Le mal de pays

By Simon

One of the things that came up at the French conversation group last night was homesickness.

In French there are a number of ways to express this concept:
– nostalgique = homesick (adj)
– avoir le mal de pays = to be homesick (for a place/country)
– s’ennuyer de (sa famille) = to be homesick (for one’s family)
– avoir la nostalgie (de qch) = to be homesick (for something)

Example
L’odeur de l’herbe lui donna la nostalgie de la ferme de ses parents.
The smell of the grass made her homesick for her parents’ farm.

The Welsh word for homesickness is hiraeth /hɪəraɪ̯θ/, which is apparently one of those words that is untranslatable. It means homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed. It is a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, and the earnest desire for the Wales of the past. It has similarities to saudade in Portuguese and morriña in Galician [source].

Do other languages have words with a similar meaning?

Ventriloquism

By Simon

There was quite a bit of talk about ventriloquism on an episode of QI I watched recently, mainly because one of the guests was a ventriloquist. The word ventriloquism comes for the Latin words venter (stomach, belly, womb) and loquī (to speak) so it means “to speak from the stomach”. It was known as εγγαστριμυθία (gastromancy) in Greek, which means the same thing.

In other languages the word for ventriloquist is either from the Latin, e.g. ventriloquia (Spanish), ventriloque (French), ventriloquo (Italian), or a calque of the word: Bauchredner (German – ‘belly speaker’), Brzuchomówstwo (Polish – ‘belly speaker), 腹語術 (Chinese – ‘belly language art/skill’). In Welsh though, the word is tafleisydd, from tafle (to throw), llais (voice) and -ydd (suffix for a person or tool), so it means ‘voice thrower’.

Ventriloquism apparently started a religious practice. Ventriloquists were thought to be able to speak to the dead and predict the future, and the voices that seemed to come from the stomachs were thought to be those of the dead. By the 19th century ventriloquism became a form of entertainment and people started using dummies, at least in the West. In other parts of the world, such as among the Zulu, Inuit and Maori, ventriloquism is used for religious and ritual purposes.

Ventriloquism involves talking without moving your lips to make it appear that the words are coming from elsewhere. It is also known as throwing your voice, though no throwing is involved. To make bilabial sounds such as /m/ and /b/ without lip movement the trick is apparently to substitute similar sounds – /n/ and /g/. If you say them fast your listeners’ brains will hopefully hear the letters you want them to – we tend to hear what we expect to hear anyway. Then again, you could just use other words without the troublesome letters. More details.

Have you tried ventriloquism?

I can sort of do it, though would need more practice to do it convincingly.

What I wonder is whether it is easier to ventriloquise in some languages or accents than in others, and whether there are many bilingual/polyglot ventriloquists who speak one language themselves and have their dummy or dummies speaking others. That might be a fun way to practise languages and interpretation skills.

Kidnap

By Simon

One of the words we discussed at the French conversation group last night was kidnap, which is enlever or kidnapper (verb) and enlèvement (noun) in French. We wondered where the English word comes from, so I thought I’d investigate.

According to the OED, kidnap originally meant “to steal or carry off (children or others) in order to provide servants or labourers for the American plantations” and came to mean “to steal (a child), to carry off (a person) by illegal force”. It is formed of kid (child) and nap (to snatch, seize).

The word kid comes from the Middle English kide/kede/kid (young goat), is thought to come from the Old Norse kið /cʰɪːð/ (young goat), from the Proto-Germanic *kiðjom. It started to be used as a slang expression for child in about the 1590s, and was considered low slang at first, but by the 19th century it was accepted in informal usage.

The word nap (to seize, catch; to arrest; to steal) is of uncertain origin. It is possibly related to the Norwegian word nappe (to tug, snatch, arrest) and the Swedish nappa (to snap, snatch). Then again, it might be related to nab (to seize, to catch and take into custody, to apprehend, arrest, to imprison).

The Welsh for kidnap is herwgipio /hɛrʊˈgɪpɪɔ/, from herw (raid, wandering) and cipio (to capture, snatch, grab). Herw also appears in herwhela (to poach) – hela = to hunt; herwlong (pirate ship); and herwr (prowler, robber, outlaw).

Gloomth

By Simon

According to Bill Bryson in At Home, A Short History of Private Life, Gloomth describes the ambience of neo-Gothic or Gothick architecture.

It was coined by Horace Walpole (1717-1797), an art historian, playwright, antiquarian and politician who revived the Gothic style and applied it to his house, Strawberry Hill, which he built in south-west London. He also wrote a Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, and is credited with coining or introducing over 233 words into English, including airsickness, fairy tale, falsetto, frisson, impressario, malaria, mudbath, serendipity and souvenir.

Here are some examples of how Walpole used gloomth (from the OED):

– One has a satisfaction in imprinting the gloomth of abbeys and cathedrals on one’s house.
– [Strawberry] is now in the height of its greenth, blueth, gloomth, honeysuckle, and seringahood*.
– Strawberry, with all its painted glass and gloomth.

*seringahood = the condition of abounding in seringa bloom. Seringa is any of the shrubs of the genus Philadelphus common in gardens; the mock-orange and the word comes via French from the Latin syringa, from the Greek συριγγ- from σῦριγξ (syrinx – pipe, tube, channel, fistula)

Gloom comes from the Middle English gloum(b)e, from the Old English *glúmian.

Gothic comes from the Goth, from the Old English Gota, from the late Latin Gothī/Gotthī, from the Greek Γόθοι, from the Gothic *Gutôs/*Gutans. The Gothic people, a Germanic tribe that invaded parts in of Eastern and Western Europe between the 3rd and 5th centuries AD, called themselves Gutþiuda (Gothic people).

Mackerel currants

By Simon

Groseille à maquereau is the French word for gooseberry, a word that came up last night at the French conversation group, and which none of us knew the French equivalent for.

Groseille means currant, light red or cherry red, and maquereau means mackerel. So groseille à maquereau could be translated as “mackerel currant”. Another French word for gooseberry is groseille verte or green currant.

Groseille also means redcurrant (ribes rubrum). So what’s the link between redcurrants and gooseberries? Well, the redcurrant is acutally part of the gooseberry family grossulariaceae.

A related fruit is the blackcurrant (ribes nigrum) or cassis / groseillier noir, which is part of the gooseberry family as well.

[Addendum] Appartently one possible reason why gooseberries are associated with mackerel in French is because mackerel and gooseberry sauce go well together. Here’s a receipe for mackerel with gooseberry sauce.

神马都是浮云

By Simon

神马都是浮云 (shénmǎ dōu shì fúyún）is a Chinese phrase I learnt yesterday which means something like “everything is fleeting / transient” or “nothing is permanent”. The 神马 part is internet slang for 什么 (shénme) = what, and 浮云 [浮雲] (fúyún) means floating clouds, fleeting, transient. This is apparently a popular phrase in China at the moment, particularly online.

Another phrase that’s popular online at the moment is 有木有 (you mùyou) instead of 有没有 (yǒu méiyǒu) = “have not have” – this is a typical form of question in Mandarin Chinese. For example, 你有没有时间？ (nǐ yǒu méiyǒu shíjiān?) = Do you have time? If you translate such questions literally into English they can sound rude – “You have not have time?” or “You have time or not?”, but this is fine in Chinese.

Sources:
http://www.mdbg.net
http://baike.baidu.com/view/4531752.htm
http://baike.baidu.com/view/5347838.htm