinte; être de garde; être en disponibilité; être de permanence to be on-call bod ar alw (?)
démodé old fashioned (things) hen ffasiwn; henaidd maez a c’hiz; giz kozh
vieux jeu old fashioned (people) hen ffasiwn; henaidd mod kozh
le faîte ridge trum; crib; cefn hedell

Quixotic

By Simon

The word quixotic (/kwɪkˈsɒtɪk/) has come up a number of times in books I’ve been reading recently, and though I sort know what it means, I wasn’t sure, so I thought I’d find out.

According to the QED, quixotic means:

– Of an action, attribute, idea, etc.: characteristic of or appropriate to Don Quixote; demonstrating or motivated by exaggerated notions of chivalry and romanticism; naively idealistic; unrealistic, impracticable; (also) unpredictable, capricious, whimsical.

– Of a person: resembling Don Quixote; visionary; enthusiastically chivalrous or romantic; naively idealistic; impractical, capricious.

It comes from Don Quixote (Don Quijote in Spanish), the hero of Cervantes’ story by the same name, which was published in 1605 and 1615. The word quijote comes from name of a piece of armour, the quixote or cuisse, which protects the thighs.

Is this word used in other languages?

If not, are there any words with a similar meaning?