Snippets

[wildeabandon]

Life continues hectic. I went up to Cambridge last week to catch up with hjdoom whilst he was there housesitting for his sister, and then headed over to themidnightgirl and the_alchemist's new house, which is exceedingly shiny. I did quite a bit of getting about by bike that day, which was the first time since getting knocked off that I'd cycled more than very short distances. The next day my shoulders, hands, and other parts of my anatomy made it clear in no uncertain terms that they were unimpressed by this sudden change, but more positively, my confidence came back pretty quickly, despite the weather being far from optimal.

Learning Dutch continues to be a great deal of fun. My favourite words and phrases so far are:
handschoenen (gloves - I remember at one point much earlier in my French learning forgetting the word gants, and saying "comme chaussettes, mais pour les mains", but I won't have that problem in Dutch :)
sneeuwpop (snowman)
zwanger (pregnant)
voor de lol (for fun)
honkbal (baseball)
uit de hand gelopen (out of control - lit. out of the hand walked)

Do you lot have any words in languages you're learning that you find particularly delightful?

I have managed to show enough self-discipline not to completely neglect my French studies for the exciting new languages, and had my mock oral exam the other day, where I became very aware that there's been a step change in my confidence and fluency since my previous speaking assessment. I still have to pause to think about some of the more complicated gramatical structures, and I'll occasionally circumlocute around missing vocabulary, but I have enough other words that I'm able to do so. Another thing that I've noticed from my weekly language exchange conversations is that I don't find speaking in French nearly as tiring as I did. When we started meeting about six months ago, I was always basically counting down the minutes until half way through when we switched from French to English, and greatly relieved when we did, because it was exhausting. Now I find it easy to miss how much time has passed.

Comments

[mtbc]

As one might guess, German's similar for gloves, some great constructions.

[bunnypip]

So many delightful words!

Off the top of my head, in German
Handschuhe (for the reasons you mention)
Geschwister (siblings, but with a far less formal register than in English)
Untertasse (saucer (undercup)) and, by extension ...
fliegende Untertasse (flying saucer - although UFO is more common I think)

[bunnypip]

This reminds me of a conversation I had with some students about The Witch of Edmonton last week. A student asked about the dog saying 'bow-wow' because he'd not encountered it before and thought dogs always said 'woof' so we looked it up and apparently dogs in English have been saying 'bow-wow' since the 16thC but have only been saying 'woof' since the 19thC. During this conversation I also leaned from another student that in Poland dogs say 'hau hau'.

[simont]

That makes me think of Watership Down, in which a dog (err, Rowsby Woof?) barks "How – how – how dare you!"

[simont]

So is 'voor de lol' a post-Internet neologism, or has that coincidentally been the Dutch for 'for fun' since before lols were cool?

[wildeabandon]

Oh, I had just naively assumed it to be the latter, and would have been terribly disappointed if it had turned out to be a neologism.

But according to wiktionary 'lol' was first used as a synonym for plezier (pleasure) in 1897, so that's alright :D

[simont]

\o/

[shermarama]

I think it's from over towards the English word 'loll', as in laying about in a relaxed manner, but IIRC it's used for the sort of fun that's also relaxing, like going for a picnic or something - straight-up funny like a comedian I'd expect to be 'grappig'. I suspect 'voor de lol' as a phrase might be post-internet, as a convenient crossover... Dutch happily takes up and Dutchifies new things, like stand-up paddleboarding (SUP) now being pretty much a fully declinable verb - ik sup, jij supt, wij zijn aan het suppen...

[sfred]

Hurray!

[shermarama]

I just straight up liked, once I got used to it, Dutch having different words for no (negative) and no (not any). I still sometimes want to write 'not any' in English.

Also 'boodschappen' being both 'messages' and 'little errand-y shopping' because 'messages' is still both of those in Scotland, so it's clearly modern English that's made the mistake in ditching this :D

[shermarama]

And, all the vegetables that are different types of root, with carrot apparently being the fundamental one that just gets called 'root', and all the things that are just different types of apple. A potato is an earth-apple (so far so French), a pomegranate is a grenade apple (but then so's a pomegranate) and an orange is a Chinese apple, obvs...

[bunnypip]

In our household we've taken to calling apples 'sky potatoes'.

[wildeabandon]

Hah. Okay, now I'm wondering whether that's something our household came up with independently, or one of us picked it up from the other...

[bunnypip]

I think at this point it may be impossible to disentangle what was cross-pollination between households (especially given the households have overlapped at points) and what is parallel evolution based on decades of being accustomed to making the same kinds of jokes!

[wildeabandon]

<3

[sfred]

<3

[sfred]

I love that Welsh for carrots is moron. And "Dw i'n hoffi coffi" feels very nice to say ("I like coffee"). Also that a week is "wythnos" - lit. 8 nights.

[wildeabandon]

Those are all lovely :)

[doseybat]

Every time I see a pot hole in the road brain enjoys labelling it as "lavaka", emphasis on first vowel, final vowel not pronounced. Ravines and sink holes are somehow very naturally "lavaka be" (final vowel pronounced this time for the combination).

[leonato]

Sneeuwpop is a great word but the best Dutch word is clearly

kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedencomitéleden

[wildeabandon]

I will grant that as the 'greatest' word in Dutch, but I'm not sure it's quite as aesthetically pleasing.

I would also like to add bioscoop to my list.