Swot!

By Simon

In British English the word swot (/swɒt/) means to study or work hard – you might swot for your exams if you’re a swot (someone who works/studies hard). You might also swot up on something. Calling someone a swot, or a little swot, can be a kind of insult, perhaps with undertones of envy or even guilt – you might think that you should really be swotting as well.

According to the OED swot, or swat, is a dialect variant of sweat and originated at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Surrey, where William Wallace, a Scottish professor of mathematics, apparently once said, ‘It mades one swot’ (= sweat), and it first appeared in print in 1850.

Other words with the same or similar meanings include to mug up on, to bone up on, and to cram for. Cramming isn’t quite the same as swotting though, as it usually involves trying to fit as much knowledge into your head as you can in a relatively short in preparation for an exam or test. Swotting can mean this, and can also mean doing all the work / study you’re given, and perhaps more than that – i.e. making more effort than strictly necessary – something that some people prefer not to be accused of.

Are there words in American English or other varieties of English with similar connotations to swot?

In French the word for a swot is bachoteur(-euse), and to swot (for an exam) is potasser (un examen) – do these have any of the connotations of swot?

Handwriting and typing Cyrillic

By Simon

I finally finished learning the handwritten cursive version of the Cyrillic alphabet for Russian today – I’ve been learning it a few letters at a time, so it has taken a while. Now I can write down the Russian words and phrases I’m learning more easily – writing the printed versions of the letters seems decidedly awkward to me. I might even investigate Russian calligraphy.

Now I just need to map my fingers to the Russian keyboard layout so that I can type Russian as well, instead of picking the letters one at a time from BabelMap, as I’ve been doing. I just found an online typing tutor that helps you learn various keyboard layouts for English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Russian. There’s a similar site with even more keyboard layouts here.

After many years of trial and error, I can touch type English fairly well, and type the other Western European languages I know as well. I can also type Chinese using pinyin, and Japanese using romaji. When typing Czech though (not something I do very often), I get accented letters like ě, č, ů and ž from BabelMap.

When learning a new language, especially a new alphabet, do you usually learn how to type it?

Книга

By Simon

Книга /’kniga/ is a Russian word for book, and also appears in other Slavic languages: кніга in Belarusian, книга in Bulgarian, Macedonian and Ukrainian, knjiga in Croatian and Slovenian, kniha in Czech, knéga in Kashubian, kъńiga (book, character, writing) in Old Church Slavonic, książka in Polish, and књига in Serbian.

It apparently comes from the Proto-Slavic *kъniga, from Old Turkic *küinig, from the Bulgaric Turkic *küiniv, from the Uyghur kuin, kuinbitig (book-spool/scroll), possibly from the Chinese 經 (jīng in Mandarin, *kˤeŋ in Old Chinese = classics, sacred book, scripture). It is possibly also related to:

Armenian: kniќ (slab, letter)
Assyrian: kuniku (slab, document)
Hungarian: könyv (book)
Korean: 권 (kwen – book)
Mordvin: końov (paper)
Sumerian: kunukku (seal, stamp)

If all these words are indeed related, it’s possible that they come from a common source – maybe Chinese, as paper was invented in China in about the 1st century AD, and books sometime after that. Are there any similar words in other languages?

La douce lueur du crépuscule

By Simon

Yesterday I discovered that there are many ways to express the concept of soft in French, depending on the context.

Doux (douce) (/du/, /duːs/), from the Latin dulcis (soft, smooth, pleasant), is used for:
– soft (not rough) skin, hands, hair, fur, silk, towels, fabric or texture
– soft (gentle) lights, colours, curves, lines, breezes and rain;
– soft (not loud) voices, music and voices
– soft (not hard) water
– soft (easy) life

For example
– la douce lueur du crépuscule (the soft glow of the evening light)
– Sa voix se fit plus douce (Her voice grew softer)

mou (molle) (/mu/, /mɔl/), from the Latin mollis (soft), is used for:
– soft (not hard) ground, snow, butter, bread

tendre (/tɑ̃dʁ/), is used for
– soft (not hard) wood
– soft (kind) heart

douillet(te) (/dujɛ/) and moelleux(-euse) (/mwɛ.lø/) are used for:
soft (not hard) beds, cushions and pillows

Douillet is also used to mean soft, as in not physically tough.

indulgent(e) (/ɛ̃dylʒɑ̃/) is used to mean lenient / soft.

If you have a soft spot for someone you could say, ‘j’ai un faible pour qn’.

To say someone is soft in the sense that they’re emotionally sensitive, the word is sensible (/sɑ̃sibl(ə)/). For example, Ne sois pas si douillet!, Ne sois pas si sensible! = Don’t be so soft!

Possession

By Simon

In the Celtic languages when you want to say that you have/own/possess something, you say that the thing is at/by/with you, often with the prepositions merging with the pronouns.

For example, this is how to say ‘I have a book’ in those languages:

– Irish: Tá leabhar agam [lit. “is book at-me]
– Scottish Gaelic: Tha leabhar agam [lit. “is book at-me]
– Manx: Ta lioar aym [lit. “is book at-me]
– Breton: Ur Ul levr a zo ganin [lit. “a book is with-me”]
– Cornish: Yma lyver dhymm [lit. “here is book to-me”]
– Welsh (North): Mae gen i lyfr (North Wales) [lit. “is with me book”]
– Welsh (South): Mae llyfr (gy)da fi [lit. “is book with me”]
– Welsh (literary): Mae gynnaf llyfr [lit. “is with-me book”]

This kind of structure occurs in a number of other languages that don’t have the equivalent of the verb ‘to have’. Russian, for example, uses a similar construction to show possession:

– У меня есть книга (U menja est’ kniga) = I have a book [lit. “by/at me there is book”].

Do you know of any other languages that use this type of stucture?

Os

By Simon

Yesterday I discovered that the French word for bone, os, is pronounced /ɔs/ in the singular, as I suspected, but /o/ in the plural [source]. Os is also used in English as a zoological and medical term for bone and is pronounced /ɒs/ (UK) or /ɑs/ (US). Final consonants of French words aren’t usually pronounced, unless followed by a word beginning with a vowel, so you just have to memorise ones like os.

Os appears in such words and expressions as:
– ossature /ɔsatyʀ/ = frame(work), skeletal/bone structure
– osselet /ɔslɛ/ = knucklebone, ossicle (small bone in the middle ear), osselet (small animal bone)
– osseux /ɔsø/ = bone, osseus, bony
– ossification = ossification
– ossifier /ɔsifje/ = to ossify (to harden, make into bone)
– ossuaire /ɔsɥɛʀ/ = ossuary (receptacle or place for the bones of the dead)

– c’est un paquet / sac d’os = he’s a bag of bones, he’s skin and bone
– mouillée / trempé jusqu’aux os = to be soaked to the skin, wet through
– donner un os à ronger à qn = to give sb something to keep them out of mischief (or) keep them quiet
– l’avoir dans l’os = to be done, to get egg all over one’s face (slang)
– il y a un os = there’s a snag / hitch
– tomber sur un os = to come across a snag

Os comes from the Latin os (bone), from the ancient Greek ὀστέον (bone), which is also the root of the prefix osteo-, and is not to be confused with ōs /ɔːs/, (mouth, face, entrance).

In Welsh os means ‘if’.

Doxastic

By Simon

I came across the word doxastic (/dɒkˈsæstɪk/) today in Being Wrong – Adventures in the Margin of Error by Katryn Schulz. It means “pertaining to beliefs” and appears in the expression used in philosophy, ‘First Person Constraint on Doxastic Explanation’, or as Schulz terms it ”Cuz It’s True Constraint’. It means that we have only a limited number of ways to explain why we believe what we do.

We often believe things to be self-evidently true without necessarily being explain why or to provide reasons. For example, you might be convinced that your method or system for learning languages works and anybody who doesn’t agree just needs to be convinced of this. You might have invested a lot of time and money to develop and promote your system, so it’s in your interest to believe that the system works. You might not be consciously aware of this, but such things are often obvious in methods and systems developed by others.

Doxastic comes from the Greek δοξαστικ-ός (forming opinion, conjectural), from δοξαστής (conjecturer), from δοξάζ-ειν (to conjecture) [source].

The dox part, from the Greek δόξα (opinion, glory), also appears in such words as paradox – para comes from the Greek παρά (by the side of, beside, past, beyond), so it means ‘beyond belief’, and orthodox – ortho comes from the Greek ὀρθο- (straight, right), so it means ‘right belief’.

Dox is also internet slang for personal details (name, address, etc) that are visible online.