I learnt an interesting word from a Dutch friend today – klunen – which refers to the action of walking on the ground in ice skates, something you might do while you’re skating along a frozen canal and come to a bridge you can’t go under, either because it’s too low, or the ice under it is too thin, so you have to walk around it. This is a wonderfully specific word and I can’t think of an equivalent in English, or any other language. Can you?
Here’s an example of useage:
Onder de brug lag geen ijs, dus we moesten erlangs klunen.
There was no ice under the bridge, so we had to walk round it.
It apparently comes from Frisian, and can also mean ‘to carry one’s canoe/kayak around impassable obstacles in the water’. There’s is a word for that action in English: portage, which comes from the French porter (to carry).
Sources: Woorden.org and Wiktionary
The closest English equivalent I can think of would be one of several words meaning ‘to walk unsteadily’ – stagger, totter, hobble… (I am picturing ladies in stilettoes, perhaps somewhat inebriated, walking on cobbles) – but these words do not have nearly such a specific meaning, and have connotations of clumsiness, which ‘klunen’ presumably does not.
The closest English equivalent I could imagine is something like “galumphing” – to move heavily and clumsily.
Similar in meaning to portage, Finnish has the words taival, taipale, ketvel, muotka. Today they are most often encountered in place names, but they mean a place where a boat has to be carried to avoid rapids or to go across a narrow isthmus or cape.
More generically, taival/taipale simply means a journey, especially on foot.
I had to look this up in Swedish. Apparently there’s mårka (from Sami muotke, muorke), ed (which can be traced back to Indo-European) and båtdrag (also used in Norweigan). Mårka and ed can also be used of a strip of land between two lakes or bogs.
Both of the books I consulted mentioned the greek ισθμός (isthmós) as a cognate to ed.
I wasn’t familiar with any of the terms even though I recognise ed from some place names (e.g. Lilla Edet).
This reminded me of the Russian word волочить (volochit’), meaning “to portage” and more generally, “to drag”. The noun Во́лок (volok) means a place where barges were portaged between rivers. This word is also part of some toponyms, e.g., the city of Volokolamsk is situated in the location where barges were portaged between the Moskva (Moscow) and Lama rivers.
@Arakun
“Ed” also exists in English as “eid” and “aith” in the Shetland and Orkney Isles dialects where the word comes from Old Norse eið (“an isthmus, neck of land”)
“eid – (UK dialectal, Scotland) An isthmus or narrow neck of land jutting out into the sea; a sandbank cast up by the sea across the head of an open bight or inlet and having a lagoon inside it. Alternative forms ed, aith” (Wiktionary)
“Aith is a village on the Northern coast of the West Shetland Mainland at the southern end of Aith Voe, some 21 miles west of Lerwick.” (Wikipedia)
@ David Eger: From what Simon said, I did not get an impression of “clumsiness” in klunen. It seems that it is just a different mode of walking. I did it a lot when I was skating in my younger days. There were a lot of ice skating rings created simply by pouring water on a flat surface with snow banks serving as borders. Boots had a tendency to get stolen if left unattended, so we all walked in skates (including 8 flights of stairs to my apartment). With a little practice, there is no staggering or hobbling involved.
The Scottish Gaelic placename “Tarbert” also means an isthmus of land across which boats must be carried/portaged.
@ Paul S.
As well as the the Scottish place name you mentioned “Tarbert” (An Tairbeart) there are a few more Scottish Gaelic synonyms for ‘isthmus’ and Scottish place names derived from isthmus from either a native Gaelic or Norse word:
dòirling, dòirlinn – isthmus, beach. Dorlin (Argyll), An Dòirlinn “The tidal isthmus or promontory”.
Ebost (Skye) Eubost “isthmus farm”.
Eye Peninsula (Lewis), An Aoidh.”The isthmus” also known as An Rubha “Point”
Eynort (Skye), Aoineart “sea loch at the isthmus”.
ùidh – a ford, that part of a stream leaving a lake before breaking into a current; also an isthmus (from Norse: eið)
tairbeart – an isthmus, peninsula: from ‘tar’ (across) and ‘ber’ of beir: “cross-bringing, portage”.