Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 July 31

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July 31

etymology of Quidlivun

A feature on Pluto has been named "Quidlivun", after the Inuit land of the dead on the Moon. It's hard to tell how corrupted the form is. Does anyone know what this would be in the orthography of any variety of Inuit? — kwami (talk) 01:23, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Category:User iu and Category:User ik might be helpful.—Wavelength (talk) 02:00, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Good idea. Pinging those editors. @Guillermo2149: @Vellidragon: @Zanimum/Babel: @SKREAM: — kwami (talk) 04:39, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Reference Desk regular Cambridge Bay Weather (talk · contribs) would likely be more helpful. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:59, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Adlivun is the underworld. They later, if purified, went to Quidlivun. Too much Marvel stuff to be able to see any good Google results. Quidlivun does not appear in the Inuktitut Living Dictionary so I'm not sure how the syllabics would be. In the orthography used from here and west it would be as you have it. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), [[Special:Contributions/CInsert non-formatted text hereambridgeBayWeather|Sunasuttuq]] 00:09, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

• "Qui-" is atypical in form for Eskimo languages. Suspecting that it should be either Qidlivun or Qudlivun I found this: Qudlivun at Google μηδείς (talk) 00:52, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Appears to be qut 'above' + li (?) + -vun LOC 'those above' or 'the place above'. It's Central Eskimo per Boaz, so Canada west of Hudson Bay. — kwami (talk) 02:14, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks @CambridgeBayWeather:. Can you give the morphology of adlivun? Qudlivun would appear to be the same, with qut 'above' substituted for at 'below'. (Is it qut where you are?) — kwami (talk) 02:18, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami:. There seems to be a bit of difficulty. It seems that nobody around here, Cambridge Bay and one woman from Gjoa Haven, has ever heard of the word. Also nobody had any idea what the word was trying to say. It's a long weekend here so my daughter is off to her cabin and won't be back until Monday night. I'll ask here to check with her friend in Pangnirtung. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 17:42, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

@CambridgeBayWeather: Thanks! According to Boaz, who I think worked on the east coast of Baffin Island, it's "those above us", vs. adlivun which is "those below us". AFAICT, it's qut/qule 'above' (or at 'below') + directional lirn + 1pl.possessive vun. Maybe the language is too different where you are to recognize. — kwami (talk) 17:54, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami:. That could well be. There are words used east of here that are very different. One of the better known, here anyway, is the word for cold, alappaa and the word for wet, ikkii. However, once you get east of here ikkii is cold and qausiqtuq means wet. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 09:57, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Quotation From Asterix

There was one of the Asterix books - I can't remember which one - where their speech became garbled, at least in the English translation. The only phrase I remember was 'Zigackly' for 'Exactly'. I can understand that translating puns into another language can be very difficult, but does this 'Zigackly' make any sense at all as a pun in the original French? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 11:21, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

It's from Asterix and the Laurel Wreath, if that helps. Urban dictionary lists it. 64.235.97.146 (talk) 12:29, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Apparently the French has "farpaitement", a consonant permutation of "parfaitement" [1]. German has "latürnich" for "natürlich". Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:56, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Aha, so it's a spoonerism, basically. I sort of thought it was, but wasn't sure. Thanks. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 13:06, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Ferpectly true! 64.235.97.146 (talk) 18:25, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Resolved

Just would like to add that (Aber) latürnich! has crept into everyday German as a jocular way to say "(But) of course!", although I'm not sure if it was the German translation of Astérix that introduced (or at least helped to popularise) this (quasi-)spoonerism – it's very well possible, though. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:19, 2 August 2015 (UTC)