The always enticing wood s lot sent me to Apollinaire’s “Automne malade” (here‘s a pretty good translation by John Hayes — I didn’t like the one at the s lot), and I was struck not only by Apollinaire’s lush sonic landscape but by a line with two words that I didn’t understand and weren’t in any of my French-English dictionaries: “Sur les nixes nicettes aux cheveux verts et naines.” Fortunately, the Trésor de la langue française informatisé came to my rescue; it turns out that nixe is a water spirit, a neck, nicor, or nixie, and nicet (fem. nicette) is a diminutive form of nice, an archaic or dialectal adjective meaning ‘foolish, simple, ignorant,’ to quote the OED s.v. nice, which is borrowed from the French word — as the OED says, “The semantic development of this word from ‘foolish, silly’ to ‘pleasing’ is unparalleled in Latin or in the Romance languages.” Classical Latin nescius, the source of the French word, is transparent in formation: the negative particle ne– plus scīre ‘to know’ (compare the uncommon English adjective nescient ‘ignorant,’ borrowed directly from Latin). Of the water sprite, the OED (s.v. nicker, updated September 2003) says:
Cognate with Middle Dutch necker, nicker (Dutch nikker demon (now obsolete in this sense and employed as a term of racial abuse)), Middle Low German necker, Old High German nichus, nihhus, nikhus (masculine) crocodile, water sprite (Middle High German nickes, nikhus (masculine) water sprite, crocodile, German Nix water sprite, merman (> nix n.2)), nicchessa (feminine) nymph (Middle High German nikese, nikse (in surnames), –nixe (in compound wazzernixe siren), German Nixe (> nixie n.1)), Old Icelandic nykr (Icelandic nykur), Swedish näck, Norwegian (Bokmål) nøkk, Norwegian (Nynorsk) nykk, Danish nøkke), perhaps ultimately < the same Indo-European base as Sanskrit nij-, ancient Greek νίζειν, Early Irish nigid (Irish nigh) all in sense ‘to wash’.
Incidentally, all the translations I’ve seen treat naines as an independent noun and render it “dwarves,” but I agree with Timothy Mathews in Reading Apollinaire: Theories of Poetic Language (p. 45), who treats it as an adjective modifying nixes: “The unusual position of the adjective at the end of the line — the fact that it is significantly separated from the the noun it qualifies — further strains the relation of adjective to noun. ‘Naines’ is spatially close to ‘cheveux’, but because of the discrepancy in gender, there is no adjectival chain established between ‘naines’ and ‘verts’, and the reader is brought up against a qualifier in an unfamilial context, or comes across a word without remembering where it belongs.” (Apollinaire quoted previously on LH.)
“Naines’ is spatially close to ‘cheveux’, but because of the discrepancy in gender, there is no adjectival chain established between ‘naines’ and ‘verts’, and the reader is brought up against a qualifier in an unfamilial context, or comes across a word without remembering where it belongs.”
It looks to me as though “naines” modifies “nixes”, to give “Foolish nixies with green hair and dwarf.”
Nixie tubes:
It looks to me as though “naines” modifies “nixes”, to give “Foolish nixies with green hair and dwarf.”
Yes, that’s exactly what he’s saying (and I’m agreeing with).
Apollinaire may have picked up on “les nixes” from Heinrich Heine, who wrote a ballad called Die Nixen. A lot of the poems in Alcools are influenced by Apollinaire’s stay in the Rhineland and there’s a Franco-German feel to much of the collection. The section entitled “Rhénanes” contains a piece called “La Loreley”, based on another water spirit from Heine.
Heine dedicates several paragraphs to the nixies in his often wonderfully tongue-cheek essay Elementargeister. Here’s my rough translation of some of it:
“Nixies bear a close resemblance to elves. Both are enticing, alluring and love the dance. The elves dance on moorland, on green meadows, in woodland glades and especially under oak trees. The nixies dance near ponds and rivers; they are also to be seen dancing on the water the evening before someone drowns. They come to the places where humans dance too and dance much as we do. Female nixies can be recognised by the hems of their white dresses, which are always wet. Also by the fine weave of their veils and the genteel elegance of their mysterious beings. The male nixie [der Nix rather than die Nixe] can be recognised by his green teeth, which are almost like fishbones. You also feel an inner shudder when you touch his extraordinarily soft, ice-cold hand. He usually wears a green hat. Woe to the girl who dances with him without realising it. He will draw her down to his watery realm.”
Notice that the colour-coding is different from Apollinaire. In Heine, male nixies are green, females white.
(Heine says that only the fish really know anything about the nixies’ underwater realm, but they’re keeping shtum).
You must be right about his getting it from Heine.
Incidentally, I put “nice nicors” in the title as a little joke for my UK readers; I hope they appreciate it.
Hat: nixe is a water spirit
You can bet that Näcken is in Sweden. He, the naked, alluring fiddler in the lake, river, pond or brook, is the source of an endless row of poems, songs, fairy tales, paintings, sculptures, folklore, mysticism etc. You’ve already linked to the Wikipedia about him (neck, nicor, or nixie). I can only contribute with some pictures of him dans le style suédois:
https://www.google.se/search?q=n%C3%A4cken&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=tjb-U-qKPMHqyQOZu4KwBg&sqi=2&ved=0CCsQsAQ&biw=1106&bih=634
He is also the origin of the word näck, ‘naked’ in Swedish as a colloquial complement to the original naken. He has given us the name of the water lily, näckros and in particular the red variety (Nymphaea alba f. rosea), unique to Scandinavia, is directly associated to an event involving Näcken (uncaring biologists though call it a ‘mutation’).
We are enchanted by him, just as the Germans are enchanted by Lorelei or die Rheintöchter, ‘the Rhinemaidens’ or – why not – the Danes by Den lille havfrue, ‘the little mermaid’.
And Americans, though we have none of our own (the consequence of being settled during the Age of Reason, though we do have various figures of urban legend), are part-heirs to them all.
part-heirs to them all
Recommended.
I believe that the niceras (seamonsters) in Beowulf are etymologically related.
In a Michaux poem I no longer can find he speaks of nains constantly being born (naitre) in a memorably odd way.
On a side-note, French ‘naine’ comes from Greek νᾶνος, “dwarf, . . . also a cake made of oil and cheese”, via Latin nānus – words which until recently had few, if any, English cognates known to the general public. Of course, now everyone knows ‘nanotechnology’ and probably other ‘nano-‘ words. I’m guessing the cake was smaller than other cakes, but that’s just a guess.
And Náin was the name of several dwarves in the history of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, including the last king of Khazad-dûm (aka the Mines of Moria). I believe the name comes from the Prose Edda and the resemblance to the French word is just a coincidence.
Stefan, I first met the Swedish water-sprite as a schoolboy, in Astrid Lindgren’s Bullerbyn Children, in the adventure of the Näcken hoax at the Old Mill. The Polish translation has Wodnik, a more-or-less equivalent being, although with no reputation as a fiddler.
I agree that naines in the poem is an adjective agreeing with the feminine plural noun nixes and the diminutive adjective nicettes, but its position after the masculine noun-phrase cheveux verts ‘green hair’ is odd since one expects another masculine adjective after et. Nain/e ‘(male/female) dwarf’ is also a noun. But I don’t know anything about a cake of that name.
About the etymology of OF “nice” from Latin nescius, I remember reading something years ago that mentioned an Occitan word nesci (current spelling might be different) meaning approximately ‘innocent, naïf, simple-minded’ and the like. Such a person is “too nice” to see evil in other people, hence perhaps the positive evolution of the meaning of the word in English.
“Good” / “bon” is sometimes ironically used to describe naive / foolish but nice people, e.g. “le bon Gerard” (de Nerval).
I notice that ‘ouragan’ is translated in both versions as ‘hurricane’, but that raises a question mark.
For me, the English word ‘hurricane’ is strongly identified with tropical cyclones in North America (the same kind of storm is known as a typhoon or cyclone elsewhere in the world). Does this apply to the French word, too? Or is the French word a more generalised term that might be equivalent to ‘gale’ or ‘tempest’? What bothers me is the image of a North American hurricane devastating an orchard in a French poem — does the French convey the same image?
JE, and also in bonhomme and bonne femme which do not refer to ‘good people’ but to very ordinary ones, usually below the “threshold” of the speaker’s opinion of their suitability as social acquaintances.
Bathrobe: Or is the French word a more generalised term that might be equivalent to ‘gale’ or ‘tempest’?
I think you are right, I don’t think the poet used it in the technical sense of “hurricane”, which would be more properly translated as “cyclone”. But hurricanes are not totally unknown in Europe: in the transition from 1999 t0 2000, the new year and new century were marked by two hurricanes which tore through France, the first one across the Northern part, the second one a few days later following a parallel course somewhat farther South, both causing considerable damage as they gained strength over the land. Among other damages, many trees were destroyed in the park of the palace of Versailles, and some Americans organized a petition to raise money to replace them since that would not have been a priority of the French government coping with more pressing problems.
Tolkien’s Dwarf names come from the “Catalogue of Dwarves” in the first poem of the Elder Edda, a Norse cosmogony called Völuspá ‘prophecy of the seeress’. This translation and the notes are by Henry Adams Bellows (1936). I have italicized the names used in The Hobbit:
9. Þá gengu regin öll | á rökstóla,
ginnheilug goð | ok um þat gættusk:
hverr skyldi dverga | drótt um skepja
ór brimi blóðgu | ok ór Bláins leggjum.
9. Then sought the gods | their assembly-seats,
The holy ones, | and council held,
To find who should raise | the race of dwarfs
Out of Brimir’s blood | and the legs of Blain.
[Here apparently begins the interpolated catalogue of the dwarfs, running through stanza 16; possibly, however, the interpolated section does not begin before stanza 11. Snorri quotes practically the entire section, the names appearing in a some what changed order.
Brimir and Blain: nothing is known of these two giants, and it has been suggested that both are names for Ymir (cf. stanza 3). Brimir, however, appears in stanza 37 in connection with the home of the dwarfs. Some editors treat the words as common rather than proper nouns, Brimir meaning “the bloody moisture” and Blain being of uncertain significance.]
10. Þar var Móðsognir | mæztr of orðinn
dverga allra, | en Durinn annarr;
þeir mannlíkun | mörg of gerðu
dvergar í jörðu, | sem Durinn sagði.
10. Here was Motsognir | the mightiest made
Of all the dwarfs, | and Durin next;
Many a likeness | of men they made,
The dwarfs in the earth, | as Durin said.
[Very few of the dwarfs named in this and the following stanzas are mentioned elsewhere. It is not clear why Durin should have been singled out as authority for the list. The occasional repetitions suggest that not all the stanzas of the catalogue came from the same source. Most of the names presumably had some definite significance, as Northri, Suthri, Austri, and Vestri (“North,” “South”, “East,” and “West”), Althjof (“Mighty Thief’), Mjothvitnir (“Mead-Wolf”), Gandalf (“Magic Elf’), Vindalf (“Wind Elf’), Rathwith (“Swift in Counsel”), Eikinskjaldi (“Oak Shield”), etc., but in many cases the interpretations are sheer guesswork.]
11. Nýi, Niði, | Norðri, Suðri,
Austri, Vestri, | Alþjófr, Dvalinn,
Nár ok Náinn | Nípingr, Dáinn
Bívurr, Bávurr, | Bömburr, Nóri,
Ánn ok Ánarr, | Óinn, Mjöðvitnir.
11. Nyi and Nithi, | Northri and Suthri,
Austri and Vestri, | Althjof, Dvalin,
Nar and Nain, | Niping, Dain,
Bifur, Bofur, | Bombur, Nori,
An and Onar, | Ai, Mjothvitnir.
12. Veggr ok Gandalfr, | Vindalfr, Þorinn,
Þrár ok Þráinn, | Þekkr, Litr ok Vitr,
Nýr ok Nýráðr, | nú hefi ek dverga,
Reginn ok Ráðsviðr, | rétt of talða.
12. Vigg and Gandalf,| Vindalf, Thrain,
Thekk and Thorin, | Thror, Vit and Lit,
Nyr and Nyrath — | now have I told —
Regin and Rathsvith — | the list aright.
[The order of the lines in this and the succeeding four stanzas varies greatly in the manuscripts and editions, and the names likewise appear in many forms.
Regin: probably not identical with Regin the son of Hreithmar, who plays an important part in the Reginsmál and Fafnismál, but cf. note on Reginsmál, introductory prose.]
13. Fíli, Kíli, | Fundinn, Náli,
Hefti, Víli, | Hannar, Svíurr,
Billingr, Brúni, | Bíldr ok Buri,
Frár, Hornbori, | Frægr ok Lóni,
Aurvangr, Jari, | Eikinskjaldi.
13. Fili, Kili, | Fundin, Nali,
Heptifili, | Hannar, Sviur,
Frar, Hornbori, | Fræg and Loni,
Aurvang, Jari, | Eikinskjaldi.
14. Mál er dverga | í Dvalins liði
ljóna kindum | til Lofars telja,
þeir er sóttu | frá salar steini
Aurvanga sjöt | til Jöruvalla.
14. The race of the dwarfs | in Dvalin’s throng
Down to Lofar | the list must I tell;
The rocks they left, | and through wet lands
They sought a home | in the fields of sand.
[Dvalin: in Havamál 144, Dvalin seems to have given magic runes to the dwarfs, probably accounting for their skill in craftsmanship, while in Fafnismál 13, he is mentioned as the father of some of the lesser Norns. The story that some of the dwarfs left the rocks and mountains to find a new home on the sands is mentioned, but unexplained, in Snorri’s Edda; of Lofar we know only that he was descended from these wanderers.]
15. Þar var Draupnir ok | Dolgþrasir,
Hár, Haugspori, | Hlévangr, Glóinn,
Dóri, Óri, | Dúfr, Andvari
Skirfir, Virfir, | Skáfiðr, Ái.
15. There were Draupnir | and Dolgthrasir,
Hor, Haugspori, | Hlevang, Gloin,
Dori, Ori, | Duf, Andvari,
Skirfir, Virfir, | Skafith, Ai.
16. Alfr ok Yngvi, | Eikinskjaldi,
Fjalarr ok Frosti, | Finnr ok Ginnarr;
þat mun æ uppi | meðan öld lifir,
langniðja tal | Lofars hafat.
16. Alf and Yngvi, | Eikinskjaldi,
Fjalar and Frosti, | Fith and Ginnar;
So for all time | shall the tale be known,
The list of all | the forbears of Lofar.
Shippey says that in Tolkien’s imagination this list might have represented a much-reduced version of a long-forgotten story about a group of Dwarves, an Elf (as Men would have thought him) who went with them and got mixed into the catalogue (‘staff-elf’ is a more plausible interpretation of Gandalfr than ‘magic-elf’, although either would do for Tolkien), and a Hobbit who, as they tend to do, got left out of the list. Eikinskjaldi is more like a byname than a name, and indeed in Tolkien it is Thorin’s byname, reflecting a story (invented by Tolkien) that Thorin’s shield was broken in battle, and he picked up and used an oak limb to defend himself. The name of Balin, the first dwarf to show up at Bilbo’s house, is the only one that does not appear here, though it is a name from Arthurian legend; however, Balin’s father Fundin (mentioned in The Lord of the Rings) is present.
Incidentally, I put “nice nicors” in the title as a little joke for my UK readers; I hope they appreciate it.
This one did, thanks.
Anyone know the origin of the name Naina, an evil sorceress in Pushkin’s Ruslan and Liudmila?
Finnish nainen ‘woman’, I think.
Thanks, Piotr.
“Good” / “bon” is sometimes ironically used to describe naive / foolish but nice people
By an odd coincidence, I’ve just come across the German equivalent in Heine’s Elementargeister:
“Die seltsamsten Sagen in Betreff der Elementargeister findet man bei dem alten guten Johannes Prätorius, dessen ‘Anthropodemus plutonicus, oder neue Weltbeschreibung von allerley wunderbaren Menschen’ im Jahr 1666 zu Magdeburg erschienen ist. Schon die Jahrzahl ist merkwürdig; es ist das Jahr dem der jüngste Tag prophezeit worden. Der Inhalt des Buches ist ein Wust von Unsinn, aufgegabeltem Aberglauben, maulhängkolischen und affenteuerlichen Historien und gelehrten Citaten, Kraut und Rüben.”
“The strangest legends regarding elemental spirits are to be found in good old Johannes Prätorius, whose ‘Anthropodemus Plutonicus, or A New World Description of All Sorts of Wonderful Beings’ appeared in Magdeburg in 1666. The very date is noteworthy; it was the year for which the Day of Judgment had been prophesied. The contents of the book are a jumble of nonsense, dug-up superstitions, jaw-dropping and bizarre stories and learned quotations, a chaotic mishmash.”
I’m sure there are Hatters with a better knowledge of German who could provide a more accurate translation. I didn’t make much attempt to deal with Heine’s wordplay.
“maulhängkolisch” I presume is a pun on “melancholisch” (melancholy) using “Maul” (gob) and “hängen” (to hang), so something like jaw-dropping or gob-smacking
“affenteuerlich” is a pun on “abenteuerlich” (adventurous, bizarre) using “Affe” (ape, monkey, idiot)
“Kraut und Rüben” (cabbage and turnips) I believe is an idiom for “a complete mess”
–Anyone know the origin of the name Naina, an evil sorceress in Pushkin’s Ruslan and Liudmila?
Most likely
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanna_(Norse_deity)
Interesting about the Heine-quote — this comes from a quick search:
The word ‘maulhängkolisch’ is also mentioned around the same time by Karl Julius Weber (1767-1832) in his ‘Democritos’ (ed. 1838, vol. III: ‘Subjectiver Unterschied des Lächerlichen in Ansehung der Temperamente’, p. 31). He explains it as a jocular folk-phrase [Volkswitz] for the hanging lower lip of sad people (“die herunterhängende Unterlippe, daher der Volkswitz auch, statt melancholisch, maulhängcholisch zu sagen pflegt”). How popular that actually was is hard to tell, but his explanation fits what I as a German speaker would have associated with the word.
Also, “affenteuerlich” is (semi-)famous from the title of Johann Fischarts translation of Rabelais, “Affentheurliche, naupengeheurliche Geschichtklitterung…” (1575) (see the ed. 1590 here))
Given the themes of Rabelais and the punning style of Fischart, I wouldn’t be surprised to find maulhängcholisch in there as well.
If I had the time, I’d be interested in finding out whether Johannes Praetorius drew much on Fischart/Rabelais, not unlikely, considering his subject matter.
Piotr, Astrid Lindgren came from Småland in the south Swedish highlands. Like 80-90 percent of Sweden it’s forested. In addition we have around 10.000 lakes, next to Canada more than any other country in the world. This landscape has formed Swedish folklore, which besides Näcken is crowded by trolls, elves, brownies, gnomes, goblins, giants, fairies and similar obscure, often subterranean, creatures out there in the dark, mysterious woods.
The Æsir cult seems to have been important mainly to people in the more densely populated plain areas as crucial for a good harvest. As late as in the 19th c. indignant priests reported about wooden figures of Thor being carried by otherwise church visiting villagers in procession around the lands to bless the crop.
SFReader: Pushkin based the character of Naina on “Ossian”‘s (Macpherson’s) Moina (in the poem “Carthon”), and the inspiration is obviously reflected in the phonetics of the name. But given the Finnish background of the Fin and Naina love story, I think he must also have been aware of Finnish nainen and/or Estonian and Karelian naine ‘woman’.
If I had the time, I’d be interested in finding out whether Johannes Praetorius drew much on Fischart/Rabelais, not unlikely, considering his subject matter.
Heine had certainly read Rabelais and he may well have taken those words from the German translation.
Both Heine and Rabelais treat supernatural beings humorously. Praetorius seems much more of a true believer, hence Heine’s mockery of him. There’s an entire book dedicated to him, Ways of Knowing in Early Modern Germany: Johannes Praetorius as a Witness to His Time by Gerhild Scholz Williams (available in a partial preview on Google Books). It contains one reference to Rabelais’ “satirical gigantology” there. However, it seems Praetorius took the existence of giants seriously, reporting that Swedish soldiers had excavated the body of one in Krems, Austria in 1645 and presented one of his teeth to the Holy Roman Emperor.
The “Maulhängkolisch” pun is originally from Fischart, according to this Dutch website, only not from his translation of Rabelais but from his Aller Praktik Grossmutter (1572).
More on Heine’s line in rhetorical attacks in this old LH post.
European hurricanes are not, technically speaking, hurricanes/typhoons/tropical storms, though they do have cyclonic winds of hurricane strength.
JC, Winds of hurricane strength were indeed blowing. I was in France at the time and did not read the English-speaking press about it, so I don’t know what English word was used for the French ouragan.
Wikipedia on the word ‘hurricane’ in various languages.
“And Americans, though we have none of our own (the consequence of being settled during the Age of Reason, though we do have various figures of urban legend), are part-heirs to them all.”
Oh John….John… America was *not* settled during the Age of Reason, it was settled towards the end of the Pleistocene, and yes Americans do have our own water spirits – just not us Anglo-Americans perhaps.
http://www.native-languages.org/water-babies.htm
http://www.native-languages.org/true-tiger.htm
http://www.native-languages.org/morelegends/little-thunders.htm
M-L,
“JE, and also in bonhomme and bonne femme which do not refer to ‘good people’ but to very ordinary ones, usually below the “threshold” of the speaker’s opinion of their suitability as social acquaintances.”
This is analogous to the condescending tone of “my good man” in English.
When I say “American culture”, which is what I’m talking about here, I don’t mean “Algonquian culture” or even “Navajo culture” or “Inuit culture”. But you knew that.
My feeling from reading is that the titles “Goodman” or “Goodwife” mark the absolute bottom level of human decency, people of no great merit but without fatal blemishes — not felons, witches, demoniacs, savages, slaves, etc. The generic male or female without distinguishing traits.
“Nixies” in the USPS are misaddressed piece of mail. A friend of mine specializes in nixies and he loves it. But that part of the USPS mission (fixing undeliverable addresses) is being gradually eliminated.
“When I say “American culture”, which is what I’m talking about here, I don’t mean “Algonquian culture” or even “Navajo culture” or “Inuit culture”. But you knew that.”
John, speaking of “American culture” there is a TV show dedicated to just this kind of thing in Appalachia and in various parts of the South. Maybe none of them happen to be associated with water, but you will agree that the Mothman, the Chupacabra and the Sasquatch don’t have much to do with the Age of Reason. And you will probably agree that the Sasquatch pretty much erases the distinction between “American culture” and the native cultures you mention because people allover, NA or not, believe in it – so no, I didn’t “know” that because it’s bogus.
As for your contention that the country was settled during the Age of Reason, that isn’t true even of the English settlers, who set up their colonies during the bloodiest and most unreasonable period of the Reformation. The Salem Witch Trails were not an expression of the Age of Reason. And even the Scotch-Irish, who did come over after it had started, obviously were untouched by an intellectual movement they had no contact with.
So that’s not the answer. The question is why out of all the superstitious crap these people brought with them, they left these water spirits home.
Yeah, I think the earliest anyone suggests the Age of Reason (which I take to be more or less synonymous with the Enlightenment) began was the late 17th century, when the American colonies were already well established.
The name of Balin, the first dwarf to show up at Bilbo’s house, is the only one that does not appear here, though it is a name from Arthurian legend.
Balin is also the name of a somewhat obscure Catholic saint from the British Isles:
“Born to the 7th century English nobility. Brother of Saint Gerald. Worked with Saint Colman of Lindisfarne, and travelled with him to Iona, Scotland. With his brothers, he later settled to live as a monk at Tecksaxon (“The House of the Saxons”) near Tuam, Ireland. ”
From the online Patron Saints Index: http://saints.sqpn.com/saint-balin/
By the way his feast day is coming up. September 3rd or 7th, depending on the calendar.
“the use of the French term ouragan is similarly discouraged as hurricane is in English, as it is typically reserved for tropical storms only.”
This must have been after Apollinaire.
Re: Goodman
“Sain er” (Good man) was a term for Robin Hood like noble horse thieves in 19th century Mongolia.
They stole horses from the rich and gave money to the poor.
… not to mention goodfellas.
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Is it only water spirits that didn’t survive the voyage to America? Robert Kirk notes in The Secret Commonwealth (I quote the end of a very long sentence): “… so that every Countrey and Kingdom having their topical Spirits, or Powers assisting and governing them, the SCOTTISH SEER banished to America, being a Stranger there, as well to the invisible as to the visible Inhabitants, and wanting a Familiarity of his former Correspondents, he could not have the Favour and Warnings, by the severall Visions and Predictions which were wont to be granted him by these Acquaintances and Favourites in his own Countrey.”
And water spirits in particular seem to be a special case. If you want to find remains of former languages, look at the river names. Water has a special mental connection to the history of a land. Hence water spirits especially don’t transfer.
even the Scotch-Irish, who did come over after it had started, obviously were untouched by an intellectual movement they had no contact with.
And remain untouched by it to this day, some might argue.
Not untouched, but certainly unpenetrated. Remember we’re talking about people for whom the main incarnations of Rational Thinking have been resource-extraction industries.
@ Sir JCass
However, it seems Praetorius took the existence of giants seriously
There is of course a lot of literature in Early Modern Studies about this kind of issue. In short: the seemingly indiscriminate conflation of what we now regard as real and as fictitious. The general idea is more or less that throughout the 14th-17th centuries, travel books and new discoveries held so many surprises, that anything was believed possible.
I am rather wary of being naive ourselves when we attribute a general kind of naiveté to people of an earlier period. What I will say, as a rather general opinion resulting from my own studies of the Early Modern era, and thus to be taken with a grain of salt, is that both the tradition of textual authority (the bible, no less, as far as giants are concerned) and perhaps a sense of the systematic execution of natural possibilities in a God-created world played into these views, at least when it comes to writers.
I am rather wary of being naive ourselves when we attribute a general kind of naiveté to people of an earlier period.
Yes, this is something I always try to keep in mind. It’s fatally easy to assume, without thinking about it, that our ancestors were far more simple-minded than we are.
Stephen Jay Gould once wrote an article on how mollusc shells before a certain time are often represented as left-handed spirals, a type that is very very rare (with the exception of certain species that are normally left-handed) in nature. How could they be so blind? He finally comes to the conclusion that they simply didn’t care about correctly representing chirality: it was an irrelevant feature from their perspective, less important than ease of drawing and clarity.
I don’t know how worthy Praetorius was of Heine’s mockery. Heine was frequently unfair.
Praetorius has some interest from a linguistic point of view. He was a member of the Elbschwanenorden, a society dedicated to promoting the German language and protecting it from foreign influences.
He was a member of the Elbschwanenorden, a society dedicated to promoting the German language and protecting it from foreign influences.
The Elbschwanenorden! That all by itself drives me to mockery; it brings to mind Kenneth Koch’s immortal “Fresh Air“:
…The chairman stood up on the platform, oh he was physically ugly!
He was small-limbed and -boned and thought he was quite seductive,
But he was bald with certain hideous black hairs,
And his voice had the sound of water leaving a vaseline bathtub,
And he said, “The subject for this evening’s discussion is poetry
On the subject of love between swans.” And everyone threw candy hearts
At the disgusting man, and they stuck to his bib and tucker…
Der Elbschwanenorden wurde als Auszeichnung von der Hamburger Regionalgruppe des Vereins Deutsche Sprache wiederbelebt.[1] Bisherige Preisträger:
2005: Hamburger Wasserwerke
Why did the Hamburg Waterworks win a German language prize?
Der Elbschwanenorden war eine Sprachgesellschaft der Barockzeit, die zwischen 1656 und 1660 gegründet wurde, 1667 einging und der insgesamt 46 Mitglieder angehörten…Die Sprachgesellschaften im Allgemeinen und somit auch der Elbschwanenorden hatten das Ziel, die deutsche Sprache zu pflegen und vor fremden Einflüssen zu schützen.
Surely that’s awfully early to have been worrying about this sort of thing. 1656: that’s only 40-odd years after Shakespeare’s death.
Geehrte Deutsche Kameraden dieses Blogs: what is an ‘Elbschwan’ (river swan)? In Swden we know about the knölsvan, Höckerschwan, ‘Mute swan’ and the sångsvan, Singschwan ‘Whooper swan’ Is it a lack of lakes that makes you specify this variety? A google search gave just one hit: a dissertation by Alexander Weber: Günter Grass’s Use of Baroque Literature. It says:
Apollo is described as ‘schwanenhalsig’ (swan necked) because in mythology he is related to the swan, the emblem of the poets (hence the names ‘Boberschwan’ Opitz, the ‘Elbschwan’ Rist). Moreover, the word ‘Schwanenhalsig’ indicates that art and literature are very vulnerable.
Otherwise the word swan is thought to be connected to Latin sono, sounds, rings.
Ah, Hat’s heart hardened towards Praetorius once he suspected him of prescriptivism!
Surely that’s awfully early to have been worrying about this sort of thing.
Googling around, it seems that there were lots of these “Sprachgesellschaften” in 17th-century Germany, all with fancy names. The “Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft” was founded in 1617, under the influence of the Italian Accademia della Crusca. It was followed by the “Aufrichtige Tannengesellschaft” in 1642. Later came the “Teutschgesinnte Genossenschaft” and the “Pegnesischer Blumenorden” (still going, apparently). Their aim was to standardise orthography and protect the German language from foreign influence (primarily Latin and French).
what is an ‘Elbschwan’ (river swan)?
Yes, the name of the society means something like “The Swan Order of the [River] Elbe”. Poets were often described as swans and thus associated with rivers. Most famously, Shakespeare was the “sweet swan of Avon”.
In Canada we have Trumpeter Swans and Whooping Cranes.
Yeah, I think it’s the German equivalent of the English people who were against “ynkhorne termes”.
Bávurr.
Ferdinand the Benevolent, in Vienna called der depperte Ferdl “dumb Ferdie”.
Human beings.
Picked up somewhere.
Yes, Kraut und Rüben durcheinander is a hopeless mess.
I thought Finland is the Official Land of the One Hundred Thousand Lakes?
That really was a thing: the Principle of Plenitude. Apparently it would be illogical for an omnipotent creator to leave any gaps in nature, whatever a gap would be.
This is why Darwin put so much emphasis on competition: he still thought the whole world was overcrowded both literally and ecologically.
Maybe they replaced an English word on their website with a German one? I’ll just say that the VDS is a bunch of cringe-inducing prescriptivists who have no idea what they’re getting so upset about.
Already? Because standardisation didn’t happen till 1901 de jure and the mid-19th century de facto.
Anyway, they created lots of neologisms (usually calques), maybe half of which have caught on and have replaced terms derived from Latin or French.
Years ago when I was studying German I read the original of Goethe’s Elective Affinities and was surprised at the high number of French words in the text.
Human beings
I hesitated to put that because Praetorius includes nixies, elves, giants et al. as “Menschen”. Gerhild Scholz Williams uses “humanoids”, I think.
Their aim was to standardise orthography
Already?
Apparently so. It doesn’t mean they succeeded.
See here, for instance:
Außerdem sollte auch die einheitliche Orthographie (Rechtschreibung) gefördert
The site also gives a few examples of the Germanised neologisms they created which didn’t catch on:
Fenster Tagesleuchter
Fieber Zitterweh
Nase Löschhorn/Gesichtserker
Pistole Reispuffer
It seems to me that if you want to learn about the European purview of most subjects the best place to start is usually Germany. Surely these 17C Sprachgesellschaften that aren’t contemporary with anything similar in France or England, and with their hostile-sounding wish to protect German from Latin & French influence (“die sich der Pflege und Förderung der eigenen Sprache widmeten und gegen Überfremdung durch andere Sprachen wand ten), they’re likely connected to the religious politics of the Thirty Years’ War. I mean it started in 1618 and the first society, die Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, was gegründet in 1617 durch Fürst Ludwig I. von Anhalt-Köthen. It says in Wiktionary that they were nach italienischem Vorbild, besonders in der Barockzeit, but I don’t know how Italy comes into it.
Their aim was to standardise orthography
Already?
Apparently so. It doesn’t mean they succeeded.
By the way, I saw on the Cambridge University German-language site (Aspects of the History of the German Language):
I don’t know how Italy comes into it.
A number of societies promoting language purism had arisen in 16th-century Italy, most famously the Accademia della Crusca. These provided a model for the German Sprachgesellschaften.
The Sprachgesellschaften are a fascinating topic. There is much confusion in their various manifestos what exactly their aim was. All things considered, the point of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft in its early phase, which goes from c. 1617 to just after the 30-years-war, is really twofold: to translate as much as possible into German (from French, Italian, Latin, Greek etc.) and thus strengthen the language’s literary use. The anti-Latin and French bias is at least partly explained by many unreadable texts at the time which just borrow faintly Germanized words from these languages.
The other point was to make available in German a great number of newer texts in order to update the general scientific discourse, which was felt to be necessary after the war years.
The question of purism is a difficult one, especially since it was an important tool for political unification, as we know best from the Académie française…
Certain people (for the FG was a huge network of men-of-letters, not a real – convening – society) like G. Ph. Harsdörffer had more affinity toward the Italian and French linguistic societies and wanted a genuinely international communication, but diplomacy made much of it impossible (the gist was: the Germans cannot contact the Italians in Italian, because that would mean acknowledging their superiority etc.) A lot of this can be found in the special literature on the subject. (Harsdörffer nonetheless wasn’t a very sympathetic fellow, but is among the most interesting people of the German world of letters at the time. He also founded the Pegnesischer Blumenorden in fact still extant, as Sir JCass mentioned, but mostly in order to wander about dressed up as shepherds and write bucolic poetry with his friends J. Klaj and S. von Birken.)
On the German academies, I generally recommend, for German-speakers, Markus Hundt: Spracharbeit im 17. Jahrhundert (Berlin 2000).
The many Italian groups unfortunately are not very well-studied at least in recent times (there are a few publications from the first half of the 20th century, such as Maylender’s Storia delle Accademie d’Italia from the 20s).
On the French academies before Richelieu’s famous group (who by the way tried to erase all memories of the earlier academies) the authority is still Frances Yates: French Academies of the 16th century (London 1947)
Thanks, it’s great to get such well-informed comments!
it’s great to get such well-informed comments!
Yes, and with references! It’s only possible at Language Hat. Thank you very much, Sir J and D Syrovy.
Thank you very much, Sir J and D Syrovy.
Thanks are more due to D Syrovy. I’m a mere dilettante here.
It’s true. Languagehat must be one of the few places on the Net you can encounter someone who really knows something about, say, German Sprachgesellschaften.
I’m also quite interested in Praetorius’ folkloristic stuff now, in spite of Heine’s Voltairean mockery.
Here’s his chapter on “Nixen. Mörfinnen, Syrenen, Meerwundern, Nymfen and Wasserweibern.” (That’s a messy hyperlink. Hope it works).
Some years ago (probably late 60’s) I saw a beautiful movie, I think from Hungary, called in English “Something is adrift in the water”. In the story, the life of a peasant couple living near a big river is utterly changed by the sudden intrusion of a very beautiful woman who emerges from the river and is taken in by them. I thought that although the treatment of the events was relatively realistic, the plot must be inspired by old legends about nixes or other female water spirits who seduce men into joining them by drowning: the woman is always completely silent and spends alarmingly long periods underwater, and she seems to have a supernatural influence on both husband and wife. I thought that the film title was odd: it occurs to me now that like many other movie titles, it might be a quote from a traditional folk song or poem which would be instantly recognizable from speakers of the original language.
I think you’re thinking of the 1969 Czech movie Touha zvaná Anada (Adrift); you can watch the whole thing, with subtitles, here.
…Oh. That’s unexpected. I guess he used it for “people” in the Star Trek meaning of that term.
That has worked out. Even today, more is translated into German than into any other language.
I’m curious if they had any concrete ideas about orthography. Wikipedia only mentions that the Aufrichtige Tannengesellschaft (“Upright/honest Fir-Society”) wanted to “fix” the spelling.
You haven’t been to Tet Zoo. 🙂
You haven’t been to Tet Zoo
Do they discuss German Sprachgesellschaften there?
No, but references in posts and comments are very common.
Yeah, I figured, but come on, you expect references on a science discussion board, and they’re (presumably) all going to be about tetrapods. Here, you never know what obscure area of human knowledge is going to be illuminated.
I guess humans qualify as tetrapods too?
Most certainly, m-l. And Hat, this is a science (i.e. Wissenschaft) discussion board.
Tom Shippey on philologists vs. philosophers (PDF, p. 25, physical p. 19):
John, in that article Shippey makes a good point: “Philosophy is too important to be left to philosophers. Philosophy deals with the great questions of human life, and anyone who has lived for very long is at least aware of them.”
Unfortunately, he also writes: “Nevertheless, I think even Lewis would agree that we do not need to know the history of philosophy to be philosophers.”
This is unfortunate because the examples of so-called philosophical questions he gives in between those two passages are, with one exception, dusty questions from the history of philosophy that should *not* be taken for granted as inherently sensible ones: “Why must we die? Why are our lives so different from each other? Is there no justice in the world? Are we merely the victims of chance? Anyone who has asked any of these questions – and surely that means all of us – is beginning to be a philosopher.”
It is crucial to become aware of how much of our thinking is dominated by hand-me-down bits of Western systematic philosophy. Without some knowledge of philosophies in history, we can’t recognize when we are rehashing them. Do-it-yourselfers in philosophy usually end up in a rut, having re-invented the wheel, but this time square instead of round.
I think you are right, and I don’t think Shippey means that we can be competent philosophers without knowing something of the history of the subject. But I would add that much of what he says about philosophers is equally true of linguists, whose roots are in philology: the scholars have less and less to say to the rest of us, and many clever-but-heartless schools have turned their backs on those same roots.
Here’s a bit more Shippey, from his essay “The Roots of Romance” (repr. Roots and Branches):
My wife’ adult English literacy students, once they have learned a little bit of how to read and write this most difficult language (they are all orally competent in it, whether natively or not, or they’d be in a different class), are immediately full of philological questions: Why are words spelled so differently from how they sound? Where do these long words come from, and what do they “really” (i.e. etymologically) mean? These are dusty questions too, but unlike the dusty philosophical questions, many of them have answers, which I relay back through Gale when she relays me the questions. As m-l and Etienne have noted here repeatedly, students often become interested in linguistics because they want to know about word origins, and are often disappointed when that’s not what the subject turns out to be about.
—Therem Harth rem ir Estraven (in Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness)
Tet Zoo is actually remarkably similar to Language Hat. The commentariat contains professional scientists, birdwatchers (often the same people) and interested laypeople; there are in-jokes remarkably similar to “everything is Dravidian”; there are posts about speculative biology, comparable to the Klingon language; and there are posts about artistic depictions of extinct tetrapods. As for us being tetrapods, you might like this post which puts us in context. 🙂
That’s a biological question, not a philosophical one.
(Lots of questions that used to be treated by philosophy have over time turned out to belong elsewhere.)
I never thought I would live to see discussions of tetrapod philosophy on Language Hat…
Thank you for the Tet Zoo, David. The large robins and small woodpeckers I’ve been seeing lately may well be nuthatches.
Yes, Tet Zoo is a complement to Languagehat!
David, thanks to the article on “us being tetrapods”, I knew some of the information but learned more, and in more depth.
Lots of questions that used to be treated by philosophy have over time turned out to belong elsewhere.
In France what corresponds to approximately grade 12 (or the 12th grade) includes the study of “philosophy”. I don’t know what the curriculum is nowadays, but “in my time” it was a hodgepodge of philosophy, psychology and probably one or two other disciplines I don’t remember (the course was not officially subdivided, and there was no textbook, just the prof lecturing). Later I was also exposed to classes in what I think was more deserving of the name of philosophy. Altogether I had three ‘philosophy’ teachers, only one of whom occasionally gave me a glimmer of what philosophy was about.
On a collective reading, “Why must we die?” is indeed a biological question. But considered distributively, “Why must I (and you, and you, and you, …) die?” it is still a separate philosophical question.
Austria too; psychology is treated the year before, but by the same teacher.
“Philosophy” ends up being a short look at the history of philosophy. “Psychology” is not much different…
Why must we die?
That’s a biological question, not a philosophical one.
No, no, no, no. This has nothing to do with biology. Must has a force of moral or legal imperative. The very question presupposes that the world as it is has internal order, logic, structure or what have you and seeks to elicit why this order etc. includes death. One of the worst answers is “for the good of the species” and one of the best is the original sin.
Ah, in that case I’d say the question is simply wrong. 🙂
We aren’t somehow obliged to die. We just break down at some point. Shit happens.
Returning back to nicors and nixies – is there any relation to the mischievous spirit for whom the metal “nickel” is named?
I recall that the metal is said to be named for some kind of mischievous spirit (who supposedly substituted it for more usable metals), and the assorted cognates to “nixie” certainly remind me of said word. But it is not listed explicitly (nor is any other form that ends in -l), and presumably any spirit that messed with metals would probably have been associated with somewhere other than water.
“Nickel” is from “kupfernickel,” literally meaning demon copper, since when mined it appeared to be a copper ore, yet yielded no copper. (The spelling “kupfernickel” is standardized as per German, but the word was in use in Dutch and English as well in eighteenth century, presumably with various spellings and pronunciations.) It is, in fact, cognate to the word “nicker,” which meant a water demon in the same languages, although the form “nix(ie)” was probably influenced by Latin.
The demon metal meaning of “nickel” is even more evident in the name of the chemically very similar element cobalt.
The OED says that nickel in Pumpernickel is from the proper name Nicklaus: literally ‘farting Nick’, meaning ‘lout’. Is that a different Nickel?
I think so. Nicholas is one of the Devil’s names (as in Old Nick):
O Coenobite, O coenobite,
Monastical gregarian,
You differ from the anchorite
That solitudinarian:
With vollied prayers you wound Old Nick;
With dropping shots he makes him sick.
—The Devil’s Dictionary s.v. coenobite ‘monk who lives communally’
The other way around.
Anyway, a mix-up of the water-demon word with Nikolaus makes sense to me.
Scand. nisse “pixie, elf, goblin; Santa” and Nisse “Nicky” are generally seen as coincidental homonyms, however conflated around Christmas. The parallel German doublet makes me doubt that.
(I use “Scand.” as a broad brush here, hiding variation both between and within the individual languages.)
Scand. nisse “pixie, elf, goblin; Santa” and Nisse “Nicky” are generally seen as coincidental homonyms, however conflated around Christmas.
TIL “Nils” = “Nicholas” (never having made that connection). That probably explains why Google translate rendered my former colleague’s nickname “Nisse” as “Brownie.”
@David Marjanović: In spite of the reversal of word order, I find “literally” to be fine in what I wrote, although I can imagine that another idiolect may disagree. Does anybody else have an opinion?
I agree. If you’d said “in that order,” there would have been a problem.
That “I think so” should have been “I think not”: that is, Kupfernickel and Pumpernickel are etymologically the same -nickel.
But it’s a kind of demon, not a kind of copper. This isn’t Ancient Greek where you can’t tell the meaning of a compound noun from the order of its components, and where you can’t predict that a philosopher isn’t called a sophophile.
@David Marjanović: That’s not how I understood the word, but you might be right. It matches “cobalt,” at least, although demon copper makes a lot more sense to me than copper demon. Since the word is attested in multiple west Germanic languages, I wonder if it originated in a nonstandard dialect in which the order of the modifier and head in the noun phrase could be switched under certain circumstances. Such dialects do exist; I’ve at least observed it in some rural dialects of the American South.
@Trond, ODS explains nisse as taboo replacement, so originally it’s the same as the hypocoristic.
I have no gut feeling whether it’s still the same, since Danes don’t do hypocoristics the same way that Swedes (and Norwegians?) do — or not any longer, I should say. Nowadays if a Dane is called Lasse, for instance, it’s because his parents named him that, but a hundred years ago he was probably baptized as Lars.
But nobody is named Nisse since that’s not the sort of being that you would name a boy for — so perhaps that answers the question: the hypocoristic wasn’t promoted to a ‘real’ name because it couldn’t be separated from the ‘brownie’ meaning. (Currently Nils isn’t very popular either, but Nisse would be downright weird).
Norwegians don’t do hypocoristics anymore either. But we used to.
I don’t think there’s any way to make nisse a cognate of nix, and there are too many coincidences here. I now think nisse as a euphemism for spirit could be a borrowing or calque of German Nickel, itself a coicidence, or pun. If this fed back into the modern myth of St. Nicholas, I don’t know. The Santa character in Scandinavia relates to older, local mythical beings, and it’s only in Norway he’s called julenissen. St. Nicholas is non-existent in Scandinavian Christmas mythology.
Such dialects do exist; I’ve at least observed it in some rural dialects of the American South.
Huh.
I wish I could provide more details. Even in these dialects, post-positional modifiers are relatively uncommon, and they are probably subject to strong restrictions that I don’t understand. However, usages like “church baptist” (referring to the congregation, not a member) do occur in these dialects with comparative frequency.
On Kupfernickel : I second David in this, this can only be interpreted as “copper demon”. I haven’t heard of any German dialect that has noun-noun head – determiner compounds.
@Brett: Depending on where you encountered the head initial compounds you mention, could that be French or Spanish influence? Both languages would have the order “church” + “denomination”.
And compare “church militant.”
Not to forget the church expectant, which consists of the souls in Purgatory, and the church triumphant, which consists of the souls in Heaven.
only in Norway he’s called julenissen — oh no you don’t, you copied that from Danish.
Seriously, julenissen (definite form) may be less common than julemanden in Danish, but it’s still the guy with the big sack for naughty children. En julenisse on the other hand is more likely to refer to a member of the lower orders of nissehood.
Since the concept of Santa Claus was only introduced around 1900 this should probably be seen as a conflation caused by their independent association with Christmas and similar taste in hats — the figures may have originated in the same pre-Christian myth, but people didn’t think “it’s because Claus is cognate to Nisse” when they transferred the name.
Lars: Seriously, julenissen (definite form) may be less common than julemanden in Danish, but it’s still the guy with the big sack for naughty children. En julenisse on the other hand is more likely to refer to a member of the lower orders of nissehood.
I didn’t know that. Well, I knew you had nisser, also those little ones around Christmas, and I expect the word itself to be brought to us from Danish. But I did think julemanden was the only way to say “Santa Claus” in modern Danish. This is exactly why I should have stayed with the broad brush.
[…] people didn’t think “it’s because Claus is cognate to Nisse” when they transferred the name.
Certainly not. What I mean is, I don’t know whether the same older myths may have fed into the modern concept of Santa Claus to such an extent that the name is no coincidence after all.
What I mean by too many coincidences is that there’s supposed to be three etymologically unrelated words becoming homonyms for the same three concepts in several languages, but not with the same distribution.
1. The name Nikolaos developing the forms Nickel in German and Nisse in Scandinavian.
2. German Nickel is a form of sprite with potential to do harm if not treated with respect. From the “nix” word.
3. Scand. Nisse is a form of sprite with potential to do harm if not treated with respect. According to Bjorvand & Linesman (following Hoff) from niðsi “dear little relative”.
1 is used for the Santa character in Dutch (and hence English). 3 is used in Scandinavia.
Christmas and the mischievous sprites are linked by the fact that the lawless days after Christmas tradionally were ruled by the various spirits of chaos (or the old order, as it were). Julenisser makes sense.
One step to reduce the number of coincidences is to reject the separate etymology of nisse “sprite” and see it as a calque of the German homonymy. I think that’s acceptable based on its distribution in Norwegian.
Another step would be to have the Nickel sprite contaminate the folk-legend of St. Nicholas, somewhere on the continent some centuries ago, making them reasonably conflated for non-linguistic reasons when meeting again in Scandinavia in the 19th century. I can’t judge the plausibility of that.
M-L: Does the ‘nickelés’ of the Pieds Nickelés in the bandes dessinés come from the German mischievous sprite above-mentioned ?
The mother church of Christian Science is The First Church of Christ, Scientist (the comma and capped The are part of the name). It’s in Boston.
Tolkien wrote a modern fairy-story-style version of Beowulf called Sellic Spell, which is published with (but quite independent of) his translation of the latter. In it, the personal names are modernized: the hero is Beewolf (and he is explicitly said to be a feral child raised by wolves), the enemy is Grinder, Beewolf’s companions are Handshoe and Ashwood (in this version identified with the coast-guard who challenges Beewolf when his ship lands), his Danish frenemy is Unfriend, and so on. Tolkien would later use the same style for Shadowfax and Wormtongue.
In early drafts (there are always early drafts in Tolkien), the monsters Beewolf meets in the ocean are nicors, a straight modernization of the OE niceras, but in the final draft they are nixes. The singular is generally nix, but once nixy.
No, it’s “coated with nickel” (compare “gilded”) as a joke color.
As soon as I opened this page (at the bottom) and my eye lit on the phrase “joke color”, I thought “This comment is written by David M.” And so it was.
I guess he used it for “people” in the Star Trek meaning of that term.
The Federation meaning, rather. Here’s a Romulan viewpoint on the subject (the Romulans being notorious speciesists, most of them):
Dhiov, who was always timid except when it came to slighting herself, or killing, said abruptly, “Those things with the tentacles —”
“Are people,” [Commander = ship’s captain] Ael said. “Never doubt it. They look horrible to me too, but I make no doubt that their gorge rises somewhat at us.” There was soft laughter over that. “They have their own version of the [Ruling] Passion [mnhei’sahe ‘love-hate’ in Rihannsu] too; they will defend their ship and their shipmates as brilliantly and bravely as you will. The same for the blue people [Andorians] and the orange ones [Edosians/Triexians from the animated series] and the brown ones [us?] and the ones who look like hlai [a Romulan herd animal].”
“And the rock?” said Dhiemn, with his usual dry humor.
“Especially the rock, I think. Elements, my children, what a start that one gave me. May I be preserved from seeing any more of that kind of thing; if Air or Fire should walk up and speak to me, I doubt I could bear it.”
[The “rock” is Ensign Naraht, one of the children hatched from the Horta’s eggs in the Classic episode “Devil in the Dark”. The text comes from My Enemy, My Ally by Diane Duane, who knows a good deal about linguistics, though she doesn’t seem to be professionally trained. Romulan religion/philosophy involves the four traditional elements.]
That is quite a letdown, seeing as China has five right here on Earth.
Yeah, well, it would be easy to lose wood if you got to your planet by spaceship.
The Æsir cult seems to have been important mainly to people in the more densely populated plain areas as crucial for a good harvest.
Amazingly, a recent paper suggests that Aesir were a pre-Indo-European cultural component, left over from the Neolthic agriculturalists who might have a period of coexistence and interinfluence with the pastoralist IE invaders in Scandinavia, and gave the Germanic languages a layer of plants/ agriculture related borrowings. The similarity with Stefan Holm’s passage is striking.
I haven’t looked behind the paywall, but that’s interesting — not at least because it turns the usual substrate/superstrate thinking upside down. But I’m also sceptical. There’s thousands of years between the (presumed) IE-fication of Southern Scandinavia and the early medieval religion of Germania, allowing many layers of cultural in- and outflux and religious innovation. Case in point: What happened to the sun? In Bronze Age (elite) religion it’s the center of everything. In Norse mythology it’s hardly visible at all.
A sun that is only visible for half the year wouldn’t be much of a god.
That also holds for the day sky, and while Týr was still there, he had undergone quite the metamorphosis in a place that hardly ever looks like the flags of Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
the Pieds Nickelés in the bandes dessinées
(Being away, I had not seen the question earlier)
As DM says, “nickelé” means ‘coated with nickel’, a treatment applied to another metal to make it very shiny, hence a metaphorical use of the word to mean more or less ‘flamboyant, showoff’, therefore ‘not genuine’.
As for les Pied Nickelés, I remember it vaguely from my childhood, a cartoon strip which boys were reading, apparently concerning boyish shenanigans.
I had no idea that the phrase itself had a particular meaning, which I just found in the trusty TLFI: avoir les pieds nickelés (lit. ‘to have nickeled feet’) meant ‘to be lazy, reluctant to act’, something like English ‘to have cold feet’ with the connotation of refusing to participate in some action in spite of having seemed willing or even eager to do so earlier. (I deduce this from the TLFI examples, I don’t remember ever hearing anyone saying it).
That’s not in the paper. (I have obtained access through the usual channels.)
“nickelé” means ‘coated with nickel’, a treatment applied to another metal to make it very shiny, hence a metaphorical use of the word to mean more or less ‘flamboyant, showoff’, therefore ‘not genuine’.
Cf. Mark Twain: “Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the ‘noblest work of God.’”
A very apposite quote.
It’s freely available from the first co-author’s publication list at the Saxo Institute in Copenhagen. (Fourth hit in Google on the complete title without quotes).
What strikes me is the suggestion that very similar agricultural terms were borrowed from Ante-PIE languages in widely separated locations, that is when the Yamnaya pastoralists arrived at the endpoint of their migration — for Germanic, in Denmark between 3000 and 2600 BCE — and not somewhere on the way. For that to work, the Ante-PIE dialects / languages would have to have spread recently as well, wouldn’t they? Maybe as part of the spread of Neolithic agriculture from Anatolia? (This is not in the paper either, of course, it’s my own speculation).
Thanks, now I’ve read it too. It’s essentially two different observation superposed:
1) common features in presumed substratal words in European languages.
2) a sharp (but slowly penetrable) line between Corded Ware and (Post-)Funnel Beaker in Denmark, persisting for more than a millennium, from the first arrival of Corded Ware to the emergence of the Nordic Bronze Age.
Both facts are interesting, and the authors conclude:
Maybe so, but they strop short of presenting an actual hypothesis for how it happened. Or it could be about the substrate population in Jutland gradually abandoning their ancestral language but keeping the agricultural terminology. Or it could be the story of a slow IE-fication of PFB in the Danish islands through elite assimilation — with similar results. Since this “provides just the right […] setting”, I assume they mean the latter case, since the first scenario could happen anywhere on the way from the steppe. And that should imply that the culturally defining elements of Nordic Bronze Age spread from a recently IE-fied Post-Funnel Beaker rather than from Jutland..
That is in the paper! It’s just briefly mentioned, though, and not pursued further.
And it’s not limited to Europe: read the discussion under this post.
Yes, I noticed the little nod to Berber in the footnotes to table of words with and without the a-prefix. Someone’s getting ready to tell a bigger story.
‘coated with nickel’, a treatment applied to another metal to make it very shiny
Perhaps also for protection; one of my family’s many pieces of cutlery is a steel fork, perhaps from the 1930s or early 1940s, that had been coated with nickel in 1950.
Over the decades, the nickel coating had worn through in places, and some of those places now show obvious rust (which made us mostly stop using that particular fork; fortunately we have a lot of much better 1950s stainless steel forks, as well as several even newer ones).
Besides, metals that needed to be very shiny tended to be coated with chrome, not nickel 🙂
This isn’t Ancient Greek where you can’t tell the meaning of a compound noun from the order of its components, and where you can’t predict that a philosopher isn’t called a sophophile.
As exemplifed by Nikolaos (the name we’ve been discussing for much of this thread) versus Laonikos (this guy).
(BTW, does anyone know if it was this guy or someone else who infamously referred to the Hundred Years’ War as a war between the Celts and the Gauls?
I checked his History, but my Greek is just barely enough to be sure that he does seem to refer to the Celts occasionally, and the Latin version apparently translated all the references to “Celts” as if it said Gauls, which made searching for this particular sentence somewhat tricky.)
Incidentally, John Bengtson has been saying for over 10 years that Basque and the Caucasian languages share agricultural terminology…
little nod to Berber in the footnotes to table of words with and without the a-prefix
Actually that was Basque, the bean word that has a soundalike in Berber was in another list.
Trond 5 years ago:
The sun isn’t in the Edda, but check out the Sólarljóð, the very burial of Norse religion. (§4.3 more than halfway down in this paper, and referenced a few more times until the end of the paper.)
Incidentally, that poem is further evidence that Valhalla was only reinterpreted as a hall after halls became important in the Viking Age. Before that, it wasn’t in German terms a Halle but a Halde ( < *-lþ-) – something sloped: the tumulus or indeed kurgan. (In modern German a spoil heap or indeed a dump. But the paper mentions there are still burial mounds in Sweden that have valhall f. in their names.)
Valkyrie Betty walks into Valhalla and says: “What a dump!”
An old Viking tries everything to get into Valhalla…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MV5w262XvCU
Oh, I forgot to say:
David M.: The sun isn’t in the Edda, but check out the Sólarljóð, the very burial of Norse religion. (§4.3 more than halfway down in this paper, and referenced a few more times until the end of the paper.)
I’ve read the paper. I like the ideas and the will to follow through on them. It’s brave to reconstruct the original meaning of a verb based on Vedic and a small Norwegian valley dialect. I’ll catalogue it for now as interesting observations,
As for Solarljoð, I’ve had the impression (without ever reading it) that its imagery was Christian. For another Christian use of the sun, Snorri tells of how king Olaf the not-yet-holy made the sun an avatar of the Christian god in a display of power with heathen peasants. But that’s actually a remarkably heathen image for a king on a Christian mission. Maybe he deliberately drew a line to a popular religion older than the Viking Age elite cult of the Æsir.
Is there a plausible connection between *dugan from the paper and ‘dug’ (teat, nipple)?
They seem to be from different roots, the teat word is seen as a loan from the ON word (not given) that also gives rise to Da dægge and Sw dägga (‘give suck,’ as in däggdjur = ‘mammal’) — this is a causative to the root in E doe, with North Germanic strengthening of the intervocalic approximant in PG *daijjan vel sim., PIE root *dʰeh₁(y)-).
But I don’t see any argument against a connection, only that people prefer the other etymology.
When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel
The New York, Chicago, and St. Louis Railroad (now part of Norfolk Southern, one of the two major freight rail carriers in the Northeast) was nicknamed the Nickel Plate Road. Per WP:
The New York part of the name referred to Buffalo, N.Y., the eastern terminus of the Nickel Plate, rather than NYC. The railroad ran along the south shore of the Great Lakes and then down the Mississippi to St. Louis.