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tarvos
Super Polyglot
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Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 105 of 243
06 July 2012 at 3:42pm | IP Logged 
J'ai tellemanchot! (as said by a friend of my ex's when we went to the Rotterdam zoo to
see penguins, and we learned that penguins are manchots in French - surprising, as she
speaks fluent French)

Edited by tarvos on 06 July 2012 at 3:47pm

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songlines
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 Message 106 of 243
08 July 2012 at 8:09am | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
The problem with the word "pingouin" is that it in principle refers to two Northerly species (Alca
torda and the extinct Pinguinus impennis - known in Iceland as the "geirfugl"). But then the word was also used
about the 'manchots' from the Southern Hemisphere, and if you look through the hits at Google it is hard to find
one single reference to the original 'pingouins' apart from Wikipedia, which nevertheless boldly claims that "Par abus
de langage, le pingouin est souvent confondu avec les manchots". OK, with 'manchot' French has another word for
penguin (and it is probably the only language to have one), but even the French think Spheniscidae when they see
the word pingouin.


Thanks, Iversen. Good to know.
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songlines
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 Message 107 of 243
08 July 2012 at 8:13am | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
J'ai tellemanchot!


Sorry, Tarvos - I don't quite get the play on words. (Or so I assume? Apologies - I know it's awful having to explain
a joke...)




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songlines
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 Message 108 of 243
10 July 2012 at 4:13am | IP Logged 
The interval between my summaries seems to be getting longer and longer. Here goes...

Summary from 11th June to 9 July:

News and other broadcasts: 305 minutes. (5 hours, 5 mins)
Films/documentaries: 318 minutes (5 hours, 18 minutes). 4 films (Three of which had Eng. subtitles, hence were
"marked down" by 30%. )
Assimil: 40 minutes
Reading: 29 pages. Nomade, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.



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songlines
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 Message 109 of 243
10 July 2012 at 5:33am | IP Logged 
I didn't get an English copy of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book Nomad to use as a parallel text, with the result that I
ended up making over five pages of vocab lists & notes for the twenty-nine pages of her book that I've so far
read.

The text itself doesn't seem that difficult, and I'm hopeful that some of this list-making will decrease as I become
accustomed to Hirsi Ali's style and language.

Herewith, a selection from Nomade/Nomad:

-le fantassin: footsoldier
-frayer (trans. verb): to clear a path for somebody; to pave the way for something. e.g. se frayent leur chemin
propre.
-une emprise: influence, control, hold. e.g. l'emprise familiale.
-fustiger: to castigate, to chastise
-mâcher les mots (idiom): mince one's words
-le noyau des Lumières: the core (lit. pit or stone of fruit) of the Enlightenment
-jadis: formerly
-une errance: wandering, roving, vagabondage, homelessness
-censer: to be intended to (do something)
-soins intensifs: intensive care
-béant/e (adj): gaping, yawning, e.g. le fosse béant
-câliner: to cuddle
-maigrichon/ne: skinny, e.g. une fillette maigrichonne
-escamoter: to make something (or someone) disappear (e.g. by an illusionist)
-ensevelir: to bury, to inter
-la mare d'eau: pool, puddle,
-une ornière: rut, e.g. ornières des rues
-le suaire noir: shroud
-un assujettissement: subjugation, subservience (also used in a financial or tax context to mean "liability")
-assujettir: to subdue, to subjugate

Moving on from Nomade, to the "English words I learned through French" category:
-le chevet: the head of a bed, or bedside, e.g. "j'ai toujours un livre de chevet". But "chevet" is also used in
English, in the context of ecclesiastical architecture:   Wikipedia.
-burkinabè: the demonym for people of Burkina Faso, e.g. le
president burkinabè. In English, "Burkinabé".
-diluvien /diluvienne: torrential, e.g. les pluies diluviennes. In English: also "diluvian".

An acronym:
-la Cédéao, Communauté Economique des Etats de l'Afrique de l'Ouest. In English: ECOWAS: Economic
Community of Western African States.   (Should the French title be all lower case from "economique" on..?)

And a couple of interesting expressions:
-amateurs de polars: Not, as one might expect, the likes of Amundsen and Shackleton, but fans/enthusiasts of
the detective novel. Wikipedia.fr.
-la pipolisation, also peopolisation: a neologism, which my dictionary says is derived from l'anglicisme "pipole"
(personne célèbre)
, e.g. la pipolisation culturelle: the celebrity culture.
-starification: stardom
-starisation: star-making, star system (not in the context of astronomy), hype

Lacune in my geographic nomenclature now filled:
- La Tamise: the Thames. (I knew la Manche for the English Channel, but am astonished that I hadn't
known la Tamise, and more so that I hadn't realized it till the coverage of the Jubilee celebrations.)

---
As always, if anyone spots any mistakes or spelling errors, please feel free to let me know.


Edited by songlines on 10 July 2012 at 5:42am

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Homogenik
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 Message 110 of 243
10 July 2012 at 11:09pm | IP Logged 
According to Bernard Grzimek's Le monde animal (vol. 7-8), the last Grand Pingouin (Pinguinus impennis, the one
being confused with the Manchot) were killed in Iceland in 1844. The Pinguins (or Auk) we have today would be the
Petit Pingouin (or Pingouin torda, Alca toda), having around 45 cm in height while Manchots are quite higher,
amongst other important differences.

Also, the joke earlier (J'ai tellemanchot!) is that J'ai tellement chaud (I'm so hot) sounds the same as if you put in the
word manchot inside tellement (but you can't actually do that, it's just a game).

Edited by Homogenik on 10 July 2012 at 11:16pm

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numerodix
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 Message 111 of 243
10 July 2012 at 11:18pm | IP Logged 
Moi aussi j'ai lu "Nomad", pas en français cependant, il y a des années désormais. Une
histoire extrêmement triste parfois.
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tarvos
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likeapolyglot.wordpr
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Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 112 of 243
10 July 2012 at 11:23pm | IP Logged 
songlines wrote:
tarvos wrote:
J'ai tellemanchot!


Sorry, Tarvos - I don't quite get the play on words. (Or so I assume? Apologies - I
know it's awful having to explain
a joke...)





It is indeed a pun. Pronounce it again, and you'll hear it sounds the same as "j'ai
tellement chaud". Now think of penguins and heat and the rest should explain itself ;)

Edited by tarvos on 10 July 2012 at 11:23pm



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