Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 April 24

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April 24

"Animal verbs" in foreign languages

English has a wonderful collection of verbs derived from animal species carrying a meaning which isn't always that plainly obvious from the animal's behaviour (e.g. to rat on someone, to badger, etc.). German has a few as well ("büffeln" (from buffalo) means to cram, to swot, (added later) though it might actually not be derived from the animal as I just found out, sorry :-|) I'm looking for similar examples of verbs from all other languages (i.e. besides English and German), no matter how obscure (but the verb should have a non-obvious meaning). Thank you in advance! ---Sluzzelin talk 00:29, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

In Italian, there's accanire as a verb, better known as a noun (accanimento) or adjective (accanito). Comes from cane, "dog", and is fairly close to the English equivalents (to dog, doggedness, dogged), but somewhat more negative in connotation. --Trovatore (talk) 00:39, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

The question brings to mind my favourite English sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo". Hack (talk) 05:42, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

There are a bunch of French examples here. 184.171.222.36 (talk) 06:23, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

A few Dutch verbs: uitvogelen, (from vogel 'bird'), meaning "to figure out"; afkatten (from kat 'cat'), meaning 'to snarl/snub'; ijsberen, (from ijsbeer 'polar bear'), meaning 'to pace up and down' (many animals, including polar bears, exhibit such behavior when they are held captive in small areas, i.e. in zoos); tijgeren (from tijger 'tiger'), meaning 'to belly crawl'; hamsteren (from hamster 'hamster'), meaning 'to hoard food'. - Lindert (talk) 09:46, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone! Hack, I hadn't even noticed Jayron's buffalo quote one thread earlier. Grazie, Trovatore, that one didn't occur to me at all, and merci, 184.171 for that excellent link! Lindert, interestingly "(herum)tigern" in German means what "ijsberen" means in Dutch, while "robben" (Robbe = seal) in German means what "tijgeren" means in Dutch! "hamstern" has the same meaning as "hamsteren". Great stuff, keep them coming, please! ---Sluzzelin talk 22:19, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Afrikaans: Kalf (calf - as in baby cow or calve - as in give birth). My kar gaan kalf. Literally: My car is going to calve. Meaning: My car is going to break/meet with disaster/become a problem. 196.214.78.114 (talk) 10:18, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Swedish: Hamstra, to hoard, from hamster, hamster. Älga, to move quickly with long strides, from älg, elk. Torska, to fail, lose or get caught, from torsk codfish. Grisa, to make messy, from gris, pig. Mostly used as grisa ner, literally pig down. Sjö (talk) 13:49, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

The article "Esperanto vocabulary" formerly mentioned several such verbs in the subsection "Cultural 'in' words" (version of 18:07, 30 January 2009).

Words and phrases reflect what speakers of a language talk about. Tellingly, Esperanto has five expressions for speaking a language other than Esperanto when Esperanto would be regarded as more appropriate, as at an Esperanto convention, whereas there is nothing equivalent in English:

krokodili (to crocodile) to speak one's native language instead of Esperanto;

kajmani (to caiman) as above, but where the language is not native to all of the interlocutors;

aligatori (to alligator) where the language used is native to no one;

lacerti (to lizard) to speak another conlang, such as Ido.

These words are sometimes subsumed under the general term reptilumi (from reptile, reptile, plus the undefined suffix -um), though this is rare and krokodili is generally used instead as the generic term. There is even a term gaviali (to gharial), for speaking Esperanto in situations where another language would be more appropriate. The oldest of these expressions, krokodili, may come from the legend of crocodile tears (in that to come to an Esperanto function yet choose to speak one's native language might be viewed as hypocritical); the others were coined by analogy with it.

The current version mentions only krokodili.

—Wavelength (talk) 14:46, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

These two sections of Talk:Esperanto vocabulary are about "krokodili" and related words.

—Wavelength (talk) 03:07, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks again! I love the calving car and caught cod, and the Esperanto reptiles made my day! More thanks for more examples. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:09, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Ger. Rössl

I know that Rössl is German for 'horse' in some sense, as in Weisses Rössl which seems to be a fairly common name for hotels in Germany and Austria. But what I find odd is that there is no entry for Rössl in LEO which is a very authoritative online German dictionary. Why might that be? And what is the difference between Rössl and Pferd? Is Rössl some kind of archaism? Even if it is, I would have expected it to have an entry in LEO. Thanks, --Viennese Waltz 15:01, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

"Rössl" is the diminutive of Ross which is the normal word for Pferd in some dialects (mine for example, though our diminutive is "Rössli"). ---Sluzzelin talk 15:04, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Am I right in thinking that both 'Ross' for 'horse' and the -l diminutive are particularly distinctive to southern dialects such as Austro-German? AlexTiefling (talk) 15:09, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Great, thanks. I would have expected LEO to show diminutives, but obviously it doesn't. --Viennese Waltz 15:11, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

(Responding to Alex and Viennese Waltz) Well, "-l" is the Austro-Bavarian diminutive, as pointed out by Alex. Did you check "Rösslein", VW? As for "Ross" it's certainly the common word in Swiss German (unlike "Pferd). In modern Standard German it's more literary and mainly used in certain idioms such as "Komm von deinem hohen Ross herunter" (get off your high horse) or "Schlachtross" (war horse) etc. ---Sluzzelin talk 15:17, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Yeah LEO doesn't have an entry for Rösslein either. Never mind, I learned something :) --Viennese Waltz 15:21, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both - this has been an enlightening thread. AlexTiefling (talk) 15:30, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Just some more trivia, because that's the way my mind works: To complete the diminutives: There are also "Rössle" in certain Alemannic dialects such as Schwäbisch and there is "Rössel" which is preserved in the word "Rösselsprung": the movement of a knight in chess, or a type of word puzzle where you have to move around like that chess-piece, and also sometimes used for the knight's tour problem. It does actually look more like a horsie than a knight, though the piece itself is called "Springer" ("jumper") nowadays).

Perhaps you have read the Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse (or had someone read it to you)? It was a very popular children's book when I was little, and the title in German was Die lustigen Abenteuer des Rößlein Hü (note the pre-spelling-reform use of the Eszett ("ß")). ---Sluzzelin talk 22:22, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Could you explain that last point further? German spelling reform of 1996#Sounds and letters says that "In reformed orthography the grapheme ß...is considered a separate letter that is to appear only after long vowels and diphthongs." But isn't the ö in Rößlein a long vowel? How do you tell the difference between a long vowel and a short one? --Viennese Waltz 05:02, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

No, the ö in Rößlein is short. You can tell the difference by the sound: short vowels are shorter in duration and have a more lax quality in German. Angr (talk) 08:06, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

If the vowel is short in the root noun then it will remain short in the diminutive version too (and vice versa). So Ross >> Rösschen/Rösslein and Spross >> Sprösschen/Sprösslein, while Floß >> Flößchen/Flößlein and Stoß >> Stößchen/Stößlein. Angr is right though, the only way you can "know" is by either knowing the pronunciation or by looking the word up. ---Sluzzelin talk 14:37, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

The spelling reform has removed some ambiguity in marking whether vowels are long or short: in the old spelling you couldn't tell from looking at them that Nuß has a short vowel but Fuß has a long vowel, but in the new spelling it's clear because the former is now spelled Nuss. But there are other cases where the ambiguity remains: you can't tell from the spelling that Ostern 'Easter' has a long vowel but Osten 'the East' has a short vowel, or that latschen 'to trudge' has a long vowel but matschen 'to play in the mud' has a short vowel. Angr (talk) 14:46, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

But aren't the vowel sounds in Nuß/Fuß and latschen/matschen exactly the same? The way I pronounce them, I can't hear any difference. --Viennese Waltz 19:35, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Apart from the difference in length and tense, there is a slight different in the vowel sound too: "Nuss" uses a near-close near-back vowel, while "Fuß" uses a close back rounded vowel (the articles give examples from various languages). You can listen to the "Hörbeispiele": for (instead of "Nuss" which has no audio-sample on German Wiktionary) and Note: I can't listen to the audios currently, so I haven't checked them, but I assume they're ok). ---Sluzzelin talk 20:28, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

As an aside, "rosse" is also used in French as a disparaging word for horse (e.g. "une vieille rosse"). It comes from the German. --Xuxl (talk) 09:29, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

And Ross is actually a cognate of English horse, which is more obvious if you compare Old English hors and Old High German hros. Pferd, on the other hand, was a borrowing from Late Latin paraveredus, which was also the source, via French, of the English word palfrey.

Godeschalk / Godescalc

The Codex Sangallensis 48 makes two references to a monk named Godeschalk, a person who I can't find any other reference for. However there is a Gottschalk of Orbais, a monk that had generated controversy by writing on predestination that was declared heretical at the time. And according to the Gottschalk page of people with that name it could also be spelled as Godescalc, which is highly similar to godeschalk. My thinking is that Godeschalk is really referring to Gottschalk. My question is of course, do you think its meant to be godeschalk or Gottschalk? Manofgun (talk) 17:35, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

"Gottschalk" shows the effects of the High German consonant shift, the other one doesn't... AnonMoos (talk) 19:57, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

All three forms of the name could be considered "correct" depending on the locale and time period, since they are variants of the same name. Our article on the High German consonant shift indicates that the shift from /sk/ to /ʃ/ took place during the 9th or 10th century. Godescalc of Orbais was born in Mainz in the early 9th century, and his name was probably pronounced Godeskalk in Mainz during his youth. During his adulthood, the pronunciation was shifting to Godeʃalk, perhaps by way of Godesχalk, which might be spelled Godeschalk. By this time, the shift from /d/ to /t/ was probably almost complete in Upper German dialects, such as were spoken around St. Gallen, where the codex was composed, but had not reached the Central German dialect of Mainz. So he might have been known as Gottschalk in St. Gallen, but as Godeschalk farther north, including his place of origin. The author of the codex may have been aware of the native pronunciation of his name. Marco polo (talk) 20:23, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

The MS actually has both gotiskalk (p. 263) and goddiskalk (p. 367). As indicated above, these are spelling variants of the same name. If Gottschalk of Orbais wrote on these themes, he is probably the one intended. Iblardi (talk) 20:28, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you guys, I have made the changes to the codex page, changing Godeschalk to Gottschalk, to match the name he is under on here, and linked to that page.Manofgun (talk) 20:39, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm no expert, but isn't that a breach of either WP:OR or WP:SYN? AlexTiefling (talk) 22:23, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Not in this case, for the heretic Godeschalk was identified earlier elsewhere and also in the article on Codex Sangallensis 48 [1] by his name and death date (d 866). --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 16:59, 25 April 2014 (UTC)