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OK, everybody, I need some specialized knowledge. I’m involved with a book of foreign expressions, and I have the gravest doubts about some of them, which seem to have been taken over from other such books, the original form, if any, having gotten garbled along the way. If anyone knows what the originals of the following might be, I’ll be deeply grateful:

basa basa (Persian)
The Arabic phrase “basa basa” means to ogle, cast amorous glances or make sheeps’ eyes at someone [is it Persian? Arabic? Arabo-Persian?]

quibo (Chinese)
the clear bright eyes of a beautiful woman [qu- is clearly wrong; is it qibo?]

Also, I need some help with Bulgarian, Romanian, and Finnish; if you know any of these languages, please drop me a line at languagehat AT gmail DOT com. Together we can make this an accurate book, unlike the ones described here!

Addendum: I forgot to mention mamihlapinatapai, an alleged Tierra del Fuegan [actually Yaghan (Yagán)—thanks, Jess!] word meaning “a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start”; anybody know where The Guinness Book of Records might have gotten this (“most succinct word”)?

Update: Beth at Cassandra Pages brought basa basa to the attention of her amazing father-in-law and reports the results in this post:

[Read more…]

A recent entry from Pepys Diary ended with this sentence: “This day Sir W. Batten tells me that Mr. Newburne (of whom the nick-word came up among us for “Arise Tom Newburne”) is dead of eating Cowcoumbers, of which the other day, I heard another, I think Sir Nich. Crisps son.” The poisonous nature of cucumbers was new to me (and to think my wife has been feeding them to me for years!), but so was the spelling cowcoumbers. Checking with the OED, I found the following etymology:

[In Wyclif’s form cucumer, app. directly from L.; in cocomber, cucumber, etc., a. obs. F.cocombre (in 13th c. coucombre, now concombre) = Pr. cogombre, It. cocomero, early ad. L. cucumer-em (nom. cucumis) cucumber.
The spelling cowcumber prevailed in the 17th and beg. of 18th c.; its associated pronunciation (‘kaʊkʌmbə(r)) was still that recognized by Walker; but Smart 1836 says ‘no well-taught person, except of the old school, now says cow-cumber.. although any other pronunciation.. would have been pedantic some thirty years ago’.]

This kind of change in linguistic fashion is fascinating: who started saying K(Y)OO- instead of COW-, and why, and why did it catch on so quickly and universally? Surely not anti-cow prejudice?

Mark Liberman quotes this sentence (from a review of a couple of horse books), with its whiff of fragrant equine snowclones: “The Blackfoot of the Plains had more than 100 words for the colours of horses, the Kazaks of central Asia 62 for bay shades alone. These are not just numerical curiosities from old horse societies, but signs of a human watchfulness and a deep connectedness to the natural world that was the norm, and is now rare.” Mark says “If you know enough Blackfoot or Kazak to evaluate these claims, or can find a relevant reference, let me know.” I too am curious; anybody know where on the continuum between “silly” and “overstated” this claim falls?

A couple of Japanese-related posts caught my eye:

1) Matt at No-sword has a post about a document that “records the Shōwa Emperor’s decision not to visit the [Yasukuni] shrine because of the class-A criminals there”; he says:

…my attention was caught by the memo’s final phrase:

だから　私あれ以来参拝していない。　それが私の心だ
So, since then, I haven’t worshipped [at Yasukuni]. That is my kokoro.

Kokoro is a tough word to Englishify. To put that more accurately, it doesn’t map to English very neatly. Depending on context, it might be translated as “heart”, “spirit”, “soul”, “feeling”, “mind”, “mood”, “opinion”, “sensibility”, “hope”, “situation”, “meaning”, “plan”, “reason”, “center”, “topic”, and I’m sure there are others, and that’s only if you insist that the translation be a single noun like the source. For example, one of the articles I linked above goes with “feeling”, but this article translates the relevant phrase as “That is from my heart.”

Kind of reminds me of the dustman’s dumpling.

2) Meanwhile, Joel at Far Outliers has a post about what the sci.lang.japan page he links to calls “a relatively recent trend in Japanese slang… to shorten long words into two or three characters plus the inflectional ending i and make new i adjectives”; the adjective that started Joel off was “kimochi warui ‘unpleasant feeling’, which [a visiting Japanese college student] shortened to kimoi.” Since she was trying to render ‘gross, yucky,’ either the word has strengthened in negative connotation since Arthur Rose-Innes rendered kyō wa sukoshi kimochi ga warui as “I don’t feel quite well today” or “don’t feel quite well” is an example of that famous British understatement.

Incidentally, I was wondering exactly how old the Rose-Innes Vocabulary of Common Japanese Words is; my copy is a 1945 reprint of the 1942 first edition of the Yale revision of what is clearly a substantially older book, since the preface by George A. Kennedy says “The Vocabulary compiled by Arthur Rose-Innes is not merely the best of its kind, but practically the only Japanese-English vocabulary suitable for the beginning student… The principal defect of the work lies in the selection of words, many important modern terms, such as ‘airplane’, being lacking, while some of the included terms seem relatively non-essential.” I checked BookFinder.com, but the entries for earlier editions say things like “Yokohama Early edition Hard Cover,” leading me to suspect that the earlier ones were undated. Anybody know anything about the history of this useful little book (or, for that matter, of Mr. Rose-Innes himself)?

Another odd word for your delectation: serow, “any of several goatlike artiodactyl mammals (genus Capricornis) of eastern Asia that are usually rather dark and heavily built and some of which have distinct manes.” Aside from the unusual name (it’s pronounced suh-ROH), what struck me was the etymology, “Lepcha sa-ro long-haired Tibetan goat.” Lepcha is a Tibeto-Burman language of Sikkim, spoken by the Lepcha, for whom, according to the Wikipedia entry, “sex is the main recreation…, beginning at age 10 or 11 and lasting throughout their lives. Adultery is expected and not viewed as a problem.” Ah, happy Lepcha!

As for the serow, according to Waiting for Wolves in Japan: An Anthropological Study of People-Wildlife Relations, by John Knight, the Japanese serow is a “national treasure” and “emblematic animal of Japan,” comparable to the Chinese panda. You learn something every day.

Update (March 2021). The Wikipedia entry no longer includes the “sex is the main recreation…” quote; checking the history of the entry, I find “14:31, January 3, 2013‎ 86.169.53.134 talk‎ 15,854 bytes −787‎ Undid revision 529912198 by JFHJr (talk). The suggestion that sex between children is common or encouraged is offensive, potentially harmful, and untrue. See also Talk comment by Prajwal Kharel.” Doubtless for the best.

I mentioned translit.ru in a comment this morning, and michael farris said it should have its own post, so here it is. You just type English letters into the box (abcde) and Russian letters appear (абцде). As you see, c gets you ц, and you can use w to get щ (though shh will also work; it collapses sh, ch, zh, etc. automatically). I’ve used it every day since frequent commenter Tatyana told me about it. Thanks again, Tat!

A passage from Chapter VI of Charles Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta (pages 196-97 in my edition); Doughty is in the town of al-Ula (“el-Ally,” as he calls it), where his interlocutor pokes fun at the Arabic spoken by the nomadic Bedouins with whom Doughty has been staying, and describes a brutally effective shibboleth:

” These Franks labour, said he, in the Arabic utterance, for they have not a supple tongue : the Arabs’ tongue is running and returning like a wheel, and in the Arabs all parts alike of the mouth and gullet are organs of speech ; but your words are born crippling and fall half-dead out of your mouths. — What think you of this country talk ? have you not laughed at the words of the Beduw ? what is this gòtar (went) — A-ha-ha! — and for the time of day their gowwak (the Lord strengthen thee) and keyf’mûrak (how do thy affairs prosper ?) who ever heard the like ! ” He told this also of the Egyptian speech : a battalion of Ibrahîm Pasha‘s troops had been closed in and disarmed by the redoubtable Druses, in the Léja (which is a lava field of the Hauran). The Druses coming on to cut them in pieces, a certain Damascene soldier among them cried out ” Aha ! neighbours, dakhalakom, grant protection, at least to the Shwâm (Syrians), which are owlàd el-watn, children of the same soil with you ! ” It was answered, ‘They would spare them if they could discern them.’ ‘Let me alone for that, said the Damascene ; — and if they caused the soldiers to pass one by one he could discern them.’ It was granted, and he challenged them thus, ” Ragel (Egyptian for Rajil), O man, say Gamel ! ” every Syrian answered Jemel ; and in this manner he saved his countrymen and the Damascenes.

As lagniappe, here’s a completely useless new word I learned from Doughty (p. 497): “If the thing fall to them for which they vowed, they will go to the one [oak grove] on a certain day in the year to break a crock there ; or they lay up a new stean in a little cave which is under a rock at the other.” Stean, saith the OED, is “A vessel for liquids (or, in later use, for bread, meat, fish, etc.), usually made of clay, with two handles or ears; a jar, pitcher, pot, urn. Now only dial. and arch.” It’s related to stone, and the last two citations are:

1888 DOUGHTY Arabia Deserta I. xvi. 450 If the thing fall to them for which they vowed [at the wishing-place], they will.. lay up a new stean in a little cave.
1908 A. BENNETT Old Wives’ Tale I. iii. 34 In the corner nearest the kitchen was a great steen in which the bread was kept.

Thanks to a MetaFilter post, I have learned that the Foreign Service Institute language courses (for a long time available only as occasional finds in used book stores, where I bought them whenever I saw them) are being put online. So far they have Cantonese, French, German, Greek, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Standard Chinese, and Turkish; presumably there will be more to come. The text is in pdf files, which is annoying, but they have audio as well, which makes up for it. Well done, Glen D. Fellows et al!

Update (Aug. 2024). The courses are now available here (and, apparently, elsewhere, but that site has a bunch of them and they’re free).

Joe Clark at fawny has a post that starts off discussing the “nonsensical stream-of-delirium lyrics” of a rock song and ends with the question “Has the phenomenon of an appearance of making sense when nonsensical words are uttered in a certain prosody actually been studied?” I imagine it has, but I wouldn’t know; I did, however, greatly enjoy the Eric Idle routine called “Gibberish” that he quotes in extenso. Here’s the beginning:

HOST: Ham sandwich, bucket and water plastic Duralex rubber McFisheries underwear. Plugged rabbit emulsion, zinc custard without sustenance in kippling-duff geriatric scenery, maximizes press insulating government grunting sapphire-clubs incidentally. But tonight, sam pan Bombay Bermuda in diphtheria rustic McAlpine splendor, rabbit and foot-foot-phooey jugs rapidly big biro ruveliners musk-green gauges micturate with nipples and tiptoe rusting machinery, rustically inclined. Good evening and welcome.
GUEST: Hello.

I think I’ll use the line “Machine-wrapped, with butter” in any situation where it seems to apply, which may be more than one would think at first glance.

Remember my joy at finding a copy of a book of pronunciations that originally appeared in a regular column in The Literary Digest over 70 years ago? Well, the BBC is putting pronunciations of names and words in the news on a blog written by its Pronunciation Unit (Martha Figueroa-Clark, Catherine Sangster, and Lena Olausson, named and pictured in the first post). Here‘s an entry on a town name I wasn’t familiar with:

“Today’s pronunciation is for the English town Chester-le-Street.
“Our recommendation, based on the advice of people who live there as well as published sources, is CHEST-uhr-li-street – the first part rhymes with ‘westerly’. Most English placenames with ‘le’ in them are pronounced in this way, rhyming with ‘me’ rather than the French-sounding ‘luh’.”

Thanks to komfo,amonan for the link!