Today one of my Chinese contacts asked me the meaning of 月食 (yuèshí). It’s not a word I’ve come across before and I wasn’t able to guess its meaning from the meanings of the individual characters, so I had to look it up. It means ‘lunar eclipse’ and the individual characters mean ‘moon’ and ‘to eat’. I suppose it does look like part of the moon has been eaten during an eclipse. A solar eclipse is 日食 (rìshí).
Gŵyl y banc
Oedd hi’n braf ddoe – heulog a phoeth gyda gynt ysgafn – er oedd hi’n gŵyl y banc. Oedd hi’n braf dros y sul hefyd – newid neis ar ôl y tywydd diflas y gawson ni’n ddiweddar. Nes i cryn dipyn o bethau ar Omniglot yn y boreau, ac yn prynhawniau bues i ar y promenâd yn sglefrolio neu yn siwglo.
Cwrddais i âr un o’r nghyfeillion – hogyn sy’n chwarae y ffliwt – a phenderfynon ni’n cael sesiwn fach yn ei fflat bob Nos Iau. Gobeithio bydd ei gyfeillion sy’n chwarae y ffidl a’r gitar yno hefyd. Byddan ni’n ceisio dysgu o leiaf un dôn newydd bob wythnos.
Ddoe dw i’n wedi penderfynu gwneud cwrs mewn canu caneuon o Iwerddon yn y Canolfan Iwerddon yn Hammersmith, Llundain. Bydd y cwrs yn dechrau yng nghalon mis Medi, bydd e’n para am ddeng wythnos, a bydd e’n digwydd bob Nos Fawrth. Dw i’n edrych ymlaen yn eiddgar ato fe.
Lá saoire banc
Bhí lá breá ann inné – grianmhar agus te le gaoth éadroma – cé go raibh lá saoire banc ann. Bhí an aimsir go breá ag an deireadh seachtaine chomh maith – athrú deas i ndiaidh an aimsir uafásach a bhí ann le déanaí. Rinne mé cuid mhaith rudaí ar Omniglot ar maidin, agus tráthnóna bhí mé ag scátáil agus ag déanamh lámhchleasaíocht ar an promanád.
Bhuail mé le cara – buachaill a bhíonn ag seinm an fheadóg mhór – agus bheartaigh muid seisiún ceoil beag a dhéanamh gach oíche Déardaoin in ar árasán. Tá súil aige go mbeidh ar chara eile ann – fidléir amháin agus giotáraí. Bhain muid triail as port nua amháin ar a laghad a fhoghlaim gach seachtaine.
Inné bheartaigh mé cúrsa amhránaíocht sa Lárionad Gaelach i Hammersmith, Londain a dhéanamh. Beidh an cúrsa ag tosú i mí Mheán Fómhaira agus beidh sé ann gach oíche Mháirt ar feadh deich seachtaine. Tá mé ag súil go mór leis.
Bank holiday
It was a nice day yesterday – sunny and warm with a light breeze – even though it was a bank holiday. The weather was good over the weekend as well – a nice change after the horrible weather we’ve been having recently. I did quite a few things on Omniglot in the mornings, and spent the afternoons skating or juggling down on the seafront.
Yesterday I met up with a friend who plays the flute and we arranged to meet up at his place on Thursday evenings for a music session. He hopes to persuade some other friends to come as well – a fiddler and a guitarist – and we’ll try to learn at least one new tune a week.
I’ve also decided to sign up for a course in Irish singing at the Hammersmith Irish Centre in London. The course starts in September, takes place on Tuesday evenings and will last for ten weeks. I’m really looking forward to it.
Winged words and chocolate interrobangs
I came across a couple of interesting-looking linguablogs today: Epea pteroenta, which discusses language, linguistics, literature, and film; and The Chocolate Interrobang, where the numerous contributors “savor discussions about language & grammar & syntax, and sometimes reminisce about diagramming sentences…”.
The phrase Epea Pteroenta (Επεα Πτεροεντα) comes from Homer’s Odyssey and means “winged words”. When I first saw it, I realised is was Greek and thought it had something to do with birds – ptero as in pterodactyl – until discovering it’s real meaning. My Greek obviously needs more work.
The titles of both these blogs appeal to me, especially the latter. I think titles are important and often spend a while trying to come up with good titles for blog posts and web pages, and even good subjects for emails. I like punning titles and those containing combinations of words not normally seen together, like chocolate and interrobang.
Books with unusual or amusing titles also tend to catch my attention, and my choice of reading material is sometimes based mainly on a quirky title. Here are a few examples: The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, the first of Louis De Bernieres’ triology or novels set in an unnamed country in South America; The Bank Manager and the Holy Grail, a travel book in which Byron Rogers explores the “wilder reaches of Wales”, and The Sprouts of Wrath, the forth book in Robert Rankins’ Brentford trilogy.
Before the 20th century, many books had very long titles which tried to explain the contents of the book in detail. Here, for example, is the title of Dr Johnson’s famous dictionary:
A
DICTIONARY
of the
English Language:
in which
The WORDS are deduced from their ORIGINALS,
and
ILLUSTRATED in their DIFFERENT SIGNIFICATIONS
by
EXAMPLES from the best WRITERS.
To which are prefixed
and AN ENGLISH GRAMMAR.
By SAMUEL JOHNSON, A.M.
In TWO Volumes
Language quiz
Here is a recording of me saying the names of five places in England. Each is spelt in a way that doesn’t match the pronunciation. Can you work out which places they are?
Where in the world?
Crocodiling
To crocodile, or krokodili, means to speak one’s native language at a gathering of Esperantists, a practice generally frowned on by Esperantists, according to an article I found today.
The article gives an interesting account of the history of Esperanto and the life of it’s inventor, Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof. For a while Zamenhof apparently considered trying to make Hebrew and/or Yiddish into international languages, but later changed his mind as he considered a revival of Hebrew futile. He also urged Yiddish speakers to adopt the Cyrillic alphabet.
The article also mentions two other interesting Esperanto words: aligatori (to alligator), which means to speak one’s native language with someone speaking it as a second language, and kajmani (to cayman), which means to converse in a language that’s native to neither speaker.
Word of the day – oology
Today’s word, oology, refers to the study of eggs, especially bird’s eggs. It also covers the collecting of bird’s eggs and the study of their breeding habits, and their nests, a practice sometimes known as caliology.
Oology is sometimes written oölogy, comes from the Greek ōion, egg, plus ology, a back formation from words like biology.
I came across this word in Jasper Fforde’s wonderfully silly book The Big Over Easy, which centres around the mysterious death of Humpty Dumpty – did he fall or was he pushed?. Oologists are consulted during the investigation.
Spandrels and squinches
While reading an interesting post on Babel’s Dawn today, I came across the word spandrel. I have heard it before but wasn’t entirely sure what it meant.
According to Wikipedia, a spandrel is “the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure”. The word spandrel is also used in the theory of evolution to describe a non-adaptive trait formed as a side effect to an adaptive one, which the context in which it was used on Babel’s Dawn.
The information about spandrels also mentions a related architectural term: squinch, which is a “piece of construction used for filling in the upper angles of a square room so as to form a proper base to receive an octagonal or spherical dome”.
Another definition tells us that a squinch is an arch, or a system of concentrically wider and gradually projecting arches, placed at the corners of a square base to act as the transition to a circular dome placed on the base.
The etymology of spandrel is somewhat uncertain, but it’s thought to come from the Latin word expandre, to expand, via the French espandre, to expand, extend.
Squinch is an alternative form of scuncheon, from the Middle English sconchon, from the Old French escoinson, from the Latin ex, out, plus cuneus, wedge.
Here’s an illustration to help you tell the difference between spandrels and squinches.
Gwerthusiad
Cefais i werthusiad ffurfiol yn y swyddfa heddiw, am y tro cynta erioed. Cyn hynny, na pheidiodd fy rheolwr gyda stwff fel ‘ny, ond mae rheolwr newydd bellach, ac mae e eisiau derbyn steil rheolaeth mwy ymarferol, fel gwneud gwerthusiadau yn eitha aml. Mae’r cwmni’n mynd yn fwy gorfforedig, dw i’n meddwl, a dyna un o’r rhesymau mod i’n meddwl am wneud rhywbeth gwahanol.
Meastóireacht
Fuair mé meastóireacht foirmiúil san oifig inniu, don chéad uair riamh. Roimhe sin, ná bac leis mo bhainisteoir stuif mar sin, ach tá bainisteoir nua aníos, agus is fearr leis stíl bainistíocht níos chuige teagmhálach, mar meastóireacht a dhéanamh go minic. Tá an comhlacht ag éiri níos corparáideach, is dóigh liom, agus sin é réasún amháin atá má ag smaoinigh rud éigin eile a dhéanamh.
Books books books
Whenever I pass a bookshop or library, I feel a strong urge to go in a have a browse. I often end up in the language section and find myself thinking that such and such a language course would really help me with my Spanish/Russian/Japanese/etc, or that I can’t live without a particular dictionary, grammar book or phrasebook. I usually manage to resist actually buying anything, at least I have done for the past few years.
I used to be almost incapable of going into a bookshop without buying something. These days I tend to borrow books from the library instead. It saves a lot of money, and I never know quite what I’ll find there, which is kind of exciting in some ways.
Sometimes I buy a language course, dictionary or other language learning book on an impulse, thinking that it might come in handy one day. I get round to reading most of them eventually, though some have been perched on my shelves for years without me taking more than a cursory glance through them, if that.
I often spend too much time looking for the perfect language course/book/website rather than actually studying.