From Susan Tallman’s NYRB review (archived) of a MOMA retrospective now on view at the Museum of Modern Art of the work of Ed Ruscha (an artist I’ve always liked):
For Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), Ruscha mounted a motorized camera on the bed of his pickup truck (Google be not proud) and shot both sides of the two miles of Sunset Boulevard known as the Strip, then arranged the photos in strips along the top and bottom edges of a twenty-five-foot-long accordion-fold leporello.
I was unfamiliar with the term “leporello,” but Google quickly took me to Jill Ehlert’s 2015 “Book works” post, which explained:
The term leporello refers to printed material folded into an accordion-pleat style. Also sometimes known as a concertina fold, it is a method of parallel folding with the folds alternating between front and back. The name likely comes from the manservant, Leporello, in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. Famed rogue and lover Don Giovanni (in Italian – also known as Don Juan in Spanish) has seduced so many women that when Leporello displays a tally of his conquests, it unfolds, accordion-style, into a shockingly long list. Many leporellos are used as a way of telling a story, while others are purely visual.
(There’s a nice illustration of such a book that Ehlert herself made; she’s a mixed-media artist in Cobble Hill, British Columbia.) I like the proposed derivation a lot; the word isn’t in any of my dictionaries (even the OED doesn’t know of it), so I can’t find out about its history, though Google Books finds a 1959 use in Ruth Zechlin’s The Complete Book of Handcrafts. Anyone know more about this charming word?
Not worth making a separate post of, but from the French noir Razzia sur la chnouf (chnouf is a slang term for hard drugs, apparently from German Schnupf ‘snuff’) I learned the Breton word kenavo ‘goodbye, au revoir,’ which Wiktionnaire says is “composé de ken, ma et vo.” I expect our resident Celticists to weigh in (is there a Welsh equivalent?).
W-aire quotes Deshayes, whose spelling is different: “Kennavo (qen na vezo, 1732), interj., au revoir, de ken + ma + vo.” It’s under “Ken (quen, 1499), adv., aussi, si, correspond au gallois cyn, de mêmes sens.” I suppose ma (assimilated to na in the example) is a subordinator, and vo~vezo is, says W-aire, “Forme mutée de la troisième personne du singulier du futur de l’indicatif du verbe bezañ «être».” In other words, ‘so it’ll be’?
I have known the Leporello for ages; it is included in German dictionaries. I always thought everyone (well everyone who cares about music) knew this aria (in German also known as Registerarie)..
I suppose that could be a relation of Gaelic mar sin leat, ‘like that with you’. Like *what* is never specified!
The word has come up here a couple times before. I doubt I would ever use it, but it is part of my passive vocabulary.
According to Ian Press’ Grammar of Modern Breton, ken na is “as long as, until”, and vo is the soft-mutated form of bo, 3rd sg future of “be.” (Welsh bo is actually subjunctive, but presumably it’s of the same origin. A slightly formal way of saying “goodbye” in Welsh is da boch chi “may you be good.”)
Ken is presumably cognate with either Welsh cyn “before” or cyn “as”; The na part is clearly nothing to do with the pronoun ma “my”; it seems to be equivalent to Welsh na “nor”, but if so, I don’t see why it’s got bleached of its negative sense.
Press confirms kenavo “goodbye”; apparently you can say kevo too. Perhaps if you’re really hip and happening.
[There was a fun object-based programming language called Kevo once upon a time. It only ran on Macs with the original kooky pre-Unix operating system though. I played with it a bit in the the olden days.]
Perhaps the bleaching of the negative sense of na (assuming that it really is the same etymon as Welsh na) is related to that weird Old French construction you get in e.g. plus fresche que n‘est rose “fresher than a rose is [not].” Come to that, weird modern French construction. Une chose plus commune qu’on ne pense.
Ah: Press says that “than” after a comparative is expressed by na if the next element is a subordinate clause. And it perhaps ought to have occurred to me that Welsh does that too, even before a NP: Gwell yw ffafr dda nag arian ac nag aur “Good regard is better than silver and than gold.” Maybe the French got it from us …
So, yes. It’s “than.” Or a subordinator, anyway. I think Deshayes probably just made a mistake with that “ma.”
Isn’t “than” after a comparative na in Welsh? Why bring in the Welsh negative na?
Favereau’s Grammaire de breton contemporain is nicely detailed. It explains kenavo as ‘jusqu’à ce que soit la “revoyure”…’.
“Les formes futures, en effet, gardent de nombreuses traces de l’ancien subjonctif présent qu’elles exprimaient naguère, comme en gallois (cf. ken ‘vo nos // cyn bo nos d’ici qu’il fasse nuit, & optatif da bo chi, cf. da ‘vo ganit tu seras bien aise < que tu sois… etc.). On peut même affirmer que c’est le subjonctif qui en breton actuel fait office de futur, plutôt que de prétendre que le futur rend en breton le subjonctif.” Maybe there’s a more modern description that does better without traditional categories, but this works.
I never mentally connected Welsh na “nor” and na “than” before. I think that they must be, at least in origin, the same word, though, They both cause spirant mutation of the next word, too, at least in Posh Welsh.
I wonder if the French empty negative after comparatives actually is a Celtic thing? Does that turn up elsewhere in Romance?
Apparently Breton na is followed by soft mutation, not spirant, but Breton seems to have a rather different distribution of the spirant mutation from Welsh anyway (it occurs after ma “my”, for example.)
I suppose “before night may come” is pretty close to “until night comes.”
The word has come up here a couple times before.
Great heavens, so it has. Once again I am impressed both by the infinite scope of the LH archives and by my ability to forget even such striking things as this.
And many thanks to everyone who has explicated the Breton construction!
Does that turn up elsewhere in Romance?
Spanish has a no expletivo somewhat like French’s ne explétif, and, indeed, used with some comparisons.
I never mentally connected Welsh na “nor” and na “than” before.
The OED isn’t sure that English “nor” meaning “than” is connected to the more familiar “nor”.
“Origin uncertain; perhaps a specific use of nor conj.1 Compare na conj., ne conj.2. Compare earlier or adv.1 A.II.2 (and for confusion of or and nor perhaps compare nor conj.1 I.4).”
It also says, “In recent use chiefly Scottish, Irish English, U.S. regional, and English regional.” Maybe I’ve never been in whatever U.S. regions it might still exist in.
@jf
Here are the citations in the H. Wentworth, “American Dialect Dictionary”, p.1944:
—
1871(1852) s.Ind., s.Ill., s.Ohio a’n’t worth no more nor a white one. Eggleston Hoos. Schoolm. 121; 70. 1880 Tenn. I likes ye better nor I does Becky. Murfree ‘Blue Ribbon.’ 1888 Ark. Thanet ‘Loaf of Peace.’ 1895 e.Canada N.B., N.S., Newfoundland He is taller nor me. 1909 n.w.Ark. He can’t do more norI can. 1911 e.Ky. He’s better nor you. 1925 w.cent.W.Va. ‘He is no more nor a chunk of a boy.’ ‘I bought those shoes no longer nor 3 weeks back.’ 1934 Dial. Web.
—
If you have access to DARE, you can probably get more information.
The terms leporello and concertina came up in the comments in the 2021 “The Shapira Affair” post, as well as in a subsequent online discussion. Moses Shapira claimed he had an ancient Deuteronomy-ish manuscript. Though his claim had a modern defender, I suggested that defending it by comparison to Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran) mss was not apt, because the claimed find spot was more distant from the Dead Sea, so wetter, and because the DSS were not in the form of a leporello.