Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
By the skin of your teeth
An interesting word that came up in my Swedish lessons this week was hinna, which to have sufficient time to do something, to manage to do something in time, or to be on/in time, not to be late. That’s quite a lot of meaning packed into a small word!
Here are some examples of how it’s used:
- Hinner du idag? = Do you have time today?
- Jeg hinner inte i dag = I don’t have enough time today
- Vi hinner inte leka lekar just nu = We don’t have time to play games right now
- Hann du läsa alla sidorna? = Did you manage to read all the pages?
- Om vi inte går nu så hinner vi inte till tåget = If we don’t go now, we’ll miss the train
- Det hinns inte. Kom nu! = There’s no time. Come now!
A possibly related word is hinna, which means a coat(ing), skin (on liquids) film or membrane. So perhaps you’re doing something by the skin of your teeth when you hinna, although the meanings aren’t quite the same.
Doing something by the skin of your teeth means to barely manage to do something, or narrowly succeed in doing something. It apparently comes from the Bible (Job 19:20) “… I am escaped with the skin of my teeth”, and is a literal translation of the original Hebrew.
Do you know any other teeth-based idioms?
Sources: Wiktionary, bab.la, The Phrase Finder, The Idioms
Linguistic Quarantine
According to an article I came across today in the New York Times, quarantine has brought linguistic benefits to many bilingual homes.
Parents who raise their children with two or more languages often find that if one of their languages is not spoken, or not widely spoken, outside their home, their children will develop a preference for the dominant language of their community. This commonly happens after the children start school and discover that all, or most, of their classmates speak the dominant language. They may speak the non-dominant language, or at least understand it, but rarely use it.
Apparently in places where children have been spending a lot of time at home with their parents due to quarantine and lock downs, they have started speaking the non-dominant language(s) more.
For example, in Nigeria, where children are taught in English at school, but speak many other languages at home and elsewhere, they are now speaking more local languages, such as Luganda.
If you have a bilingual or multilingual household, have you noticed any differences in language use recently?
Language Quiz
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
Almost, Nearly, Not Quite
One of the words that came up in the French Conversation Group last night was faillir [fa.jiʁ], which means to almost do something or to fail.
Whether you almost do something or fail to do it is really a matter of perspective – the end result is the same. Yesterday, for example, I almost made another episode of the Radio Omniglot podcast. I recorded about 15-20 minutes of it several times, decided it wasn’t good enough, then got distracted with other things, as often happens. I can talk about language-related topics at the drop of a hat until the cows come home, but actually making my ramblings into a reasonably coherent podcast is a different kettle of fish. The editing always takes quite a while, and I usually find something else to do instead.
Today I told myself that I would make the podcast first thing, before checking emails, or getting distracted by other things. Several hours later I still haven’t produced the podcast, but I have learnt some more Swedish and Danish, answered some emails and written this.
Anyway, back to faillir – appears in expressions like:
- faillir faire = to almost/nearly do
- J’ai failli tomber = I almost/nearly fell
- J’ai failli lui dire = I almost/nearly told him
- J’ai failli l’oublier = I almost forgot about it
- faillir à qch = to fall short of sth
- faillir à sa tâche = to fall short of one’s tsak
- faillir à son devoir = to fall short of one’s duty
- Il ne faut pas faillir à notre devoir = We must not falter in our duty now
- J’ai un plan astucieux qui ne peut faillir = I have a cunning plan that cannot fail
- avoir failli faire qch = to narrowly miss doing sth
Related words include:
- failli(e) = bankrupt, insolvent
- la faillite = bankruptcy, collapse (political)
- une entreprise en faillite = a bankrupt business
- être en faillite = to be bankrupt
- faire en faillite = to go bankrupt, fail, go broke, go bust
- la ferme a failli faire en faillite = the farm almost went bankrupt
- il faut qu’il faille faire en faillite = he must almost go bankrupt
- faille = flaw, loophole, weak spot, fault
- faille fiscale = tax loophole
- faille spatio-temporelle = time warp
Faillir comes from the Middle French faillir (to fail), from the Old French falir, from the Vulgar Latin *fallīre, from the Latin fallere (to deceive, disappoint, cheat), from the Proto-Indo-European *bʰāl- (to lie, deceive). The English word fail comes from the same root, via the Middle English failen, and the Anglo-Norman faillir (to fail).
Another way to say that you almost did something is J’ai presque fait qch, for example, Il est presque tombé and Il a failli tomber both mean ‘He almost fell’. In the case of the latter, the impression I get is that he was expected to fall, but didn’t, while in the case of the former, there seems to be no expectation that he would fall. Is that right?
Sources: Reverso, Wiktionary, bab.la
You Pancake!
If you said to someone “Je bent een pannenkoek!“, they’d probably have no idea what you were talking about, unless they spoke Dutch. This is a kind of mild / affectionate insult in Dutch meaning literally “You’re a pancake”.
It’s often used to refer to oneself – Oh, wat ben ik toch een pannenkoek! (Oh, what a pancake I am!) when you’ve done something stupid, dumb, foolish or clumsy.
Pannenkoek [ˈpɑnə(n)ˌkuk] means pancake, crêpe or flapjack. It comes from pan (pan, cooking pot) and koek (cake, cookie, biscuit, pie).
Pan comes from the Middle Dutch panne (pan), from the Old Dutch *panna (pan), from the Latin panna, a contraction of patina (a broad, shallow dish; a pan; stewpan; a kind of cake; a crib, manger), from the Ancient Greek πατάνη (patánē – a kind of flat dish) [source].
Koek comes from the Middle Dutch coeke (cake), from the Old Dutch *kuoko (cake), from the Proto-Germanic *kōkô (cake). The English words cake, cookie and quiche come from the same root – cake via Old Norse, cookie via Dutch, and quiche via French [source].
Words used in a similar way in Dutch include sufkop (“dull head”, numskull), dommerd (dummy), gekkie (weirdo, goof), oelewapper (ding-dong, dummy, monkey), druif (grape), oliebol (donut, dumpling), koekebakker (“cake bakker”), uilskuiken (“owlet”, nincompoop, birdbrain), flapdrol (fool, nincompoop), mafkees (weirdo, goofball), oen (“castrated donkey”, moron), sukkel (dummy, idiot, twerp) [Information from Anna Rutten and Wiktionary].
Some equivalents of pannenkoek I can think in English are muppet, idiot, wally, plonker and numpty. Others, from Reverso, include: knucklehead, slouch, douche and potato-head.
Can you think of more in English or other languages?
Language Quiz
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
Procrastination Chariots
Do you tend to leave things to the last minute, and then scramble around frantically trying to get them done in time?
I certainly have been known to do this on occasion. For example, for nearly two years, I’ve been meeting with a few friends once a month to share songs we’re working on. During this time I’ve written a new song every month, and often do so in the few days before we meet. I may have various ideas for songs before then, but don’t usually do much with them until the last minute. In this case, I find that having the monthly deadline of our meetings helps.
Before this group started meeting, I wrote songs when I felt inspired – sometimes I’d write several in a month, and at other times I didn’t write anything for ages.
What I indulge in could be called a charet(te), or “a period of intense work, especially group work undertaken to meet a deadline” [source], a word that comes from the Old French charrete (chariot).
The sense of last-minute work apparently comes from the practice of students at the École de Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris working together furiously at the last minute to finish their termly projects, which would be collected on a charette, a small wheeled chart. They were said to be working en charette (“in the chart”), and the night before the deadline was known as la nuit de charette (“charette night”). Any work not on the charette was not accepted for assessment. The word and concept was borrowed into English in the mid-19th century [source].
Do you find it helpful to have targets and deadlines, whether set by you or someone else?
I don’t usually set myself deadlines and targets when learning languages, unless I’m preparing for a particular trip, event or occasion.
Bread rolls
In the UK there are many different regional words for types of bread, particularly for bread rolls, and people tend to be quite attached to their version, believing it to be the one true name for such things. Not all of them refer to exactly the same type of bread product though.
Whatever you call them, they are small, usually round loaves of bread, and were apparently invented in the south east of England in 1581 [source], although similar small loaves were probably made in other places long before that.
Here are some of the words for bread rolls used in the UK:
- Scotland: roll, bap, bun, morning roll, softie, buttery, rowie
- North East England: bun, roll, muffin, batch, breadcake, stottie, oven bottom (bread), tufty bun, scuffler
- Noth West England: barm, barm cake, bun, tea cake, muffin, nudger
- Midlands: cob, bap, roll, bun, batch
- Southern England: roll, bap, bun, cob
- Wales: roll, bap, cob, batch
- Northern Ireland: cob, roll, bun, bap
The word roll comes from the Middle English rolle (role), from the Old French rolle / role / roule (roll, scroll), from the Medieval Latin rotulus (a roll, list, catalogue, schedule, record, a paper or parchment rolled up) [source].
The word bun (a small bread roll, often sweetened or spiced), comes from the Middle English bunne (wheat cake, bun), from the Anglo-Norman bugne (bump on the head; fritter), from the Old French bugne, from Frankish *bungjo (little clump), a diminutive of *bungu (lump, clump) [source].
The origins of the word bap, as in a soft bread roll, originally from Scotland, are unknown [source].
A cob is a round, often crusty, roll or loaf of bread, especially in the Midlands of England, is of uncertain origin [source].
A barm (cake) is a small, flat, round individual loaf or roll of bread, and possibly comes from the Irish bairín breac (“speckled loaf” or barmbrack – yeasted bread with sultanas and raisins) [source]. The cake in barm cake was historically used to refer to small types of bread to distinguish them from larger loaves [source].
A batch, or bread roll, comes from the Middle English ba(c)che, from the Old English bæċ(ċ)e (baking; something baked), from the Proto-Germanic *bakiz (baking), [source].
A stottie (cake) / stotty is a round flat loaf of bread, traditionally pan-fried and popular in Tyneside in the north east of England. The word comes from stot(t) (to bounce), from the Middle Dutch stoten (to push), from the Proto-Germanic *stautaną (to push, jolt, bump) [source].
They are known as oven bottoms or oven bottom bread, as they used to be baked on the bottom of ovens, and typically eaten filled with ham, pease pudding, bacon, eggs and/or sausage. A smaller version, known as a tufty bun, can be found in bakeries in the North East of England [source]
A scuffler is a triangular bread cake originating in the Castleford region of Yorkshire, and the name is thought to come from a local dialect word [source].
A nudger is a long soft bread roll common in Liverpool [source].
A buttery is a type of bread roll from Aberdeen in Scotland, also known as a roll, rowie, rollie, cookie or Aberdeen roll [source].
A teacake is a type of round bread roll found mainly in parts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumbria. Elsewhere a teacake is a light, sweet, yeast-based bun containing dried fruits, often eaten toasted [source].
In Welsh, bread rolls are known as rholyn bara, rhôl fara, rôl / rol / rowl, bab, wicsan, cwgen, cnap or cnepyn [source]. There may be other regional words as well.
Rhôl/rôl/rol were borrowed from English, and rholyn is a diminutive. Bara (bread) comes from the Proto-Celtic *bargos / *barginā (cake, bread) [source]. Cnap was borrowed from the Old Norse knappr (knob, lump) and cnepyn is a diminutive [source]. Cwgen is a diminutive of cwc, cŵc, cwg (cook), which was borrowed from English.
In Cornish, bread rolls are bara byghan (“small bread”) [source].
In Scottish Gaelic, a bread roll is a bonnach arain – bonnach is a bannock or (savoury) cake, and comes from the French beignet (a fritter filled with fruit), from the Frankish *bungjo (lump, bump, swelling), from the Proto-Germanic *bungô / *bunkô (lump, heap, crowd), from the Proto-Indo-European bʰenǵʰ- (thick, dense, fat) [source], which is also the root of the English words bunch and bunion.
Aran (bread, loaf, livelihood, sustenance), comes from the Old Irish arán (bread, loaf), from Proto-Celtic *ar(-akno)- (bread) [source].
See a map showing where these words are used:
http://projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/ukdialectmaps/lexical-variation/bread/
If you’re from the UK, what do you call a bread roll?
What are such baked goods called elsewhere?
Language Quiz
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?