An seachtain seo caite cheannaigh mé bodhrán. Bhí mé ag smaoineamh ar cheann a cheannaigh ar feadh tamallín, agus anois tá ceann agam. Níl mé abalta é a sheinm go fóill, ach tá mé ag foghlaim leis ceachtanna ar líne.
Last week I bought a bodhrán. I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while, and now I have one. I can’t play it yet, but am learning with online tutorials.
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
The other day I came across the expression to ginger up in an English-French dictionary (it’s secouer or animer in French). Examples given include:
– the ideal man to ginger up the chat show formula
– Attempts to ginger up the tennis club’s social nights proved unsuccessful.
The French word secouer is used in the context of ‘gingering up’ a person or organisation, while animer, which is related to animate, is used when gingering up involves making things more exciting. I can see how the application of real or metaphorical ginger might spice things up, but have never heard or seen the phrase ‘ginger up’ used in this context. Have you?
According to the Phrase Finder, to ginger up means to excite or enthuse, and an alternative version of the expression is ‘to get someone’s ginger up’. The former version was recorded by Francis Grose, in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785): “To feague a horse, to put ginger up a horse’s fundament, to make him lively and carry his tail well.” It then appears again in 1895 in reference to baseball.
The latter version appears frist appears in print in 1843 in The Attaché by Thomas Haliburton, or Sam Slick in England: “Curb him [a horse], talk Yankee to him, and get his ginger up.”
The other day I heard a discussion on the radio (BBC Radio 4) in which the words de-risk and de-scale, cropped up. They caught my attention because I hadn’t come across them before.
The context was the UK Sports Minister talking about the London Olympics, and he said, “As the project moves on it de-risks and de-scales.” I took this to mean that the size and risks involved in the project are reduced as it proceeds. I’m not sure if the Minister made them up on the spot, or if he’d heard them or read them somewhere.
De-risk gets 310 results in Google, and derisk gets only 29. De-scale and descale get 5 and 6 results respectively. So it seems these words aren’t all that common. Have you heard them before?
I heard the word stookie on the radio the other day as was mystyfied as the it’s meaning – the context didn’t help. Forunately the person who mentioned it explained that it’s a Scottish word for plaster cast – the kind of thing you might have on a limb if you facture a bone. It’s also mention in this story on the BBC News site.
The Urban Dictionary provides this example of usage, Gonnae let me right a menshie oan yer stookie? (Are you going to let me write graffiti on your plaster cast?).
Wikitionary defines stookie as: plaster of Paris; plaster cast; (dialect) idiot; (dialect) shy person, and it apparently comes from stucco plus the diminutive suffix -ie.
Stucco comes from Italian, and means “stucco or plaster”, which comes from the Lombardic *stucki (crust, fragment, piece), from the Proto-Germanic *stukjan, *stukjaz, *stukō, *stūkō (stick, beam, stump), from the Proto-Indo-European *stAug- (stalk).
To me a stookie sounds like a more friendly thing to have on your arm or leg than a plaster cast, which is also known as a orthopedic or surgical cast. What do you think?
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it is spoken?
I discovered yesterday that French equivalents of ‘to go shopping’ or ‘to do the shopping’ are faire des courses or faire les commissions, which also mean ‘to run errands’. These expressions were new to me because when in French I’ve either stayed with families or in hotels and have never had to do or talk about such activities.
According to Reverso (to go) shopping (for food/groceries) is (faire) les courses, but shopping as a leisure activity is le shopping. In English you might say, ‘I am doing the shopping’ = I am shopping for food/groceries, but ‘I love shopping’ might refer to the leisure aspect of the activity. Do you make this distinction?
Related expressions include:
– partir faire les magasins = to go on a shopping expedition/trip
– les courses alimentaires = food shopping
– liste des courses = shopping list
– achat en ligne = online shopping
– centre commercial = shopping arcade / precinct / centre / mall
– sac/panier à provisions = shopping bag/basket
– caddie (m) = shopping trolley / cart
– faire du lèche-vitrines = to go window shopping
– faire ses cadeaux de Noël = to do one’s Christmas shopping
One way to practise languages you’re learning is to use them to write shopping lists. I usually write mine in Welsh.
In French if you want to talk about movement in general you use bouger, but for moving house you use déménager. The other day a friend pointed out that the root of déménager is ménage (housework, housekeeping, household, married couple), as in ménage à trois, from the Old French manage, from manoir (manor, country house), from the Latin manere (manner, fashion, way).
Déménager can also mean to leave, get lost, clear out, to be crazy, and related words include:
– emménager = to move in (to a house)
– un deménageur = furniture mover
– un deménagement = removal, moving
– déménager à la cloche de bois = to sneak off in the middle of the night
– Ça déménage ! = It’s great/brilliant!
As well as déménager, there are a few other French words for movement:
– bouger, remuer = to move (general)
– évoluer = to move (events, politics)
– circuler = to move, circulate (traffic); move along (get out of the way)
– avancer = to move (vehicle), advance, move along/forward
– voyager = to move about (from place to place), travel
– se déplacer = to move about (in a room or house)
– s’éloigner, s’en aller = to move off
– se pousser = to move over
Sources: Reverso, french.about.com, Wiktionary
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
