Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg Brezhoneg
la brute; le tyran bully bwli tirant
tyraniser; rudoyer; intimider to bully gormesu; bwlio gaiet gante; abafiñ
la laisse lead tennyn roll
le pont deck (of ship) bwrdd pont
la passerelle (de commandement) bridge (of ship) pont (lywio) pontenn
l’arête (f) / le dos bridge (of nose) cefn ker
le chevalet bridge (of violin) pont pontig
quand le chat n’est pas là, les souris dansent when the cat’s away the mice will play llon llygod lle ni bo cath

Bimbling

By Simon

I came across the wonderful word bimble (/bɪmbəl/) yesterday for the first time and guessed it meant something like “to do something in a relaxed fashion”. The OED defines it as “To move at a leisurely pace, esp. on foot; to amble, wander.” and cites a book by R. McGowan & J. Hands called Don’t Cry for Me, Sergeant Major from 1983 as its earliest appearance in writing. Elsewhere in the OED suggests that though the word is thought to have been coined by British soliders in the Falklands, it might have come from the northeast of England.

Wiktionary defines it as “A gentle, meandering walk with no particular haste or purpose.” (noun), and “To walk with no particular haste or purpose.” (verb). It might be a variant on bumble.

Have you heard it before?

I like words like this that end in mble, such as bumble, amble, fumble, scramble, bramble and thimble. To me the combination of sounds in them is pleasing to the ear.

Reverse engineering languages

By Simon

Recently I read an interesting book by Barbara Sher called Refuse to Choose!, which suggests ways in which people with many interests, who the author calls scanners, can find time to persue all those interests. I thought some of the suggestions might be relevant to people interested like learning many languages, like me.

One idea is thinking about what you want to achieve, then working backwards thinking about all the steps you need to take to achieve your goal. If you did this for language, you might start picturing the level of competence you want to reach in a language, then work out all the steps needed to reach that level, working backwards.

Have you tried anything like this?

We No Spik No Whalsa’

By Simon

This is a song from one of the concerts I went to last week at the Shetland Folk Festival. It’s a version of Yolanda Be Cool’s ‘We No Speak Americano‘ by Steven Robertson in Shetland dialect which makes fun of the Whalsay dialect, which people from other parts of Shetland find very funny and/or incomprehensible. I couldn’t understand the bits in Whalsay dialect, but could follow most of the other bits.

He also did versions of songs by Tracy Chapman, Lady Gaga and various others in Shetland dialect, which were hilarious.

There are recordings of people from Whalsay, and other parts of Shetland and Orkney on the Edinburgh University site, and some more on the BBC Voices site.

Tuning in

By Simon

I went to a concert featuring poems and songs in Shetland dialect last night – some new, some old, some serious, and some frivolous and very funny. I was able to follow most of the words, but there were some that I didn’t understand, including some of the funny bits, so sometimes when everyone else was laughing, I was wondering what the jokes were.

Some of the performers were more difficult to understand than others, as there is quite a bit of dialect and accent variation between different parts of Shetland that I’m not used to yet. The Whalsay dialect is reputedly the most difficult to understand, and the one people from other parts of Shetland make fun of.

My ears and brain are gradually tuning in to the Shetland dialects and accents, a bit like a radio tuning in to different stations. My understanding of them is on a similar level to my understanding of Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic at the moment – I can get most of them when I really concentrate, and some words which I don’t understand the first time make sense when I hear them again in a slightly different context. Sometimes I find it helps to de-focus slightly and to let the words flow in without worrying that I don’t understand all of them.

Slockit

By Simon

I’m currently in Lerwick for the Shetland Folk Festival，and at a concert last night I heard some interesting Shetland dialect being spoken and sung.

One word I particularly liked was slockit, which means ‘gone out, extinguished’. It appears in the title of a tune by Tom Anderson, Da Slockit Light, which he was inspired to write after seeing how many of the houses in his home village at Eshaness were dark. He thought about the people who use to live there and how they have moved away or passed. For me it’s fascinating to hear the stories behind tunes and songs like this.

I also discovered today that there is an online dictionary of Shetland dialect with recordings on shetlanddialect.org.uk. Some other interesting Shetland words I came across there include:

– slurd = small, driving rain
– skutamillaskroo = the game of hide-and-seek played among the cornstacks in the yard
– skurtfoo = an armful. e.g. He cam in wi a skurtfoo o paets for da fire.

Korriganed

By Simon

Korriganed are apparently small creatures that live under standing stones (dolmen/menhirs) in Brittany. They feature in one of the lessons in my Breton course and are explained thus:

“Les korrigans doivent être des êtres particulièrement petits, puisque ce mot est formé de korr, “nain”, puis du diminutif -ig puis du’un autre diminutif – obsolète aujourd’hui – -an. Il s’agit donc de “petits petits nains.”

Or

“The korrigans must be particularly small beings, since the word is formed from corr, “dwarf”, and the diminutive -ig and the another diminutive – now obsolete – -an. So they are “little little dwarfs.”

When I read the explanation in French I saw the word nain and thought it was the Welsh word for grandmother, not realising that is means dwarf or midget in French. So for a while I believed that the Korriganed were tiny grandmothers. Later I realised my mistake and discovered the actual meaning of that word.

According to legend, the Korriganed erected the standing stones in Brittany.

Do you mistake words in one language for words in another at all?