The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/119185
FEATURES FINDING MEANING A Škoda Fabia Combi municipal police car in Český Krumlov, Czech Republic (left). The word škoda means 'what a pity' (Schade in German) © ISTOCKPHOTO A BIRD IN THE HAND The word for ostrich ( far left) in at least six European languages comes from the Greek strouthos megale, meaning 'big sparrow' Coromines's two monumental dictionaries were recently simplified into single volumes, priced at about €50 each, and these have become my bedside reading. Many Catalan words have cognates in French and other Romance languages that don't occur in Spanish, such as ocel for 'bird' (Fr. oiseau), as opposed to pájaro in Spanish. This makes them easier for French-speakers to learn. Hungarian, which is not Indo-European, is considered the hardest European language to learn (after Basque), yet its vocabulary is not purely Uralic. My Hungarian etymological dictionary helpfully lists all loan words by language in a separate section, many of which I know from German, French or English. Surprisingly, the Hungarian words for hundred (szaz) and thousand (ezer) both derive from Middle Persian, as do the words for castle (vár) and town (város). This suggests that early Hungarian nomads, migrating by an unknown route from the Urals to central Europe, passed through the Persian empire near the Caspian Sea. It also tells us that in their homeland they did not have towns or castles, nor any need for large numbers of sheep or people, until their mass migration. Having joined the Chartered Institute of Linguists by examination in Persian, I can easily remember these two Hungarian numerals, but I often muddle the numbers from one to nine. The Romance languages are, by definition, derived from Latin. It is usually thought of as a dead language, but Nicholas Ostler, author of the stimulating Empires of the Word, who has a working knowledge of 26 languages, thinks it is very much alive in terms of native speakers. In the United States, he points out, Latin's Spanish form is gaining rapidly on English, a Germanic language. Vol/52 No/2 2013 I had pretty much forgotten the Virgil I studied at school, but increasing contact with Romance languages brought back memories of classical Latin. Travelling through Romania in Ceaușescu's time, I found that by comparing menu items with other Romance food names I could more or less understand them. That's etymology singing for its supper! A good way of building vocabulary is by researching the surnames of people you meet. If you're learning Russian or, indeed, any Slavonic language, check out the names of acquaintances, famous writers or politicians, and you'll soon come across words you didn't know. Tolstoi gives us the word for 'sturdy', Gorky is 'bitter', Molotov is related to molodoi ('young'), Khrushchev to grusha ('pear'), while the poet Pasternak's name means 'parsnip' (an ancestor's nose, or did he grow them?). In Prague I deal with a man called Mr Havranek (havran is a raven, and he looks a bit like one). Being much younger than their Romance and Germanic counterparts, Slavonic words are often quite similar, so this bird is gawron in Polish, kavran in SerboCroat and Slovenian, kávoron in Ukrainian, garvan in Bulgarian, and so on. That's half a dozen words for the price of one! My Bohemian partner's maiden name is Konopik, which tells me that a farming ancestor probably grew a lot of konopi ('hemp'), derived from Latin 'cannabis', but presumably his was for making rope, not reefers. I was surprised to find that 'hemp' and 'cannabis' are in fact cognates, both deriving from a Scythian word. Such consonant changes keep etymologists on their toes. This is still a thriving branch of scholarship. Just look at how often the phrases 'etymology unknown' or 'disputed etymology' occur in a specialised dictionary. I have waded into this minefield with my own theories about such words as 'crimson' and 'marzipan', tracing them back to Persian sources. Arriving in Rejkjavik in the 1970s, I wondered why businesses prefixed their telephone numbers with the word Simi, instead of the usual 'Tel'. A friend who was working on the ongoing National Dictionary project told me they had found the word in their mediaeval Sagas. It seemed to mean a kind of silver wire, so it was chosen for the telephone, but its origin was unknown. That clinched my hunch. I told him that sim meant silver in classical Persian, and in the 1930s had been used in Iran to create the word bisim ('without wire') for 'wireless'. Filigree silver jewellery has always been a Persian speciality; presumably the Vikings traded it for amber and salted cod, and some pieces found their way to Iceland, where the cod came from. Almost every language has similar unsolved mysteries. Above all, though, etymology is a source of fun. Take the word ostrich: it's Strauss in German, straus in Russian, autruche in French, pštros in Czech, avestruz in Spanish, and (my favourite) strut in Romanian… All these forms go back to Greek strouthos megale, meaning a big sparrow. As Churchill put it: 'Some chicken; some neck!' Strouthos itself probably derives from *trozdo (Proto-Indo-European), which in time was to hatch the English bird 'thrush'. Going back to where we started, what about the etymology of pivo? According to Rejzek, it means simply 'a drink'. And although English 'beer' is of disputed etymology, its most likely origin is the Vulgar Latin word biber, which also meant 'a drink'. How vulgar can you get when beer's your tipple! APRIL/MAY The Linguist 21