Language
Category archives for Language
Gordon Ramsay’s Predecessor Sacks Jerusalem
Posted by Martin R on August 9, 2010 And here’s star philologist and religion scholar Ola Wikander with a guest lesson in Akkadian. The word of the day is nuḫatimmu. It means “a cook” in Akkadian (or sometimes “a baker”). Maybe something to interest Gordon Ramsay? And wouldn’t it be great if there was an Akkadian version of the TV show MasterChef, named…
Heretical Room Mate
Posted by Martin R on July 4, 2010 My buddy Micke and his Japanese college room mate: “I’m Ken Nakamura. Ken means ‘heresy’!” “Really? That’s kind of… odd.” “Yes! It means ‘HERESY’! Rike when you are never sick!” “Ahaaa, you mean ‘healthy’…” “Yes! Correct! What does your name mean?”
Little Interpreters
Posted by Martin R on May 31, 2010 When a family migrates, the members who pick up the local lingo first and best are generally the children, and they soon become little interpreters. My wife wrote letters to the Swedish authorities for her Chinese dad from the time she was 11. And when time rolled around for the biannual talk with the teachers…
Hernia Brand Glue
Posted by Martin R on March 14, 2010 Scandinavians generally speak pretty good English. But every now and then you come across reminders that they are still very far from being native speakers. Witness this pail of wall-paper glue that I bought earlier today. Dear Swedish glue-maker, “hernia” means brock and is defined as “the protrusion of an organ or the fascia of…
Recent Archaeomags
Posted by Martin R on February 17, 2010 The non-profit Center for Desert Archaeology is located in Tucson, Arizona and publishes a fine magazine, Archaeology Southwest. These generous people contacted me one day out of the blue and offered me a complimentary subscription. On Monday issue 23:3 (summer ’09) reached my mail box on snowy Boat Hill, and I was soon enticed to…
Tripartite Names in Denmark and China
Posted by Martin R on February 5, 2010 Danes often have tripartite names, like famous Roman Iron Age scholar Ulla Lund Hansen or NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. And I’ve been wondering how these names are inherited. Specifically, which names get dropped and which ones get passed on to the kids. So I wrote my erudite buddy, osteologist Helene Agerskov Madsen, and…
Everybody knows that English has borrowed the words ombudsman and smorgasbord from Swedish. But did you know that rutabaga is another Swedish loan? And that it was borrowed from a rural Swedish dialect, not standard Swedish? “Rutabaga” is an American word for the kind of turnip known to Englishmen and Australians as swede. Indeed, the…
Runological Report on the Hogganvik Rune Stone
Posted by Martin R on November 2, 2009 Runologist James E. Knirk has published a report on the recently found Hogganvik rune stone. His transliteration is [?]kelbaþewas:s(t)^ainaR:aaasrpkf aarpaa:inanana(l/b/w)oR eknaudigastiR ekerafaR His translation is Skelba-þewaR’s ["Shaking-servant's"] stone. (Alphabet magic: aaasrpkf aarpaa). ?Within/From within the ?wheel-nave/?cabin-corner. I NaudigastiR [="Need-guest"]. I, the Wolverine. So there isn’t actually an explicit lord-retainer relationship in the text, just a…
5th Century Rune Stone Found
Posted by Martin R on October 7, 2009 Most rune stones are written with the late 16-character futhark and date from the 11th century when the Scandies had largely been Christianised. Their inscriptions tend to be formulaic: “Joe erected the stone after Jim his father who was a very good man”. But by that time, runic writing was already 900 years old. It’s…
Copulation Music
Posted by Martin R on September 18, 2009 Musical styles can have really weird names. There’s sauce music (salsa), meringue music (merengue), juvenile delinquent music (punk), record collection music (disco), LSD warehouse music (acid house), popular music (pop), you name it. But some of the most intensely loved musical styles have names that mean “copulation music”. “Jazz” was once a verb meaning “to…
