Language
-
Italian has the ability to swallow English words whole, not even bothering to Italianize them. Here are a few examples drawn from a 2016 novel by Stefano Benni. "Freezer," as in diventa rigido come un peluche lasciato nel freezer." ("It became stiff like a stuffed animal left in the freezer.") "I cornflakes," incorporated as a plural noun.…
-
Unlike most sciences, where there are numerous pseudo-Greek or pseudo-Latin coinages, geology offers all sorts picturesque and lovely words that have been in the language for years – and are novel to me. So "graywacke" –a muddy sandstone containing particles of quartz"; "fumarole" — a small vent emitting jets of steam; "sinter" – a crust…
-
"Antres" is among the rarest of rare words. Shakespeare's Othello speaks of "antres vast and deserts idle" in the magnificent oration in which he takes issue with the Venetian bigotry that claimed that he was only able to win white Desdemona by employing drugs and witchcraft. No, it wasn't because he was a sorcerer; it was because he was accomplished, heroic, romantic. "Antres"…
-
Judging from his spectacularly wonderful name you might guess that Bacchus Pederson is either a character in a novel by Thomas Pynchon or the son of a Swedish father and a patriotic Greek mother. Not so. He's the creation not of eccentric parents or postmodern fiction the but of the voice recognition system that's been…
-
"Enough is as good as a feast" has become my very favorite proverb. It's a warning against crass consumerism, against materialism, against the excesses of capitalist acquisitiveness. Cold water in a jelly glass, it asserts, is as good as your $500 wine in crystal. As they used to gloss the proverb, no "avaricious scraping…
-
Now that we've at last come to the NBA playoffs and are heading toward another Warriors-Cavaliers showdown, it's fitting that we reflect on basketball jargon, which is distinguished by its many colorful monosyllables: hoops, hops, bigs, stuff, slam, jam, slash, dish, board, glass, dunk, pick, screen, paint, lane, point, wing, trey, rim, post, trap, "D", roll, box,…
-
If you asked me to guess what the word "chalaza" means, I'd say, from its sound, that it would have to be an odd cactus-y looking plant that grows only in the Atacama desert and flowers once a decade, or an extinct language formerly spoken in the southern Caucasus mountains, or perhaps some sort of…
-
The twins and their older brother came to visit and were playing their favorite new game, "hide the goose." The goose? a two foot tall hollow plastic replica perhaps originally a lawn ornament, now an excellent child's toy. Easy to find. After the hiding game had gone on long enough, and was just starting to become…
-
Years ago, I read, in translation of course, a few of Leonardo Sciascia's Sicilian mysteries. Excellent books: The Day of the Owl (Il giorno della civetta — 1961)), Equal Danger (Uguale pericolo –1973), The Challenge (Il contesto–1971). Last week I tried to read one of Sciascia's short stories in its native Italian. A good idea, but quite a…
-
On the whole, Italian is a mighty regular language. Of course it has its irregularities, but many fewer than, say, English. Plurals, for example, are largely predictable, but with some curious exceptions. The masculine noun bue (ox or sometimes, by extension, a dolt) seems to call for the plural form *bui, but it's not so; it's buoi. Dio (god), becomes…