Gender Matters

By Simon

In languages with grammatical gender, such as Spanish and Swedish, gender matters and can sometimes lead to misundertandings if you get it wrong.

Some words may sound the same, but have different genders and different meanings. For example, in Swedish a team is ett lag (neuter) and a law is en lag (common gender).

I haven’t come across any other homographs like this in Swedish, but there probably are others. Do you known any more in Swedish or other languages?

I found some in Spanish, including:

  • el coma = coma; la coma = comma
  • el mañana = future; la mañana = morning
  • el moral = blackberry bush; la moral = morale, morality
  • el papa = pope; la papa = potato
  • el pez = fish; la pez = tar, pitch
  • el tema = subject; la tema = obsession

Other Swedish words I sometimes get muddled include: väg (path, road) and vägg (wall), and svart (black, dark) and svårt (hard).

So it’s not just gender that matters – accents and spelling are also important.

How do you learn the genders of nouns in languages with grammatical gender?

Voynich manuscript deciphered?

By Simon

According to various news stories, such as this one on the BBC news, the Voynich manuscript, a mysterious medieval manuscript, has been deciphered by an academic from Bristol.

The Voynich Manuscript is named after Wilfrid M. Voynich, a Polish antiquarian book dealer who acquired it in 1912. It is a lavishly illustrated manuscript codex of 234 pages, written in an unknown script. It is housed in the Beinecke Library at Yale University in the USA. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon dated to the early 15th century (1404-1438).

Here is an example of the script used:

Writing from the Voynich manuscript

Many attempts have been made to decipher the text but none have succeeded so far. One theory is that is was written sometime during the 13th century by a Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon (1214-1294). Some think the manuscript is gibberish, and was probably a practical joke played on Rudolph II.

According to the latest decipherer, Dr Gerard Cheshire of the University of Bristal, Voynich is a therapeutic reference book written in a lost language called Proto-Romance. He believes that the manuscript was compiled by Dominican nuns as a source of reference for Maria of Castile, Queen of Aragon, the great-aunt to Catherine of Aragon.

Proto-Romance, a previously unknown language, was commonplace in the Mediterranean during the medieval period, but was not used in written documents as Latin was the main written language, according to Dr Cheshire.

Apparently when you try to decipher any parts of the text using Dr Cheshire’s method, it comes out a incomprehensible nonsense, and only parts of it can be understood with reference to many different Romance languages, and a lot of fudging and wishful thinking. So the manuscript remains undiciphered.

Critism of this ‘decipherment’
http://ciphermysteries.com/2017/11/10/gerard-cheshire-vulgar-latin-siren-call-polyglot
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/no-someone-hasnt-cracked-the-code-of-the-mysterious-voynich-manuscript/
https://voynichportal.com/2019/05/07/cheshire-recast/
https://voynichportal.com/2019/05/16/cheshire-reprised/

More information about the Voynich Manuscript
https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/voynich-manuscript
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript
http://ciphermysteries.com/the-voynich-manuscript

Shipping

By Simon

Sailing ship

Recently I’ve noticed the word ship being used quite a lot in the comments on some videos on YouTube.

Here are some examples (from the comments on the video below):

  • “why do people have to ship every single person who collabs with another even when they’re in a relationship”
  • “is it okay to ship them or”
  • “I Dont Care. I Ship It.”

From the context I guessed that it means that the commenter thinks the people in the video are in a relationship, or could be, or would like them to be, and that ship is an abbreviation of relationship.

There are a variety of definitions of ship and to ship in the Urban Dictionary, including:

  • Ship, N. Short for romantic relationship, popularized in fanfiction circles.
  • A ship is when you put 2 people’s names together and want them to be in a relationship. Most commonly used among fandoms.
  • Ship – A couple. Two people one thinks should date, or likes that they do/did. Usually combines the two names to make a ship name, i.e.:John+Karen=Jaren.
  • ship (v.) to support or endorse a romantic paring that is not canon in the work(s) in which they appear. The shipping of couples is often the purpose of many fanfiction stories. Used for characters in anime, manga, video games, tv shows, etc.

A related words include: shippable – when someone can be shipped with many people. Shipping – the phenomenon of using these terms. Shipper – someone involved in shipping. Shipping war – when two ships contradict each other [source].

According to Dictionary.com, (to) ship can mean:

  • Ship = “a romantic relationship between fictional characters, especially one that people discuss, write about, or take an interest in, whether or not the romance actually exists in the original book, show, etc.”
  • To ship =”to discuss, write about, or take an interest in a romantic relationship between (fictional characters): I’m shipping for those guys—they would make a great couple!”

Apparently it was first noticed in 1995.

According to Wikipedia:

  • “Shipping, initially derived from the word relationship, is the desire by fans for two or more people, either real-life people or fictional characters (in film, literature, television etc.) to be in a romantic relationship. It is considered a general term for fans’ emotional involvement with the ongoing development of a relationship in a work of fiction. Shipping often takes the form of creative works, including fanfiction and fan art, most often published on the internet. However, shipping can involve virtually any kind of relationship- from the well-known and established, through the ambiguous or those undergoing development, and even all the way to the highly improbable and the blatantly impossible. It can be used as a friendship term.”

Do you use ship the ways described above at all?

Have you noticed others using it?

Are there equivalent words in other languages?

le mystère Champollion à Plougastel-Daoulas

By Simon

A Czech friend sent me a link to an interesting article (in Czech) about a mysterious inscription found on a rock in the village of Plougastel-Daoulas in Brittany in the northwest of France. Verisons of the article in English and French are also available.

Mystery inscription from Brittany
[source]

The writing is in the Latin alphabet, but the language is unknown – people have suggested that it’s an old form of Breton or Basque.

Parts of the inscription are “ROC AR B … DRE AR GRIO SE EVELOH AR VIRIONES BAOAVEL… R I” and “OBBIIE: BRISBVILAR … FROIK … AL”, and there are two dates 1786 and 1787.

It looks most like a form of Breton to me, although the word VIRIONES looks more Gaulish.

A reward of €2,000 is being offered to anybody who can deciper this. If you take part, you have until November 2019 to submit your decipherment. The most plausible entry will receive the prize. You can contact veronique.martin@mairie-plougastel.fr to register for the competition, find out more and to receive photos of the inscription.

Patois

By Simon

One of the things we talked about last night at the French conversation group was patois, specifically Jamaican (Jimiekn / Patwah).

In French patois means

“Système linguistique essentiellement oral, utilisé sur une aire réduite et dans une communauté déterminée (généralement rurale), et perçu par ses utilisateurs comme inférieur à la langue officielle.” [source]

or

“an essentially oral linguistic system, used in a small area and in a particular community (usually rural), and perceived by its users as inferior to the official language.”

In English patois means “an unwritten regional dialect of a language, esp. of French, usually considered substandard; the jargon of particular group.” [source].

Another definition of patois from Wiktionary is:

1. A regional dialect of a language (especially French); usually considered substandard.
2. Any of various French or Occitan dialects spoken in France.
3. Creole French in the Caribbean (especially in Dominica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago and Haiti).
4. Jamaican Patois, a Jamaican Creole language primarily based on English and African languages but also has influences from Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi.
5. Jargon or cant.

It comes from the Middle French patois (local dialect), from the Old French patois (incomprehensible speech, rude language), from the Old French patoier (to gesticulate, handle clumsily, paw), from pate (paw), from Vulgar Latin *patta (paw, foot), from the Frankish *patta (paw, sole of the foot), from the Proto-Germanic *pat-, *paþa- (to walk, tread, go, step), of uncertain origin [source].

Patois was first used in written French in 1643 to refer to non-standard varities of French, and to regional languages such as Picard, Occitan, Franco-Provençal and Catalan. Such varities and languages were assumed to be backward, countrified, and unlettered. Use of the word was banned by king Louis XIV in 1700.

There is no standard linguistic definition of patois, and to a linguist it can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, or vernaculars [source].

Are there similar words in other languages?

Blesk a hrom

By Simon

Lightning

Two interesting words that came up in my Czech lessons recently are blesk (lightning) and hrom (thunder).

Blesk also means a flash, thunderbolt or flashlight / torch, and sounds like a flash of lightning to me. Hrom could be to a clap of thunder.

I’m not sure which of them usually comes first – is it blesk a hrom or hrom a blesk?

In English it’s always thunder and lightning, even though the lightning comes first. Lightning and thunder just sounds wrong.

In Welsh it’s mellt a tharanau (lightning and thunder).

Is thunder and lightning or lightning and thunder in other languages?