Random language thread 6

[Vlürch]

As far as I can tell, it's not Tibetan, it's.... English! And Icelandic.

Huhhhh, that's really interesting! I mean, I did at first find "Nordic" stuff when googling for it myself (and knew about Icelandic placenames with jökull in them from watching travel shows, etc. but didn't know what it meant) but ignored all of that since I thought it couldn't possibly be related, but I guess I shouldn't have assumed that it'd be a Tibetan word. It's just that Tibetan words are so often used untranslated in contexts of Tibet-related stuff that I figured it had to be a Tibetan word...

sounds as though it can be used for mountains permanently covered in snow and ice that occur in other locations

So it's that typical English extension, then. Hmm.

It makes sense, and I think they didn't explain what it means because they were using it as an English word and perhaps assuming people would know it. (My suspicion: English-speakers who are more familiar with the geography of permanently snowy mountains do know the word.)

That's probably true, thanks.

(Although from what I can figure out, they've misunderstood the etymology somewhat; jökull means "glacier" or "ice cap", not "icicle".)

Apparently Old Norse jǫkull could also mean "icicle".

If I am right about this, then "a white Jokul God without flesh and blood" would mean a snowy mountain god - it is white because it is covered in snow and it is "without flesh and blood" because it takes the form of a mountain rather than a human form.

Ooh, that makes sense too.

Maybe in Tibet it has some other meaning or origin, but... the fact is that I did find jokul meaning a mountain that is always covered in ice and snow, from jökull (glacier, ice cap) in Icelandic, and Tibet does have that type of geography (mountains always capped with ice and snow). You also found many references to snow-capped mountains. I think that's right on, but again, it's English-from-Icelandic, not Tibetan. I think that meaning fits all of the contexts you provided so it is probably what is meant.

Yeah, thanks! It's kinda funny (and embarrassing?) because it sounds kinda like a Tibetan word in the English form at least to me, but then again, if I had first encountered in a non-Tibetan context I wouldn't have thought that, so... I don't know if this is evidence of some kind of subconscious racism against Tibetans, but I hope not... it's just, like I already said, I've noticed that in Tibet-related contexts Tibetan words are often used untranslated and sometimes unexplained, so I didn't think it wouldn't be like that in this case.

[linguoboy]

Well, that was a fun little rabbithole! I tried to see if I could find a Tibetan equivalent of "jokul" and one of the Tibetan dictionaries online gave me gnas ri. The literal translation of this is something like "abode mountain", i.e. a mountain that is the dwelling place of a deity. And while there does seem to be significant overlap between the two, it's not one-to-one. Still, that would go a way towards explaining the references to "worshipping jokul".

[Vlürch]

Well, that was a fun little rabbithole! I tried to see if I could find a Tibetan equivalent of "jokul" and one of the Tibetan dictionaries online gave me gnas ri. The literal translation of this is something like "abode mountain", i.e. a mountain that is the dwelling place of a deity. And while there does seem to be significant overlap between the two, it's not one-to-one. Still, that would go a way towards explaining the references to "worshipping jokul".

Cool! Apparently there's also གངས་རི (gangs ri), which is literally just "snow mountain" (and doesn't seem to have the spiritual connotation?), which is the "Kangri" part in the names of mountains, eg. Kula Kangri! Well, I'm pretty sure I'd encountered it before but hadn't made the connection to the names of mountains... but anyway, knowing that there's also a word specifically for mountains with that spiritual connotation is nice.

Since you didn't post it in the Tibetan script, I googled and apparently it's གནས་རི, and according to Wiktionary gnas is pronounced /nɛː˥˩/... the Tibetan script will always confuse me.

Also, I'll probably mix those two mountain words up if I ever try to remember which is which...

[Yasna]

Sprachleitfaden für Diversität: Angeschwärzt

"Nun haben auch die Farben ihre Unschuld verloren. Da sehen Sie schwarz? Aufgepasst: Das könnte auf einen latenten Rassismus deuten. So viel Diversitätssensibilisierung will gelernt sein, und deshalb geht die Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Justiz, Verbraucherschutz und Antidiskriminierung mit schwindelerregend gut gemeintem Beispiel voran und händigt ihren Landesbediensteten einen Sprachleitfaden aus, der ihr politisch korrektes Bewusstsein schärfen soll."

"Nein, wir erhalten hier ganz neue Einblicke in eine politische Farbenlehre: Demnach soll man nicht mehr „schwarz fahren“ sagen, sondern „fahren ohne gültigen Fahrschein“. Auch „anschwärzen“ steht unter Diskriminierungsverdacht „und ähnliches“ – also offenbar alle Ausdrücke, in denen das Wort „schwarz“ in einem negativen Kontext auftaucht."

"Nicht auszudenken, vor welchen Sprachbarrieren wir stünden, weiteten wir die Farbpalette vermeintlicher Rassismen noch aus. Gelb vor Neid? Erinnert allzu sehr an die koloniale Praxis, Asiaten als „gelb“ einzustufen. Die Rote Karte zeigen? Man denke an die Hexenverbrennung. Weiß wie Schnee? Markiert die vielbeschworene Überlegenheit der weißen Rasse. So zeigt die kolorierte Hypermoral der Senatsverwaltung vor allem eines: wie man sich selbst handlungsunfähig macht. Den Opfern von Rassismus ist damit am wenigsten geholfen."

[linguoboy]

I'm really looking forward to her opinion piece next month on Christmas creep.

[md0]

To be fair, I do roll my eyes on attempts for language reform when they are done to the exclusion of system reform. I know the experimental results do not 100% support my position that the interaction between culture and language is one-way and that language nearly reflects culture, but I also haven't seen strong effect sizes either.

For every collateral target like schwarz fahren there's a Mohrenstraße though. Getting some things wrong doesn't suffice to dismiss antiracism.

[vijayjohn]

So the Standard Malayalam is not used in education, in media, in written language, in formal discourses?

In education, people are more likely to use English for most cases. For those other purposes, yes, a very formal variety of it is used.

I thought it was like Catalan, Irish or Basque etc.

I don't think that's necessarily different from the situation in any of those languages, though.

[linguoboy]

I thought it was like Catalan, Irish or Basque etc.

I don't think that's necessarily different from the situation in any of those languages, though.

It sounds quite different from the Catalan situation to me. Catalan doesn't have a great deal of dialect differentiation to begin with and the normative standard is widely accepted. (The modifications for Valencian usage are on a par with the differences between the Standard German of Germany and the Standard German of Austria or UK English vs NA English.) Prescriptivists are always on the lookout for "castellanismes" but they find these as much in the speech of native-speakers as anyone else.

Irish and Basque are different. There are normative standards which are promulgated through the education systems, but dialect-speakers are very loyal to their local and regional varieties leading to considerable tension between them and L2-speakers (as we've seen on this very board) and mutual intelligibility between them can be quite low.

[Saim]

Apparently in the Catalan expression marejar la perdiu (to filibuster, overcomplicate things, waste time saying nonsense) the word perdiu means "partridge", and has nothing to do with the word perdre (to lose). I used to associate it with the expression perdre el temps (to waste time) and never would've imagined it has anything to do with birds or hunting; I guess the metaphor here is wasting time making the partridge dizzy rather than shooting it. As far as I can tell it's also a calque of the Spanish expression marear la perdiz although the Catalan version sounds more familiar to me.

[Antea]

Sí, es lo mismo. Yo utilizo mucho “marear la perdiz”, en castellano, en situaciones como: “Estuvo media hora mareando la perdiz, y al final no quedamos en nada”.

[Gormur]

I'm wondering if syllables vary by language, like what's considered a syllable

I know in English it's based on vowels and not stress, for example. But maybe in another language it could be based on stress rather than vowel sounds. I know this confused me in school, even though it's simple but my mind always broke up words based on stress so like with most things I just rote-memorized the rules

This may be a hard question to answer so I don't expect an answer. Just appreciate any thoughts

[Gormur]

I looked at Wiktionary and it states that ass is [ɑːs] in English English. Does that make it interchangeable with arse in pronunciation? I could swear that I've heard English people say arse instead of ass in media and it sounds different, like there's a different vowel sound at the beginning

Maybe my observation is meaningless because of dialects. I'm not sure, just curious

[Saim]

I looked at Wiktionary and it states that ass is [ɑːs] in English English. Does that make it interchangeable with arse in pronunciation? I could swear that I've heard English people say arse instead of ass in media and it sounds different, like there's a different vowel sound at the beginning.

The standard spelling in predominantly non-rhotic countries would be arse. Ass is a variant that originally arose to represent the American pronunciation (i.e. rhotic accents where non-rhoticity is fossilised in this one word), but I think you'll also find people who pronounce it the British way rendering it as ass due to American influence. I've even heard some people from England pronounce it as /æs/, but I'm pretty sure that's just an Americanism, and I think it's more common in loaned compounds (dumbass and such). In Australian English on the other hand we generally convert these Americanisms into compounds with -arse, even when the root actually has to do with the animal (I remember that in Australia everyone referred to the American show Jackass as jack[ɑː]s and not jack[æ]s).

Of course, if you're talking about the animal, it's always ass /æs/.

[Gormur]

I looked at Wiktionary and it states that ass is [ɑːs] in English English. Does that make it interchangeable with arse in pronunciation? I could swear that I've heard English people say arse instead of ass in media and it sounds different, like there's a different vowel sound at the beginning.

The standard spelling in predominantly non-rhotic countries would be arse. Ass is a variant that originally arose to represent the American pronunciation (i.e. rhotic accents where non-rhoticity is fossilised in this one word), but I think you'll also find people who pronounce it the British way rendering it as ass due to American influence. I've even heard some people from England pronounce it as /æs/, but I'm pretty sure that's just an Americanism, and I think it's more common in loaned compounds (dumbass and such). In Australian English on the other hand we generally convert these Americanisms into compounds with -arse, even when the root actually has to do with the animal (I remember that in Australia everyone referred to the American show Jackass as jack[ɑː]s and not jack[æ]s).

Of course, I've you're talking about the animal, it's always ass /æs/.

Thanks for your input. Yeah I've heard /æs/ on English TV shows, but I realize there's a tendency for media to use uncommon or even unheard of words so that makes sense

You hear arse in rhotic-Canadian dialects (like in Hiberno English) although I don't know its history. I had a professor who used it but I never saw it in written form, always ass.

[Yasna]

I was trying to remember how to say "picky eater" in German, and discovered a remarkable amount of regional variety.

heikel [österr., sonst regional] [wählerisch]

schleckig [südd.] [wählerisch in Bezug auf Essen]

schnaikig [schwäbisch] [wählerisch beim Essen]

schnäubig [hessisch] [wählerisch beim Essen]

krüsch [nordd.] [wählerisch im Essen]

https://www.dict.cc/englisch-deutsch/picky+%5Beater%5D.html

[linguoboy]

schnaikig [schwäbisch] [wählerisch beim Essen]

FWIW, schnaikig bzw. schnaigig is also found in other Alemannic varieties, such as Badisch, and heikel has the variants heiklig, hakelig, haklich, usw.

Other variants missing from that list are gnäschig (Franconia), (g)schnäd(d)erfräsig (Switzerland), mäkelig (Eastern Germany), leksch (Schleswig-Holstein), and pingelig (Rheinland).

For the geographic distribution of these and other terms, see: http://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de/runde-3/f09b/.

[Hoogstwaarschijnlijk]

I was trying to remember how to say "picky eater" in German, and discovered a remarkable amount of regional variety.

heikel [österr., sonst regional] [wählerisch]

schleckig [südd.] [wählerisch in Bezug auf Essen]

schnaikig [schwäbisch] [wählerisch beim Essen]

schnäubig [hessisch] [wählerisch beim Essen]

krüsch [nordd.] [wählerisch im Essen]

https://www.dict.cc/englisch-deutsch/picky+%5Beater%5D.html

That's funny, I call that a 'pitser'. But then I moved (from Brabant to Utrecht) and found that no one called it a 'pitser', people here just describe it as 'a difficult eater' or something like that. In standard Dutch there doesn't seem to be a word for it.

[linguoboy]

That's funny, I call that a 'pitser'. But then I moved (from Brabant to Utrecht) and found that no one called it a 'pitser', people here just describe it as 'a difficult eater' or something like that. In standard Dutch there doesn't seem to be a word for it.

Yeah, I asked two native speakers I know; one said that “wählerisch” is the best word he can think of, the other that he only knows a term “in my dialect”. The former recognises some other regional terms (like “mäkelig” and “krüsch”) although he doesn’t use them but was ignorant of “gnäschig” despite the map showing it as the dominant term in his home region. The latter, a Saarlander, uses the word “schnägisch”.

[Yasna]

For the geographic distribution of these and other terms, see: http://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de/runde-3/f09b/.

Have you come across any terms on that site with more regional variation than "wählerisch beim Essen"? Great site, bookmarked.

[linguoboy]

For the geographic distribution of these and other terms, see: http://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de/runde-3/f09b/.

Have you come across any terms on that site with more regional variation than "wählerisch beim Essen"? Great site, bookmarked.

I don't think I have, but then again I haven't looked at every result from the ongoing surveys. Certainly, quite a few seem to feature a choice between two possibilities. Anything with more than ten distinct responses is a rarity.

BTW, some of these terms have different meanings in Standard German. Heikel you probably know from collocations like "heikles Thema" ("touchy subject") and pingelig is used informally in the sense of "persnickety" (i.e. fussy about anything, not just food).