languagehat.com

The Irish writer and documentary-maker Manchán Magan has featured here a number of times (e.g., 2007, 2017, 2020), mostly for entire essays; I’m citing the March edition of his Substack newsletter for just one paragraph, but I like it:

Mayo Books also published Focail na mBan (Women’s Words), a book of Irish words for vagina, vulva, periods, etc that I did with 30 artists in November 2023. Some of my favourite words from that were Ribe an tsiabhrán – Clitoris (a colloquial, euphemistic term). Its literal meaning is bristle of delusion, or hair of derangement, or tuft of mental confusion. Pis/Pit – Vulva. Roe. Pea. A shell-less crab. What you say to attract a cat’s attention. Faighin – Vagina. Scabbard. Sheath. Shell.

I can’t help but think of a dustman’s dumpling. Thanks, Trevor!

The subreddit r/MapPorn has an amusing map Zero fucks given in different languages that translates into English allegedly canonical national sayings expressing utter lack of interest. The first thing that comes to mind is the oddity of the name; as Orri says in the comments:

I’ve never heard “Zero fucks given” in England, it’s normally “I don’t give a shit”.

I’m pretty sure “Zero fucks given” is a niche expression even here in the US. But never mind that, what about the other countries? Well, everynameisalreadyta writes:

I had to think for a sec what it means in Hungarian (Kutyát sem érdekel), because I “shit on it” is way more frequently used.

And I beg leave to doubt that “flowers on my dick and bees all around” is very commonly used in Greek. But what I do know is that the alleged Russian equivalent, “it’s horseradish to me,” is absurdly mealymouthed. Yes, the word хрен ‘horseradish’ is used in many expressions — хрен с ним ‘the heck with him/it,’ на хрен мне это ‘this is no damn use to me,’ etc. — but the point is that it’s always a euphemistic replacement for the Big Bad Word хуй ‘cock’ (traditionally both unprintable and unspeakable in decent company); why would you provide a euphemism to represent the most vigorously obscene language around? If you want to provide a Russian equivalent for ‘I don’t give a fuck’ it would be either мне по хуй ‘it’s along the cock for me’ or мне до пизды ‘it’s up to the cunt for me’ (those literal translations make no sense, of course; I’m just trying to give the general idea). Let mat be mat!

I’m a day late with this; our favorite polyglot vegetarian, MMcM, posted about idli yesterday, which was apparently World Idli Day, “a holiday started nine years ago by M. Eniyavan in Chennai, who runs a catering business specializing in idli.” But time means nothing to us here at LH, where Homeric Greek is coin of the realm and Proto-Indo-European is just over the next hill, so never mind. I’ll reproduce a couple of tempting tidbits; from near the beginning:

The same batter can be used to make (the ordinary varieties of) idli, dosa, and uttapam.. This is made from urad dal,(उड़द दाल), that is, dehulled beans (cotyledons) of black gram (Vigna mungo), soaked and ground, then mixed with soaked and ground polished rice. […]

Uttapam is from ūtu ‘blow’ (that is, ‘inflate’) and appam, a sweet rice-flour cake. A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary only lists cognates, all referring to the same dishes, for iṭṭali ‘idli’ and tōcai ‘dosa’. Wiktionary for Tamil தோசை tōcai gives an etymology from தோய் tōy ‘soak; curdle’, that is, ‘ferment’, citing a 1967 article in செந்தமிழ்ச்செல்வி Senthamilchelvi (that does not seem to be anywhere on the site to which it links or among the scanned issues). Devaneya Pavanar’s A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Tamil Language gives a similar derivation: தோய் tōy→ தோயை tōyai → தோசை tōcai. Wikipedia for தோசை tōcai adds a couple that sure look like folk etymologies: தேய் tēy ‘rub’ + செய் cey ‘do’, on account of how dosas are cooked; and ஸ்ஸை ssai, the hissing noise dosas make when cooking, prefixed by தோ tō < Hindi दो dō ‘two’ because you hear it twice. This latter is even cited by Pavanar as the perfect example of a “Playful Etymology”, that is, a joke. Pavanar for இட்டளி iṭṭaḷi again lists cognates: ம. இட்டலி Ma. iṭṭali (ഇട്ടലി); க. இட்டலி Ka. iṭṭali (ಇಟಿಟಲಿ); தெ. இட்டென Te. iṭṭeṉa (ఇటిటెణ?). And some relationship with இட்டம் iṭṭam which I am not sure I get. Kamil Zvelebil’s Comparative Dravidian Phonology 1.24.2.2 proposes that, for these idli words, the -ṭṭ- in the Literary Tamil indicates a loanword from Kannada through a Colloquial Tamil -ḍḍ-.

And from near the end:
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Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti quotes Augustine, Sermons 158.4:

There remains, however, the struggle with the flesh, there remains the struggle with the world, there remains the struggle with the devil.

restat tamen lucta cum carne, restat lucta cum mundo, restat lucta cum diabolo.

He asks:

Is this the first occurrence of this unholy trinity? I don’t have access to Siegfried Wenzel, “The Three Enemies of Man,” Mediaeval Studies 29 (1967) 47–66, rpt. in his Elucidations: Medieval Poetry and Its Religious Backgrounds (Louvain: Peeters, 2010 = Synthema, 6), pp. 17-38.

He’s definitely antedated Abelard, the first source cited in the Wikipedia article (other than stray Bible bits); that article says “The phrase may have entered popular use in English through the Book of Common Prayer,” which is probably where I first encountered it. At any rate, if anyone knows of other sources, or has thoughts about this famous phrase, by all means speak up.

Winston Manrique Sabogal of El País had a 2013 post “Las palabras más autóctonas de México, Panamá y Uruguay” [The most indigenous/autochthonous words of Mexico, Panama and Uruguay] that chooses three words to introduce the Atlas sonoro de las palabras más autóctonas del español: pinche ‘fucking, goddamned’ for Mexico, sinvergüenzura ‘an act of shamelessness’ for Panama, and celeste ‘pale blue, sky blue’ for Uruguay. Claudia Amengual, who proposed the latter, says it’s not from the uniform color of the Uruguay national soccer team but from the country’s flag, but Marcos in the comments objects, with a learned discussion of a 1910 soccer game; it’s all good fun. Thanks, Y!

Matt at planetmut had a splendid post about newspaper typos back in 2018, although “typos” is a wan and inadequate term for what he documents. After a minor example from the BBC (“The speaking cock turns 75 years old…”) and an amusingly bollixed-up quote from Wolverhampton Wanderers chairman Sir Jack Hayward, he gets to the good stuff: a “classic example of a production error” from the Times & Citizen (a headline reading “headline headghgh”) and the real gem, from “a 1979 edition of the now sadly defunct Peterborough Standard.” It begins:

CROWLAND’S Silver Jubilee committee was finally wound up on Thursday evening with a presentation ceremony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Parnell as ‘one of the finest efforts in Lincolnshire’, fremony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Parnell as ‘one remony atremony aremony at the library.

The jubremony at the library.

Tremony at remony at the library.

Thrremony at tremony at the liremony at the libraremony at the library.

Theremony at the library.

But it goes on and on, culminating in an “almost poetic segue” that introduces an entirely new plotline. (Ironically and perhaps inevitably, the transcription of the article contains its own error: in “Thrremony at tremony at the liremoay,” the last non-word should read “liremony,” as I have indicated in my own version above — there’s a slight blotch on the n that made the transcriber read it as an a.) To add to the fun, there is a clip of it being read aloud. As Matt says, “This is just magnificent.” Thanks, Trevor! (I should note that Trevor sent it to me with the very apposite subject line “Gertrude Stein in Peterborough.”)

Last month I posted about Lily Gladstone’s relationship to Blackfoot (her father is of Blackfeet and Nez Perce ancestry); I’ve just been enjoying Nora Mabie’s story “‘Bigger than the Oscars’: Blackfeet Nation honors Lily Gladstone with stand-up headdress” (with some glorious photos), and when I got to the end I discovered it was followed by a separate piece by Mabie, “Gladstone brought the Blackfoot language to the world stage,” that begins:

ōk̇ii niiksōk̇ōw´aiks nitṫǎanikk̇oō ṗiiṫǎak̇ii (no)mō˝ṫoōṫoō siksik̇aitsiitṫǔṗii… niṫtsiik̇ǎak̇ōmimm.

“Hello my relatives, my name is Eagle Woman. I arrived here from the Blackfoot Confederacy. … I love y’all!”

That’s what Blackfeet Actress Lily Gladstone said in her Golden Globes acceptance speech — first in Blackfoot and then in English — when she made history as the first Indigenous woman to win best actress.

Robert Hall, director of Blackfeet studies at Browning Public Schools, said when Gladstone spoke Blackfoot on the world stage, two things happened. Some Blackfeet individuals watched the show live and translated Gladstone’s words to their families. Other community members, Hall said, watched and didn’t know what Gladstone said. Later, they felt inspired to learn and translate her words.

“That’s powerful, too,” he explained.

And there’s an interesting passage on consistent spelling:
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Alonso Zamora at Tlacuilolli (which “focuses on Mesoamerican writing systems: Aztec, Maya, Mixtec, and more”) announced (on March 21) an exciting discovery:

Yesterday, a team of specialists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico, led by the historians Baltazar Brito Guadarrama and María Castañeda de la Paz, the philologist Michel Oudijk, and the Nahuatl specialist Rafael Tena, presented to the public the discovery of three new Aztec codices, collectively known as the Codices of San Andrés Tetepilco, formerly a part of the Culhuacan polity of Central Mexico, and nowadays located within the Iztapalapa borough in Mexico City. This is one of the most exciting and spectacular discoveries regarding codical sources in recent years, and is no doubt closely related to the topic of this blog. The discovery has been already covered by the Mexican press and explained in detail in yesterday’s presentation at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, which can be seen in Youtube. However, an English summary will be presented for the readers of this blog.

[…] It comprises three codices. The first is called Map of the Founding of Tetepilco, and is a pictographic map which contains information regarding the foundation of San Andrés Tetepilco, as well as lists of toponyms to be found within Culhuacan, Tetepilco, Tepanohuayan, Cohuatlinchan, Xaltocan and Azcapotzalco. The second, the Inventory of the Church of San Andrés Tetepilco, is unique, as Oudijk remarks, since it is a pictographic inventory of the church of San Andrés Tetepilco, comprising two pages. Sadly, it is very damaged. Finally, the third document, now baptised as the Tira of San Andrés Tetepilco, is a pictographic history in the vein of the Boturini and the Aubin codices, comprising historical information regarding the Tenochtitlan polity from its foundation to the year 1603. […]

Of course, new and very interesting examples of Aztec writing are contained throughout all these documents, including old and new toponyms, spellings of Western and Aztec names, and even some information that confirms that some glyphs formerly considered as hapax, as the chi syllabogram in the spelling of the name Motelchiuhtzin in Codex Telleriano-Remensis 43r, discussed in another post of this blog, were not anomalous but possibly conventional. Besides logosyllabic spellings, the presence of pictographs with alphabetic glosses in Nahuatl will be of great help to ascertain the functioning of this still controversial part of the Aztec communication system.

Images and more details at the link; thanks, Y!

Boy, here’s a word that didn’t gee. From Michael Eby’s 2001 history of the magazine Electrical Construction and Maintenance:

The magazine was first published in November 1901 as The National Electrical Contractor, the official trade journal of the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA). Many of the articles in these early issues focused on activities related to the Association and on business issues related to electrical contractors.

In May 1918, the magazine changed its name to the Electrical Contractor-Dealer. […] However, the new name didn’t last long. In November 1921, the magazine changed names again to the National Electragist, and more simply to The Electragist in June 1923. The term “electragist” was adopted to replace the term “electrical contractor-dealer.” The name change coincided with the renaming of the Association to The Association of Electragists International at its annual meeting in 1922.

Thanks to the wonders of Google Books, we can read the National Electragist from the comfort of our devices; Volume 22 (1922) contains this vigorously stated passage on pp. 17-18:
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A puzzled correspondent sent me this quote, saying the final word was a mystery to him:

There were papers, letters, and paid bills and miscellaneous items, including the stuff from her room at the office, but there was no diary or anything resembling one, and there was nothing that seemed likely to be of any help. If it got too tough I might have to have another go at it or put Saul Panzer on it. I did use a few of the items, in Elinor’s handwriting, to check the writing on the letter that was in the box with the money. It geed.

  The Father Hunt, by Rex Stout (Bantam pbk., 1971, p. 18)

I sent him a link to Green’s Dictionary of Slang, but it occurred to me that this long-forgotten term might be of interest to others (and perhaps clarify similar mysteries), so here’s Green’s definition and a few citations:

gee v.¹
also jee
[? pron. of initial letter of SE go]

to fit, to suit, to behave as required or expected; usu. in phr. it won’t gee, it doesn’t suit, it doesn’t work.

c.1698 [UK] B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: It wont Gee, it won’t Hit, or go.
1719 [UK] in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy V 83: If Miss prove peevish and will not gee / […] / find out a fairer, a kinder than she.
[…]
1887 [Aus] Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Nov. 7/3: Italian opera ‘gees’ in a general way at Melbourne Royal, but not to any alarming degree.
[…]
1904 [Aus] West. Australian 12 Apr. 9/2: They all reckon they can bring […] in enough sentiment to make it gee.
[…]
1925 [US] Odum & Johnson Negro and His Songs (1964) 154: Yes, I hollow at the mule, an’ the mule would not gee.

I say “long-forgotten,” but of course I shouldn’t assume: are any of y’all familiar with this short, punchy verb? Also, how does Green know that last quote doesn’t involve gee “(intransitive) Of a horse, pack animal, etc.: to move forward; go faster; or turn in a direction away from the driver, typically to the right”?