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Iversen’s Multiconfused Log (see p.1!) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3449 of 3959 28 November 2013 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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ESP: En la urba-buso-hejmen mi hodiaŭ legis arojn de elpresajojn kun tekstoj en esperanto, ekzemple: "Oraj kornoj" (el Vikipedio). En Danio duefoje troviĝis oraj kornoj apud Gallehus en Suda Jutlando el la ferepoko (la 5-a jarcento). Unuan kornon trovis malriĉa junulino, kiu daris la kornon al rego. Duan malriĉa hubulo kiu daris sian kornon al la grafo de Scheckenborgo kiu daris ĝin al rego. En 1802 malriĉa horlogisto/oraĵisto stelis ambaŭ kornojn el la rega kolekto kaj fandis ĝin, sed la ĉefo de la oraĵistoj en Kopenhago malkovris lin. Kirsten Svendsdatter riĉevis jupon kiel rekompenco, Erik Lassen riĉevis 200 talarojn (moneroj tiutempaj), kaj ŝtelisto Heidenreich riĉevis loĝejon ĝis 1840 en la laborprizono de kopenhago, kiu estis konata kiel "Tugt, rasp og forbedringshus".
Mi ankaŭ legis artikolojn pri Zaratuŝtro kaj la kromleĥoj el la megalitepoko. In the bus back home from my job today I read some printouts with articles about the two iron age Golden Horns which were found in 1639 and 1734 and ended up in the royal art collection ('Kunstkammeret'), from where they were stolen and promptly melted in 1802 by a shady watchmaker/goldsmith from Copenhagen, who already had been caught for forgery of banknotes, but released and helped to establish himself in society again - an early, are and not very succesful example of rehabilitation of criminals. The alderman of the goldsmiths' guild in Copenhagen had however got a suspicion and succeded in catching the culprit and deliver him to the police. And the thief spent the next 38 years in prison until 1840. Right after the crime Copenhagen was in total shock, and the poet Oehlenschläger wrote the most famous poem in Danish about the incident: Guldhornene De higer og söger i gamle Böger, i oplukte Höie med speidende Öie, paa Sværd og Skiolde i muldne Volde, paa Runestene blandt smuldnede Bene. Oldtids Bedrifter anede trylle; men i Mulm de sig hylle, de gamle Skrifter. Blikket stirrer, sig Tanken forvirrer. I Taage de famle. „I gamle gamle hensvundne Dage! da det straalte i Norden, da Himlen var paa Jorden, giv et Glimt tilbage!“ etc. etc. The shorter poem is famous for its inscription, which is one of the most famous in Proto Nordic - the step before Old Nordic: "Ek HlewagastR HoltingaR horna tawiðo". It is mostly translated as "I Lægæst from Holt (or Holt's son) made (the) horn". "Holt" means wood, but could also be a proper name. And even the identity of Lægæst has been disputed - maybe it isn't the goldsmith himself, but his employer, who in principle could be the same as a certain king Liutgast who is mentioned in the Niebelungen Lied. Well, all that is speculations - and there is no reason to believe that the mystery can be solved. Edited by Iversen on 08 December 2013 at 11:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3450 of 3959 02 December 2013 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have spent the weekend with my family, so it didn't result in much studying. However I did manage to watch the news in Dutch from BVN, I watched the news in Greenlandic (with Danish subtitles) and I did manage to do some word counts.
In the Greenlandic program there was a topic about a family who wanted to call their baby (a girl) something I have forgotten, but the meaning was something like "life" or "living". However the language authorities had refused to accept the name, and this decision had been upheld by the appeal authority. So maybe the end result will be that the girl will have a formal prename, a middle name = life and her family name. But the journalists pointed out that the name authorities might have spent their precious time better on weeding out approved items like "sindssyg stodder" (innaeq?), "møgkælling", "skidested" and "bremsespor" from their lists (roughly "raving lunatic", "dirty bitch", "outdoors loo" and "skid mark" (poo)). I did 4 word counts from 3 English dictionaries - and one of these won't be listed on page 248. The aberrant count was made from "mrs. Byrne's dictionary of unusual, obscure and preposterous words", so the result can't be directly compared to results obtained from regular allround dictionaries. But here it is: out of a total of 9000 words I knew an estimated 2000 (24%) and could guess 1000 more (9%). And as usual: 'guessable' means that I'm pretty sure I haven't seen the word, but I can guess its meaning. And because it is difficult to exclude that I have seen a word the number of guessable words is fairly small. If I should start a new round I might define "guessable" in a less restrictive way, but right now I'm stuck with the current one. Apart from that I have made a word count based on Gyldendal's red dictionary, though in a fairly old edition. My estimates, based on a mere 3 pages out of 621, are 36.000 known words (68%) and 3000 guessable ones (6%) out of somewhere around 53.000 words. And I made not one, but two based on the Concise Oxford dictionary (printed 1979). The problem was to find the dividing line between wordlike compounds, expressiions and examples of usage so first I only counted headwords, and afterwards I counted everything in bold typeface. The 'net' estimates: 23.000 words (70%) known and 2.000 guessable (5%) out of 33.000 headwords. The 'gross' estimates: 49.000 (64%) known and 10.000 guessable (13%) out of 74.000 lexical items. And lo and behold: the dictionary actually claims on its inner sleeve to have precisely 74.000 lexical items, which is quite reassuring - my counting isn't totally off the mark. Some of the results from 2009 were higher, but I have probably become more critical of my judgments now that I have added the category 'guessable' - maybe to the extent that some guessables have ended up as unknowns if my guesses weren't precise enough. Or maybe the total number of words were taken from sources on the internet which referred to other editions - this will of course affect the estimates. All my totals now are calculated from the pages I actually count. Edited by Iversen on 02 December 2013 at 12:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4654 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 3451 of 3959 02 December 2013 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Heh, I can quite agree with you about weeding out the lists. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3452 of 3959 02 December 2013 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The most worrying thing about this is that those names even found their way to a list over approved names. Which kind of malevolent parents would ever call their beloved kid "skidmark"? And nobody outside Greenland ever discovered anything because those names were in Greenlandic! But maybe there is a reason: I faintly remember having read about a tribe of jungle dwellers somewhere who habitually chose such names to make evil spirits ignore their kids and haunt those of their neighbours instead. Maybe that also was practised among the Inuit?
Here in Denmark there is a similar body which tries to keep dedicated numerologists from calling their offspring names strange names (unless those names are attested as traditional names in some other part of the world). However in one such case a pair of parents after much debate and heavy fines got the permission to call their son Christophpher, - and apparently Christophpher now 21 years later is happy about his name, which he has all to himself. Edited by Iversen on 02 December 2013 at 1:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4831 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 3453 of 3959 02 December 2013 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Quite by chance I found out that a small child in this area has been given the name
"Theoden". Well, we know where that comes from, I guess, and it's not such a bad name (better than "Bilbo" or "Frodo", and certainly better than names taken from temporarily popular celebrities), but I'd still think the poor kid might have a hard time at school. I suppose that's only his "Sunday best" name, and in everday life he will be called "Theo", which also isn't all that usual, but probably less likely to get him into trouble. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3454 of 3959 02 December 2013 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Theo is just a bit old-fashioned (short for Theodore). Everyone could get away with that. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3455 of 3959 02 December 2013 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Who knows? Maybe Theoden will become famous, and then there will be lots of Theodens.
In Denmark the 10 most common female names right now are: Anne, Kirsten, Hanne, Mette, Anne, Helle, Susanne, Lene, Maria and Marianne And the most common male names are: Peter, Jens, Lars, Michael, Henrik, Søren, Thomas, Jan, Niels and Christian But these names are the most common ones across the fluctuations back to the early 20. entury. Right now in 2013 the most common girls names are: Emma, Isabella, Laura, Ida, Clara, Sofie, Mathilde, Freja, Anna and Sofia and the boys' names are Lucas, William, Oliver, Noah, Emil, Victor, Frederik, Magnus, Mathias and Mikkel Did you notice something strange? Not ONE single name occurs on both sets of lists! And the generation 2013 names include names which haven't been in common use for at least 100 years - as if everybody from that era had to pass away before their names were given to new kids. And particularly at the top of the boys' list you may notice a surprising number of English names like Lucas (Skywalker), William (several possible sources), Oliver (probably after the cook), Noah (the name of an environmental organization). On the other hand it comes as a surprise to me that Muhammed or some variant thereof doesn't enter the list - as far as I know it has been named as the most common name in the world by Guinness, and you could have expected our resident 1., 2. and 3. generation immigrants from Moslem countries to carry on that costum. Edited by Iversen on 02 December 2013 at 4:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4102 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 3456 of 3959 02 December 2013 at 3:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
It strikes me as if though you're looking very hard for foreign influence where there isn't necessarily any. Lucas and Noah are old Christian names. Oliver may be foreign influence, but I doubt it has anything to do with Jamie Oliver (the cook, I presume). In Sweden, at least, Oliver has been very very trendy since the early 1990s. Interesting to see that the top list in Denmark is very much like the Swedish one, though, and that very old names are coming back there too.
Simple explanation: Danish immigration law. ;) Go across the Oresund Strait, the first place you get when you leave Denmark for friendlier immigration laws, and you'll have Elias topping the 2012 list of names for baby boys. Muhammed was the second most common name for baby boys. :D Just kidding. Not about the statistics, but about how immigration law is the reason. When you take all of Sweden into account, Muhammed isn't even in the top 30 list, even though it's so common around Malmö. I wouldn't be surprised if it's similar in Denmark... Muhammed may be one of the most common names in some areas, but it's outweighed by the rest of the country. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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