As is traditional while I’m digesting my birthday curry, I’ll post about the gifts of possible interest to LH readers. Pride of place goes to Victor Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary
Some years ago I was at a conference of writers and journalists from various countries. A group of us were talking, and someone asked that each person around the room say who was the political writer whom he or she most admired. When my turn came, I named Victor Serge. A man I did not know abruptly leapt to his feet, strode across the room, and embraced me.
Other gifts: Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian
Like many items of urbanized culture, this word is a loan from Lat ruga ‘twist, wrinkle’ used in Vulgar Latin for ‘road’, cf Fr rue ‘street’ (Meyer 1891b: 376) . Note that initial Latin r– is one of the sources of Albanian rr– and that Latin intervocalic g is not lost as –b- and –d- are. The latter development matches the native loss of intervocalic *b(h), d(h), and *ĝ(h) but retention of *G(h) and *gw(h) before *-eA2.
(And yes, the initial “like” clause was not thought through; the guy’s an etymologist, not a prose stylist.)
Congratulations and happy reading!
Sorry to start the comments with technicalities of historical linguistics, but I am intrigued:
ruga > Fr rue
I didn’t know where rue came from, nice to finally learn it. It must be cognate with rugueux ‘rough to the touch’, from the adjective rugosus.
Albanian: the native loss of intervocalic *b(h), d(h), and *ĝ(h) but retention of *G(h) and *gw(h) before *-eA2.
What is this *G(h)? Capital G is the symbol for a voiced uvular stop, are uvulars supposed to have existed in Proto-Albanian? or even in PIE?
I know that ĝ is an alternative notation for palatalized gʲ, so I conjecture that G here is simply g.
JC, but in that case why not use plain g? G must refer to a consonant farther back in the mouth.
Congratulations from me too!
marie-lucie: obviously an idiosyncratic choice, a way to distinguish between velar and palato-velar, I guess.
By the way, Albanian has this distinction again: “k” versus “q” , but when I was in Tirana in the 90s, “q” sounded like English “ch” to me.
(Apparently the software doesn’t like the brackets linguists like to use for graphemes – thinks I’m a programmer.)
Funny story by the way: At the time I wasn’t yet a student of comparative linguistics, but wanted to be one. Went to Macedonia because it seemed like a good idea. By Lake Ohrid another tourist asked if I could take a picture of his wife and him. Turned out he was a linguist!
Lagniappe!
He invited me to come see Albania, and I did – with US dollars for the visa even though DM would have worked as well. Got around pretty easily speaking pijin Italian. My guide was the linguist’s daughter, who was used to Italian TV.
I forgot that mode, alas, a decade later in Romania. Barely managed to talk to one of the most beautiful women who ever lived until we said goodbye and she gave me her email address. Which ended in yahoo.it.
“q” sounded like English “ch” to me.
Yes, Albanian, like Chinese, used Roman letters in strange and unpredictable ways.
I enjoyed Norman Davies’s “Vanished Kingdoms”. However. A reviewer in the Gruaniad says “… the states in question really have been forgotten, as with the old British Alt Clud, the Kingdom of the Rock.” To which I say balls. Anyone my age who went to a decent Scottish school heard a fair about it. I dare say that Davies should have said that no-one schooled in England knows anything about it. No surprise there: the teaching of history in England has (always?) been rather parochial. Hell, they probably didn’t even mention Poland-Lithuania.
Dearie, Norman Davies rather likes Trevor-Roper.
What do you think about independence for the Shetland isles? I’m all for it.
Greater Galicia, surviving only in provinces in Poland, Turkey, and Spain.
Musorgsky wrote two Godunovs which differ in the degree to which they assume Godunov’s guilt.
And I will never quit trying to spell it “Gudonov”.
That’s because of Boris Badenov, right?
LH: Delighted you got Vanished Kingdoms. It’s wonderful…
John E. : Correct me, but I don’t believe there is any connection between Galicia, Spain, and the region in Eastern Europe, apart from the coincidence of the name.
Greater Galicia, surviving only in provinces in Poland, Turkey, and Spain.
I was amazed to find a Polish quarter upon first visiting Istanbul in 1992. Well, OK, not quite a quarter, but certainly a neighborhood. I presume the community’s leader was Kazimierz Bey . . .
It seems established that the name of Spanish Galicia derives from the Celtic root gal as in Gallia “Gaul” and Galatians (to whom St Paul wrote). The name of Polish Galicia seems to have a different origin, so the name is only coincidentally identical.
The Galatians seem to have been originally a Southern Gaulish population which migrated to the Balkans and eventually settled in Anatolia.
Two Galicias, two Georgias, two Albanias, two Iberias.
Yes, those twinnings look suspicious.
I suppose independence for Shetland should be considered, as long as Shetland allows independence for Fair Isle, which allows independence for Northern Fair Isle. Who could say fairer than that?
Ok, I’ll buy that.
But if Shetland made irredentist claims to Orkney, things might turn nasty.
In that case, I’m Switzerland. But I want the Western Isles to be independent. Whisky galore!
Oh God, what if the Macleods go on the rampage again?
I’m always the last to realize that there’s a celebration going on. Congratulations!
One day Galicia will again be unified, and you people will be sorry. There’s also greater Guinea / Ghana / Guyana.
The Polish quarter in Istanbul is presumably a relic of the 19th-c. emigration of anti-Czarists, some of whom entered the Ottoman military.
At the time of the Barbary pirates wars (“shores of Tripoli”) Jefferson was working on an alliance with the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (along with Denmark, Sweden, Malta, and Portugal). Basically France and Britain boycotted or sabotaged the alliance.
it seems that Herzogovina was very a short-lived political unit (duchy, province, district?), but I will always remember it from old maps I saw when I was a kid. And Tannu-Tuva (from stamp books).
“Along with Denmark, Sweden, Malta, and Portugal”. The devil screwed up my link.
Bessarabia always strikes me as a funny name.
John Emerson: the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
Begge Sicilier in old Dano-Norwegian terminology.
I have two step-nieces (on different sides of the country and of the family tree) named Cecilie. I’ve had a line ready for years, but they never meet.
There are several Ceciles in my family, about one per generation.
My wife’s sister’s son’s wife is a Cowan, hopefully unrelated to me.