我们AA吧！

By Simon

The Mandarin Chinese expression, 我们AA吧！ (wǒmen AA ba), is the equivalent of “lets split the bill” or “let’s go Dutch”. I heard it for the first time from a Chinese friend the other day. My friend assures me that it’s a very common expression and is used when going out for a meal with friends (or on similar occasions) where instead of one person treating everybody (请客 qǐngkè), as happens at formal meals and banquets, each person pays for what they eat and drink.

Other ways to express the same idea include 我们分开付款 (wǒmen fēnkāi fùkuǎn) = we split the bill; 我们AA制吧 (wǒmen AA zhì ba) “let’s pay AA”; and 我们各付各的吧 (wǒmen gèfùgède ba) “let’s each pay our own”.

Apparently AA stands for “Algebraic Average” – the average share of the bill [source].

[Addendum] AA is also used in medical prescriptions as an abbreviation for the Late Latin word ana (in equal quantities) [source].

A few other Chinese expressions that use letters like this include 卡拉OK (kǎ lā OK) = karaoke and T恤 (T xù/xié): T-shirt.

Do you know any others?

The English phrase “to go Dutch”, meaning to pay separately, first appeared in writing in 1914 and is mainly used in the USA, according to the OED.

According to Wikipedia:

The phrase “going Dutch” originates from the concept of a Dutch door. Previously on farmhouses this consisted of two equal parts. Another school of thought is that it may be related to Dutch etiquette. In the Netherlands, it was not unusual to pay separately when going out as a group. When dating in a one-on-one situation, however, the man will most commonly pay for meals and drinks. English rivalry with the Netherlands especially during the period of the Anglo-Dutch Wars gave rise to several phrases including Dutch that promote certain negative stereotypes. Examples include Dutch oven, Dutch courage, Dutch uncle and Dutch wife.

New Finnish Grammar

By Simon

I’m currently reading New Finnish Grammar, an English translation of Diego Marani’s novel Nuova grammatica finlandese. It is the story of a man who is found unconscious with a serious head injury on a street in Trieste and who is cared for by a Finnish doctor, who believes he is Finnish as his jacket has a name tag with the Finnish name Sampo Karjalainen. When the mystery man regains conscious he has no memory or language so has no idea who he is, where he’s from or how he ended up in Trieste. The doctor does his best to teach Sampo, the name he adopts, to speak Finnish, then later arranges for him to continue his treatment in Helsinki.

It’s a really good translation that reads as if it was originally written in English, the language used very expressive and interesting, and there are lots of interesting bits about language acquisition and about the Finnish language. Here is a selection:

“In the Finnish language the noun is hard to lay hands on, hidden as it is behind the endless declensions of its fifteen cases and only rarely caught unawares in the nominative.

Is this true?

In the Finnish sentence the words are grouped around the verb like moons around a planet, and whichever one is nearest the verb becomes the subject. In European languages the sentence is a straight line, in Finnish it is a circle, within which something happens.

Is this a good description of Finnish sentences?

I was beginning to be able to express myself, even if somewhat stiltedly. I would learn the words already declined, a different one for each case, and when I did not know how to put them together I made do with saying them at random, hoping that intonation and gesture would go some way towards making up for lack of syntax. And yet, while still lacking firm banks, the Finnish language was gradually carving itself out a bed in the quicksands of my mind, with the words that I had tamed coursing down it and gradually informing me of the meaning of others. Branching out and joining up, they sent the thousand drops of sound which make up a language into circulation, watering and strengthening my awareness, my ability to sense the boundaries of meaning.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but am enjoying it so far and would certainly recommend it.

Rundfunk

By Simon

I came across the German word Rundfunk the other day and it just appealed to me, so I thought I’d find out more about it.

Rundfunk /ˈʀʊntfʊŋk/ means broadcasting, radio, wireless or broadcasting company/corporation, though would probably also be a good name for a band.

It also appears in such expressions as:

– Rundfunkansager – radio announcer
– Rundfunkgesellschaft – broadcasting company
– Rundfunksendung – radio programme
– Rundfunksender – radio transmitter

Rund /ʀʊnt/ means round, rounded, circular, spherical, plump, about, roughly, flatly, and comes the Middle Low German runt, from the Old French ront, from the Latin rotundus (round), from rota (wheel, disk), from the Proto-Indo-European *Hroth₂-o- (wheel) [source] – the same root as the English word round.

Some words and expressions featuring rund include:

– Rundbank – circular bench
– Rundbau – rotunda
– Rundblick – panorama
– Rundung – curve
– eine Runde machen – to go for a walk / ride – similar to the Welsh expression, mynd am dro (to go for a turn)
– eine Runde schlafen – to have a kip (sleep)
– rund um die Uhr – right (a)round the clock
– jetzt geht’s rund – this is where the fun starts
– es geht rund im Büro – there’s a lot on at the office

Funk /ˈfʊŋk/ appears in radio-related compounds, like Rundfunk, and is possibly related to Funke (spark, scrap, gleam, ray, glimmer), from the Proto-Germanic *funkô/*fankô (spark), from the Proto-Indo-European *(s)peng-/*(s)pheng- (to shine).

Some words featuring Funk include:

– Funkerzählung – story written for radio
– Funkgerät – radio equipment, walkie-talkie
– Funkmeßgerät – radar
– Funkkolleg – educational radio broadcast
– Funkwagen – radio car

The verb funken (to radio, to emit sparks) also exists.

One thing I like about German is words link Rundfunk, which seem to me to be somehow more earthy and straightforward they their more flowery Latin or Greek-derived equivalents. I like the Latin and Greek-derived words as well, but the words with Germanic roots just appeal to me in a different way.

Hedges and thistles

By Simon

During a conversation with a Chinese friend yesterday neither of us could think of the Mandarin word for hedge or thistle, among others, so I thought I’d look it up.

There appear to be a number of words for hedge in Mandarin:

– 栵 (lì) – hedge
– 藩籬 [藩篱] (fān​lí) – hedge / fence; line of defence / barrier
– 樹籬 [树篱] (shù​lí) – quickset hedge*
– 籬垣 [篱垣] (lí​yuán) – fence / hedge
– 柵籬 [栅篱] (zhà​lí) – hedgerow

If you want to talk about hedge funds though, there’s 私募基金 (sī​mù​jī​jīn) or 對衝基金 (duì​chōng​jī​jīn), and a hedgehog is 猬 (wei).

From: MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary

*a quickset hedge is a type of hedge created by planting live hazel or whitethorn (common hawthorn) cuttings directly into the earth. Once planted, these cuttings root and form new plants, creating a dense barrier [source].

So I’m still not sure which word to use for the hedge in my garden (a privet hedge), probably 栵 or 藩籬. This is the kind of thing you often have to deal with when translating.

The English word hedge comes from the Old English *hęcg, hęgg from the Germanic *hagjâ.

The Mandarin for thistle is 荼 (tú), which also means common sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus) / bitter (taste) / cruel / flowering grass in profusion [source]. The English word thistle comes from the Old English þistil, from the Old Germanic *þīstil.

Summer chicks and glowing coals

By Simon

Butterfly

Last night we were talking about the Pili Palas on Anglesey, a butterfly centre, which also has birds, snakes and other exotic creatures. The name is a pun combining pili-pala (butterfly) and palas (palace) – it took me ages to realise this. We were trying to think of the words for butterfly in various other languages and came up with the French, papillon, and the Spanish mariposa, but got stuck after that. This got me wondering why these words are so different in different languages.

The English word butterfly comes from the Old English buttorfleoge, perhaps from bēatan (to beat) and flēoge (fly), or perhaps it was the name just for yellow butterflies, and/or because butterflies were thought to eat butter and milk.

In Middle High German butterflies were known as molkendiep (“milk-thief”) and in Low German a butterfly is a Botterlicker (“butter-licker”) [source]. In Modern German Schmetterling /ˈʃmɛtɐlɪŋ/ is the word for butterfly – from Schmetten (cream) – from the Czech smetana (cream). This is based on the folk belief that witches transformed themselves into butterflies to steal cream and milk [source].

Welsh words for butterfly include iâr fach yr haf (“summer chick”), glöyn byw (“living coal”), pila-pala and bili-balo.

Like iâr fach yr haf in Welsh, butterflies are known as “summer birds” in Norwegian, sommerfugl, and in Yiddish, zomerfeygele.

In Irish the word for butterfly is féileacán, possible from the Old Irish etelachán (little flying creature / butterfly), from etelach (flying) [source]. The Manx butterfly, foillycan, comes from the same root, but in Scottish Gaelic butterflies are seilleann-dé (“God’s bee”) and dealan-dè (“God’s lightening”).

The French word for butterfly, papillon, comes from the Latin pāpiliō (butterfly, moth) – of unknown origin, and also the root of the English word pavilion (via Old French) [source]. The Italian farfalla (butterfly) comes from the same source.

The Spanish word for butterfly, mariposa, apparently comes from the expression Mari, posa(te (Mary, alight!), which features in children’s songs and games, or from la Santa Maria posa (the Virgin Mary alights/rests). Other theories about the etymology of this word.

There is more discussion of words for butterfly in various languages on AllExperts, and there are words for butterfly in many more languages here.

Spreek je Nederlands?

By Simon

Today’s post comes from an email sent in by James Eglinton.

I have met many non-native English speakers who speak English with no discernible non-native accent. I know Dutch people (with Irish spouses) who can pass themselves off as Irish in Ireland. I know French people who speak faultless British English, I have heard a German speaking Scottish Gaelic and I struggled to tell that he wasn’t a native speaker. I also know various non-native French speakers who have to convince French people that they really are foreigners. I know Scots who can pass themselves off as Germans in Germany. Wherever you go in the world, you meet non-native English speakers with perfect American accents …

In my own situation, I grew up with English and Gaelic, and also learned French while living in Paris. When I was living there, people would ask if I was Belgian or Swiss. My French accent wasn’t quite native enough for them to think I was French, but I spoke it well enough that they generally thought I was a native speaker from somewhere else in French-speaking Europe.

I now live in the Netherlands and have learned Dutch to fluent non-native level. Thanks to my Gaelic background, Dutch gutturals don’t pose any major problems, but although I speak Dutch all day at work, I have found trying to acquire a decent native-like accent astonishingly difficult. I have found Dutch easy to speak well, but thus far impossible to speak perfectly. I regularly ask Dutch people, “Have you ever met a foreigner who speaks such good Dutch that you didn’t know they were foreign?” The universal answer is, “No”.

I’m aware that Dutch has a couple of very tricky features (the klemtone [misplaced stress] and the system of de and het definite articles) that make acquiring native level fluency very difficult (or perhaps impossible?), but I wonder if any Omniglot readers know non-native Dutch speakers who speak faultless Dutch.

If not, why is Dutch so seemingly impossible to learn at that level? Are there sociological factors involved (i.e. very few people learn Dutch, many millions learn English/French etc, which creates a more challenging setting for Dutch learners) or is Dutch just uniquely hard to master due to some subtle grammatical nuances?

Cnaipí & cripio

By Simon

A story I heard when I was in Ireland featured two characters playing na cnaipí (tiddlywinks) /nə kripiː/ in a graveyard at night. A man who overheard them sharing out the tiddlywinks, saying over and over “one for me and one for you”, and thought they were the devil and god sharing out souls.

When I first heard the story I didn’t know what na cnaipí were, but later disovered that they are buttons or tiddlywinks. The singular of the word is cnaipe /kripə/ or /knapə/* and it means button, knob, key or dot, and can refer to buttons on clothes and to buttons (and keys and knobs) on keyboards and other electronic software and hardware.

* in some dialects of Irish, such as in Ulster and Connemara, cn is pronounced /kr/ while in others it’s pronounced /kn/

Today I discovered some similar-sounding Welsh words, cripio (to scratch) and cripiad (scratch), and wondered if they were related to the Irish cnaipe.

According to Dennis King, cnaipe comes from the Middle Irish cnap, from the Old Norse knappr (button, knob), from the Germanic *kn-a-pp-, from the Indo-European root *gen- (to compress into a ball), which is also the root of the English words knob and knoll, and the Scottish Gaelic word cnap (knob, lump, hillock).

As far as I can discover, there is no link between cnaipe and cripio – their resemblance is a chance one, something you find quite often when comparing languages.

Easy Languages Language Trip Giveaway

By Simon

Today over on The Language Traveler they’re launching their first ever language trip giveaway. The grand prize is 2 weeks of French lessons, including accommodation, in Brussels in Belgium valued at €795 or approximately US$1,100.

To participate, eligible visitors simply have to leave a comment on the announcement post. The winner will then be randomly selected from all the valid entries.

The Language Traveler is the official blog of Easy Languages, a study abroad agency based in Brussels that can arrange language courses at over 70 destinations around the world.