Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
Romance and Horses
What does romance have to do with horses?
Well, the word romance has a number of meanings:
– A story relating to chivalry; a story involving knights, heroes, adventures, quests, etc.
– An intimate relationship between two people; a love affair.
– A strong obsession or attachment for something or someone.
– Idealized love which is pure or beautiful.
– A mysterious, exciting, or fascinating quality.
– A story or novel dealing with idealized love.
– An embellished account of something; an idealized lie.
– An adventure, or series of extraordinary events, resembling those narrated in romances.
– A dreamy, imaginative habit of mind; a disposition to ignore what is real.
– (music) A romanza, or sentimental ballad.
The first meaning provides the connection to chivalry, a word which comes from Middle English chivalrie (quality of being knight), from the Old French chevalerie (knighthood, chivalry, nobility, cavalry), from chevaler (knight, horseman), from the Medieval Latin caballarius (horseman, knight), from the Vulgar Latin caballus (horse), which meant ‘work horse, pack horse or nag’ in Classical Latin, possibly from the Gaulish caballos (horse), or from an Old East Iranian dialect.
The word romance comes from the Middle English romauns, roumance, from Anglo-Norman and Old French romanz, romans (the vernacular language of France, as opposed to Latin), from the Medieval Latin rōmānicē, from the Vulgar Latin rōmānicē (in the Roman language), from the Latin rōmānicus (roman) from rōmānus (a Roman).
Sources: Wiktionary, Online Etymology Dictionary, Degruyter.com
Gorillas, monkeys and ponys
With a title like that, you might be expecting a post about animals, but in fact it’s about slang terms for money – a gorilla is £1,000, a monkey is £500 and a pony is £25.
These names apparently come from old Indian banknotes and coins: the 25 Rupee coin had a pony on it, and the 500 Rupee note had a monkey on it, and British soldiers returning from India brought back such notes and slang terms with the to the UK. A gorilla possibly got its name because it’s two monkeys.
General slang terms for money in the UK include:
– cash – from Middle French caisse (money box), from Old Provençal caissa, from Old Italian cassa, from Latin capsa (box, case), from capio (I take, seize, receive), from Proto-Indo-European *keh₂p- (to grasp)
– bread – from the rhyming slang bread & honey (money)
– dough – an extension from bread
– dosh – possibly a combination of dough and cash
– readies – from ‘ready money’
– spondulicks – unknown origin
– (filthy) lucre – from Latin lucrum (profit)
– moola(h) – possibly from the Romani mol (have value, be worth), or the French moulin (mill)
– wonga – from Romani wangar (coal), from Sanskrit अङ्गार (áṅgāra, charcoal, coal), from Proto-Indo-Iranian *Hangāra-, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ongʷl-.
Do you use any of these, or other slang words for money, and/or for specific amounts of money?
More on money slang:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slang_terms_for_money
http://www.aldertons.com/money.htm
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wikisaurus:money
Within walking distance
This weekend I went to a friend’s wedding near Milton Keynes, and stayed in an AirBnB in Bletchley on Saturday night. In my review of the AirBnB I said that it was “within walking distance” of the centre of Bletchley. After writing this, I started thinking that the phrase walking distance probably means quite different things to different people.
I walk a lot – at least 3 or 4 miles a day, so ‘within walking distance’ to me means up to 4 miles, or further. I walk to get around, to keep fit, and also because I enjoy exploring places on foot.
On Saturday afternoon I decided to walk from Bletchley to Newton Longville, the village where the wedding reception took place. On the map the distance was 3 to 3.5 miles, depending on the route. However, part of the route went through an area where a lot of new houses are being built, and some of the roads and paths were blocked off, and I got a bit lost. After asking for directions I found the right road, and ended up walking 5 or 6 miles in total. I got there in the end and had a wonderful time, and got a lift back with the bride’s granddad.
What does “within walking distance” mean to you?
Or do you use another phrase?
(The photo is the fabulous lego-based wedding cake)
Language quiz
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
It’s in your east hand
An episode of Word of Mouth I listened to recently discussed the language of directions, and how in some languages directions are absolute rather than relative. So you don’t have a right hand or left hand, for example, but a north or south hand, or an east or west hand, depending on which way you’re facing. In some languages directions are relative to a feature in the local landscape such as a river or mountain.
Indonesian is one language they mention that uses absolute direction, at least outside the major cities – in Jakarta they use the equivalents of left and right (kiri & kanan).
The way people think about time also differs in different languages. In Western languages we generally think about the future as ahead of us and the past behind us, but in Aymara the past in in front of you and the future is behind you. This can also be seen in gestures – when talking about the past, Aymara speakers point in front of them.
So if you speak a language which uses absolute directions you have to be always aware of which way is north, or of the location of the landscape feature on which the directions are based. Apparently this is something you can learn – one of the people on the programme spent time with people in northern Australia who use absolute direction, and after a while she found that she was starting to be aware which way was north most of the time.
They also discuss place names in England and how they refer to direction in different ways. There are many ways, for example, to indicate what a place is near: Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Newcastle-under-Lyme (under used to mean ‘hard by’), Weston-super-Mare, Goring-by-Sea, Southend-on-Sea, Aston juxta Mondrum and Wells-next-the-Sea
Are direction words used in interesting ways in your language or dialect?
Clymau tafod
Mi wnes i dyfeisio cwlwm tafod Cymraeg heddiw:
Llawr ar lawr y cawr enfawr mae llawer o lewod lliwiog yn llyfu llaw Gwawr nawr.
Ti’n gwybod unrhyw glymau tafod Cymraeg eraill?
This is a Welsh tongue twister I came up with today. It means “Down on the giant giant’s floor many colourful lions are licking Gwawr’s hand now.”
Do you know any other Welsh tongue twsiters?
Spaghetti car bananas
On a recent episode of Word of Mouth on BBC Radio 4, they discussed the interesting words children come up with. They might attempt say particular words but can’t quite manage all the sounds, or get them mixed up, sometimes with unintentionally funny results. They also get words mixed and muddled, or perhaps muddlixed.
Can you guess the title of this post refers to?
It’s an attempt at spaghetti carbonara.
Other examples from the programme include:
– Snotrils (nostrils)
– Jumpolines (trampolines)
– Hippyhoppymus (hippopotamus)
– Hockle bockle (hot water bottle)
– Suggestive biscuits (digestive biscuits)
– Alligator (escalator)
Sometimes these words get adopted as family words and continued to be used even when the children are adults.
This doesn’t just happen to children though – adults also mix up their words sometimes. A few weeks ago, for example, at one of the choirs I sing in I mentioned to a friend that the song we were learning could do with some calligraphy. She looked at me a bit confused, then we realised that I meant choreography. Hilarity ensued.
Do you have any other examples?
Language quiz
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
Beds that lie
The other day I noticed the word gwlau on a sign outside a furniture shop. It’s a Welsh word I hadn’t seen or heard before, but from the context I worked out that it meant ‘beds’. The sign also included the words gwlau soffa (sofa beds). As I hadn’t come across this plural form of gwely [ˈɡwɛlɨ/ˈɡweːli] (bed) before, I wondered if it was a mistake.
According to Geiriadur yr Academi and Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, the plural forms of gwely are gwelyau or gwlâu, so the words on the sign weren’t wrong, but were just missing a to bach (circumflex) on the a.
Gwely comes from the Proto-Celtic *uɸo-legyom from *legh (to lie down), from the Proto-Indo-European *upo (under, below) & *legʰ- (to lie (down)), and is cognate with the Cornish guely and the Breton gwele. *legʰ- is the root of the Irish luigh, the Manx lhie, and the Scottish Gaelic laigh (to lie (down)); and also the Italian letto and French lit (bed), via the Latin lectus (bed); the English lair, the German Lager (store, camp), and the Swedish läger (camp), as well as other words [source].