Irish-American poet Greg Delanty has a nice Independent piece about his visit to Benares (now officially Varanasi), which includes the following paragraph:
It struck me there that the undulating Hindi reminded me of the sing-song Cork accent, and how we used words in Cork that had Hindi origin and were brought back by Irish soldiers in the British army, words like dekho, which in Hindi means “to look”, or conjun box. Conjun comes from the word Khajana — Hindi for “treasure” — and in Cork it was our word for a child’s piggy bank. I had just broken into my conjun box to bribe the rickshaw driver.
Hindi खजाना khajaana is a real word, but it’s not clear that conjun (a highly localized word that is not in the OED) comes from it; Diarmaid Ó Muirithe writes:
Two female friends of mine from Cork city wrote to ask about the origin of conjun box, a child’s money box, a piggybank. Sean Beecher has the word in A Dictionary of Cork Slang (1983). He says that the word is possibly from Tamil kanji, “a lock-up (military), hence a place to keep money; possibly introduced into Cork by the Munster Fusiliers”.
Kanji doesn’t mean a lock-up. Bernard Share, in Slanguage, is right in saying that the Tamil word means water in which rice has been boiled, a source of vitamins and carbohydrates, and a staple nourishment for prisoners in India. A precious substance, therefore. From kanjee came conjun, a little box for hoarding precious pennies.
I have no doubt whatever that conjun box is what they say north of the Lee; but when I inquired further I was told that conjurin’ box is what is said in other places. Whether this conjurin’ is a mistaken “correction”, I don’t know; all I can say is that it exists in Ovens and in Glasheen, from where Mrs Maureen McAlister wrote to tell me that she often heard girls at her school talk of opening their conjurin’ boxes unknown to their parents if they were stuck for ready cash.
All of these suggested derivations sound equally dubious to me, but the word is a nice one; Darragh Bermingham in the Cork News has a whole column about such boxes:
University College Cork (UCC) recently opened its new business education centre at the old Cork Savings Bank site on Lapp’s Quay. While he said he is delighted to see the rebirth of the location, UCC President Professor Patrick O’Shea, revealed the site had a profound and lasting impact on him from a young age.
Professor O’Shea recently enjoyed a profound blast from the past in the form of a children’s savings box or conjun. He recalled being around eight or nine years old when his mother, Josephine, took him to Cork Savings Bank on Lapp’s Quay to open an account and to get a green conjun box. “I remember being so excited that I had a hard time signing my name on the form,” he said.
Thanks, Trevor!
The Tamil word “kanji” is a false-friend for Japanese “kanji,” but did come into English in its original rice-porridge sense (mediated through Portuguese) as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congee.
EDITED TO ADD: the UK slang (dating to the 1950’s, sez the internet) “to do porridge” meaning “to do time in prison” perhaps shows that the alleged transferred meaning in British Indian military jargon from “local porridge” to “place you get locked up” is not *that* implausible.
‘Conjun’ is new to me, but ‘have a dekko,’ meaning take a look, was moderately common in England in the 60s, although probably a bit dated even then. I don’t know if it’s still in use.
There was also ‘have a shufti,’ with the same meaning. It’s from Arabic, sez the Google, and also a post-WW2 import.
There are some more pictures of conjun boxes given out by banks here and here and especially here.
I’ve always spelled खजाना as खज़ाना , khazaanaa not khajaanaa. In recent years, as politics has driven the Sanskritisation of Hindi, Google Translate has stopped recognising many words spelled using the nukta (all imports) as Hindi, but a Google search shows that the “z” spelling, खज़ाना is still common, though खजाना is much more so now.
The replacing of “ज़/z” with “ज/j” was common even before it became politically preferred, among Panjabis in particular – In an English-language nursing article I proofread, the L1-Panjabi author wrote “the region why …”.
Apparently (this predates my interaction with Hindi), this dropping of the nukta was often the cause of hypercorrection, speakers from areas where the replacement was the norm would pronounce words with a “z” that should actually have been said with a “j” .
Very interesting!
I can’t find it anywhere before 2015. How else is it spelled?
Add: found “he’d want a serious kick in the congen box” in a discussion of somewhat surreal Irish bon mots, from 2010.
We talked about this word before
https://languagehat.com/ard-al-sawad/#comment-1626921
Whew, you mean kazna/χaznä/خزينة (χazīna) — I was afraid you were talking about conjun, and it would have seriously depressed me if I’d thought we’d had such a discussion and I’d forgotten it.
I used to use ‘have a dekko’ in the 60s, but haven’t said or heard it for decades, though I occasionally hear the rhyming slang ‘have a butcher’s’ [hook].
There was also ‘have a shufti,’ with the same meaning.
That still seems to be around; I remember it bring used in one of the Harry Potter books, so around 2000 by an author who grew up in the 60s/70s.
Which doesn’t exactly equate to “still around.”
Well, if that generation still uses the expression, it looks to me like it’s still around. It’s not a small cohort 🙂
True, but I took your “still around” to imply that it was in good shape. I would guess rather that it’s been dying out for quite some time and that Rowland’s use was a throwback use of a word she remembered fondly (perhaps having heard some beloved uncle use it in her childhood) rather than proving it was alive and well among her generation. Going from “I remember it bring used in one of the Harry Potter books” to “that generation still uses the expression” is quite a stretch. For what it’s worth, the latest citation in the OED is from 1980.
The google books corpus has some 21st century hits for “have a dekko.” Some are false positives, e.g. reprintings of books first published several decades previously or dialogue in a “period” novel set several decades previously, but others seem legit. E.g. from a 2008 travel magazine article: “the event was celebrated in a manner quite typically Swiss—they promptly invited 130 journalists from all over the world to come and have a dekko.”
My only personal experience with “have a butcher’s” is in the lyrics of the Soft Boys song “Kingdom of Love,” which is a timeless classic but also was, in point of fact, recorded in 1980. Which is now getting to be some considerable time ago.
Beecher’s work is online here. He links five words to India via the Munster Fusiliers, of which I only know one, though I grew up in Cork. Besides “conjun box” and “dekko” he has “pawny” (Water or rain), “Cat and Dog” (a game with two sticks) and of course “langer”, for which Beecher’s wishful connection to langur monkeys is dismissed by the OED.
The interchange of “z” and “j” also came up in this thread:
http://languagehat.com/that-key-to-knowledge/
Although in Bengali rather than Hindi or Punjabi.
Re shufti: For what it’s worth, the latest citation in the OED is from 1980.
… in an entry written in 1986! Green’s has citations of “have/take a shufti” up to 2013. And it was Ron Weasley who used it in the Harry Potter book, not some geezer, and I don’t think it drew any comments about anachronism.
As an American, I can’t speak to the currency of “shufti” myself, of course. Green’s has no American citations, only UK, Aus, and Scottish.
The interchange of “z” and “j” also came up in this thread
The relevant comment, but nobody answered the question.
… in an entry written in 1986! Green’s has citations of “have/take a shufti” up to 2013.
Good point, and I should have thought to check Green’s; here’s a direct link to the entry.
The Hindi word is presumably from Arabic خزانة, khizana = treasury, vault, via Persian I imagine. Some will know that so-called Khazneh, treasury, in Petra. Makhzan = storehouse, from the same root, is the source of English magazine.
Shufti is an imperative in Arabic. “Look!” I am told that the same is true for dekko in Hindi
CuC
The Arabic word itself is probably a loan from Iranian (Wiktionary compares it to كَنْز (kanz) from Old Median *ganǰəm (“treasure, treasury”). Lameen might know more.
And it was Ron Weasley who used it in the Harry Potter book, not some geezer, and I don’t think it drew any comments about anachronism.
Yes. Adults can be clueless about youth slang later than their own generation’s, but I assumed that the word must be current enough in everyday speech if Rowling didn’t hesitate to put it in the mouth of a teenager.
“The Hindi word is presumably from Arabic خزانة, khizana = treasury, vault, via Persian I imagine. ”
The nukta (the subscript dot) under the character is only found on imports from Urdu, most of Persian origin. I don’t know of any Sanskrit-origin Hindi words that have the “z” sound. The nukta is also used with a few other devanagari characters to indicate a change of pronunciation and as a marker of their “foreign” status. Like the ज़ , the use of the indicated pronunciation is waning, most are pronounced as their original form. In my limited experience, pronouncing them nukta’d as is my habit is increasingly viewed as a solecism that raises eyebrows but is tolerated. Were I an L1 speaker, the reaction would be stronger, I suspect
Most of the voices used in Google Translate also ignore nuktas when using the read loud function. Over the last 4-5 years it has been very noticeable how many of these words that Google Translate USED TO accept as Hindi it no longer does, either ignoring them completely or saying “did you mean” then suggesting the non-nukta version. Which doesn’t always help, as many of the words using the nukta are still clearly Persianate in origin, not the “shuddh” Hindi that is very literally “politically correct” in today’s India, and so even after removing the nukta Google will still not translate them. Which is frustrating because I read Urdu poetry in devanagari, and used to be able to paste unfamiliar words into Google and have most of them translated.
See also geniza.
Assuming something’s current because it’s in Harry Potter is a bit risky: quite a lot of the language is a bit dated. It’s presumably deliberate – the wizarding world is generally depicted as being at least a couple of decades behind the ‘muggle’ world in a lot of respects. This fits quite nicely with the old-fashioned boarding-school story atmosphere of the first few books. It’s probably significant that it’s Ron Weasley, whose family have very little contact with muggles, who uses it, and not, say, Harry or Hermione. I’m not sure how clearly this all comes across to non-Britons, though.
To me, both ‘shufti’ and ‘dekko’ sound dated, but not very dated. I’d bit a bit surprised to here them from someone my ages (forties), but not stunned; I’d be rather startled to hear either from someone in their teens or twenties.
@bt
I believe dekko is very much used by all ages in Ireland, as a preliminary step in performing a recce. Mollymooly?
@PP
Indefinitely increasing the preliminary steps in performing a recce: a path to world peace?
I suppose there is some logic to the military being a fertile source of expressions for ‘have a quick look and leave in a hurry’.
Thank you, mollymooly, for that link.
I was tempted by Beecher’s Indic etymology for langer “penis”, considering the meanings of reflexes of the family of Sanskrit lāṅgūlá- “tail” in the modern Indo-Aryan languages: Marwari lagul लगुल “penis”; Maithili lā̃gaṛ लांगड़, Gujarati lā̃gul લાંગુલ “tail”, etc. The Royal Munster Fusiliers could very well have picked up a reflex like one of these in the regions where they were stationed. In any case, the semantic change “tail” > “penis” comes free of charge at any stage of the history of the word—consider Spanish rabo, French queue, German Schwanz, perhaps Arabic zubb زب “dick, cock” (if ultimately from Akkadian zibbatu “tail”), or indeed Latin pēnis, whatever its exact history. Curiously, there is also English spank the monkey for another possible avenue of semantic change.
However, the Irish etymology mentioned in the Wiktionary, to Muskerry Irish leangaire “an unusually long, slender salmon” (compare langa and langaire), seems plausible too. I wonder if this association of the Cork slang word to the Irish word has been published anywhere outside the Wiktionary. I am trying to think of other instances of the shift “fish” > “penis”. I remember encountering Arabic qarmūṭ قرموط “catfish” used as a word for “penis” in Egyptian slang many years ago, but I haven’t followed that up.
Wiktionary compares it to كَنْز (kanz) from Old Median *ganǰəm (“treasure, treasury”)
I once looked into the further etymology of the family of Iranian “treasure” and didn’t find much that was promising. Here is Wilhelm Eilers on the topic, p. 206, on Arabic kanz and its Iranian antecedents:
I have never found any further publications from Eilers on this topic. Akkadian kankum is the verbal adjective to kanākum “to seal”.
Aber darüber eingehender an anderem Orte.
I wish scholars wouldn’t do this. Worüber man nicht veröffentlicht hat, darüber muß man schweigen.
At my old Alma Mater Eilers would have got a rap on the fingers for that*). We were expressly told not to write that kind of thing. “Further research is needed” was also a big no-no.
*) At least, if he would have handed that in as a student. As we all know, tenured professors are beyond reproach.
Ben Tolley said: the wizarding world is generally depicted as being at least a couple of decades behind the ‘muggle’ world … It’s probably significant that it’s Ron Weasley, whose family have very little contact with muggles, who uses it, and not, say, Harry or Hermione.
Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that. There’s another “shufti” from Sirius Black, who’s also a wizarding insider, and was isolated in prison for a decade to boot.
@LH “The interchange of “z” and “j” also came up in this thread. The relevant comment, but nobody answered the question.
If I read the following passage correctly, /z/ is a marginal phoneme in Bengali (found only in morphemes of non-native origin), hence the tendency to replace it by /dʒ/, a high-frequency phoneme (of native origin).
“⟨জ⟩ and ⟨য⟩ may represent a voiced affricate /dʒ/ in Standard Bengali words of native origin, but they can also represent /z/ in foreign words and names (জাকাত [zakat] ‘zakah charity’, আজিজ [aziz] ‘Aziz’). Many speakers replace /z/ with /dʒ/. However, a native s/z opposition has developed in Chittagonian Bengali. Additionally, Some words that originally had /z/ are now pronounced with [dʑ] in Standard Bengali (সবজি [ɕobdʑi] ‘vegetable’, from Persian sabzi)” (Bengali Phonology, Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_phonology).
***
If so, speakers of Bengali may carry the Bengali shift from /z/ to /dʒ/ over into other languages, such as English.
Thanks!
“If so, speakers of Bengali may carry the Bengali shift from /z/ to /dʒ/ over into other languages, such as English.”
This fits exactly with the situation I experienced with my Panjabi friend mentioned above. Sabzi is an excellent example because when I started learning Hindi, I learned it as “sabzi”, influenced both by the self-teaching resources available, and the Urdu of the old ‘Hindi’ films I used for aural acquisition. It struck me as a little odd that a word for such a fundamental part of everyday life in largely vegetarian cultures should be an import, but as the Wiki article quoted above, the pronunciation has been localised.
In the 15 years since I’ve been able to hold a conversation in Hindi, I’ve heard it said “sabzi” so rarely that it sounds odd, “sabji” has become my default, as it is for the Panjabis with whom I interact most often, and the Delhite (I had to think LONG to translate ‘dilliwale’ into English there) L1 Hindi speakers I know.
It could be interesting to compare Standard Bangladeshi Bengali with Standard Bengali from Bengal in India, and Pakistani Panjabi with Indian Panjabi, to see if those variants that are used in Muslim settings (with much more frequent exposure to imported “z”s) retain the “z” more than those variants used in settings where such imports are not as common.
It sure would.
It reminds me of the frequent replacement of shibilants by sibilants on Taiwan — people said “Bu si” for “Bu shi” (‘No,’ ‘It isn’t’) and the like. I still have to remind myself that the frequent exclamation of irritation ‘Dog shit!’ is “Gou shi” rather than “Gou si” because I almost always heard the latter and that’s how it stuck in my mind.
How would a Taiwaner pronounce “Gucci”, as in “gou si on my Gucci shoes”? Are chibilants also often replaced by sibilants ?
By tsibilants, rather. The reason that sh (shibilant), zh (non-emphatic chibilant), and ch (emphatic chibilant) are written that way in Pinyin is to make life as easy as possible for people whose Mandarin doesn’t distinguish between them and s (sibilant), z (non-emphatic tsibilant), and c (emphatic tsibilant). Most Southern varieties, including Taiwanese Mandarin, exhibit this merger, reflecting the analogous limitation in the phonologies of the other Sinitic languages of Taiwan. The same is true throughout most of Southern China.
Pinyin thus obliges readers to acknowledge distinctions of which they have no knowledge from their own speech ? How does that make life as easy as possible ? English orthography clings to tradition for similar reasons, I suppose.
But thanks for the explanation. I expect to remain ignorant for the rest of my life as to what emphatic and non-emphatic chibilants sound like. That’s ok, though, since I have no Chinese. No pig, no need to distinguish between shades of lip gloss.
Standard Chinese has no /ʃ/. It has /s/ (<s>), /ʂ/ (<sh>), and /ɕ/ (<c>) and their corresponding plain affricates (<z>, <zh>, <j>), and aspirated affricates (<c>, <ch>, <q>). Polish, too, has s-ʂ-ɕ but no ʃ.
Typo for <x> – and it’s only really [ɕ] for southerners who don’t retroflex; in the north it’s a dorso-palatal sibilant that the IPA doesn’t have a symbol for.
The Polish retroflexes, BTW, aren’t very retroflex; much less so than the Russian ones for instance.
Dag! Thanks. I thought I’d typed an x.
I presumed that there is a standard pronunciation, hence “Standard Chinese” and not “Mandarin”. No?
What’s a source describing that northern sibilant?
Pinyin thus obliges readers to acknowledge distinctions of which they have no knowledge from their own speech ? How does that make life as easy as possible ?
As easy as possible, but not more so. Since you don’t know how to / are unable to pronounce what sh, zh, ch are supposed to sound like, you simply ignore the h[*], and you are doing as well as can be expected. That does not, of course, tell you when to insert the h in writing.
As for emphatic, it is an abstract distinction that is usually, but not always, realized as aspiration. We will have to ask David M if it is really fortis.
[*] But not standalone h, which is another matter, variably [h] or [x].
Unfortunate association: The deeply unpleasant candiru is a parasitic catfish.
Although I see that WikiP tries to debunk some of the more extreme claims about it.
Uh, yes (also “Standard Mandarin”). It’s what I called northern.
I’m not aware of any, but just listen.
It’s not meant to. Pinyin is, among other things, intended as a tool to teach the standard pronunciation of Mandarin to all of China. It even marks a few tiny distinctions that are definitely nowhere near phonemic, e.g. the vowels of bo, po, mo, fo vs. duo, tuo, nuo, luo.
I’ve never seen “emphatic” used to describe Chinese. The trick about Chinese is that the aspiration contrast isn’t limited to the plosives – it extends to the affricates: c, q, ch are the aspirated counterparts of z, j, zh (which are voiceless lenes). In northern accents such as the standard one, k is an affricate, too, but it keeps its aspiration nonetheless because aspirated affricates are already in the system.
DM: thanks! I’ll look for examples. What do you mean by “northern”, exactly? Beijing? Shandong?
Definitely Beijing, definitely not Wuhan; I don’t know where the isoglosses are.
It even marks a few tiny distinctions that are definitely nowhere near phonemic, e.g. the vowels of bo, po, mo, fo vs. duo, tuo, nuo, luo.
I think those are just required contractions. Chinese doesn’t have an opposition between plain and labialized labials (does any language?) Therefore, there is no opposition /bə~bʷə/, so just bo is enough, whereas for /d/ we need both de and duo for /də~dʷə/. It’s analogous to tui, which would be tuei if written as pronounced.
does any language?
Wikipedia mentions Chaha, Paha, and Tamambo as having a distinction between plain and labialized (bi)labials; Chaha (Ethiopic) and Paha (Kra) have both /b/ and /bʷ/, Tamambo (North Vanuatu) doesn’t appear to have either but has the same distinction in other consonants.
Honestly naively I’d have expected it to be more common than that.
PHOIBLE shows 52 languages with pʷ and 55 with bʷ, naturally with some overlap. Probably most or all have a non-labialized version as well. Most are indeed in sub-Saharan Africa, Vanuatu, New Guinea, plus the Arandic languages in Australia; plus a couple in the Himalayas and one in the Amazon.