For a short while, after visiting the UN when I was about ten, I thought I wanted to be a simultaneous translator. Of course, I only knew one language, and that rather irregularly. The simultaneous translator idea didn’t last long, BTW. Still, I have retained a curiosity about language.
So, an article this week was right up my alley. It’s by Timothy Snyder, in the New York Times, dated April 22nd, and titled, The War in Ukraine Has Unleashed a New Word.
The new word is “рашизм.” And it’s Ukrainian, if you didn’t catch that; written Ukrainian uses Cyrillic letters, like Russian, but it’s not Russian (duh). Roughly, рашизм translates as “Russian fascism.” The article is about how much that translation skips all the cleverness folded into the actual word. Lesson: plenty is missed in translation.
First, рашизм’s seriously multi-lingual, including English. So clever, so complicated. Go to the article (apologies: paywall) and learn all the intricacies.
One thing I didn’t know, while English refers to Russian and Rus (red), etc., with the vowel u, in Ukranian and Russian the vowel is o. I had no idea (why would I, actually?). (And it’s more than o, actually, as Russians pronounce it like an a. Surprise.)
And now, we have handy pocket translators, good for a giant assortment of languages. I have not checked what mine makes of the Ukrainian рашизм.
Posted at 8:19 PM |
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Typically when I name photos for this space, I use an underline (_) between words. For some reason, I didn’t today. I intended “shaft of light,” but I read “shaft o’ flight.”
Posted at 7:07 PM |
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We just started a new international television series. It’s called Pera Palas’ta Gece Yarısı, or Midnight at the Pera Palace. For enquiring minds: the Pera Palace is a real hotel that had its grand opening in 1895.
Turns out that just like Finnish and Swedish, we can’t understand Turkish merely by listening to it.
Posted at 8:52 PM |
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Today’s new vocab: dunkelflaute. However, this is a pink dogwood. Most are white; I recall reading some years ago that the dogwoods are susceptible to a virus and the breeders haven’t come up with a resistant pink dogwood. It seems like that still may be true as there are fewer and fewer pink dogwoods in our neighborhood. And none are young trees. [I admit that’s a very local, spatially biased observation.]
Oh: dunkelflaute (German). It’s usually translated as dark doldrums, or meteorologically: anticyclonic gloom. It’s when renewable energy can’t be generated (e.g., overcast days for solar panels, or still days for wind turbines).
Posted at 4:53 PM |
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Repeated patterns can be mesmerizing. Especially if blue or purple colors are involved IMHO.
Posted at 8:33 PM |
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This pile is so large because it was from a cleaned parking lot. It’s snow snow snow, nevertheless.
Small ponds still had ice in the centers, but larger bodies of water, like this: open water.
Yes, we did another latitude shift north today. And experienced graupel twice, hours apart. [Graupel is not in the Apple dictionary; it suggests grapple—not the same at all.]
Posted at 9:56 PM |
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Probably along with twenty-seven or eighty-four (or more?) other television stations around the USA, one of our local affiliates’ weather team is using a new (to them) hot phrase for select days ahead with a worrisome prediction. They call them First Alert days. And now that they’ve been using this marketing model for a few weeks, I noticed that the promotional phrase has been turned into a verb, as in: “I’m First Alerting Thursday.” Evolution in front of our very ears.
Posted at 10:28 PM |
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I’ve seen the Ukranian President’s name as Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Volodymyr Zelensky. I don’t know what the distinction is/means. I do understand the Ukranian Kyiv (vs the Russian Kiev). Such are the problems of transliteration. And colonization/subjugation.
Posted at 9:07 PM |
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Here’s one of those mini-driveway bridges I mentioned on Friday, all hooked up. It’s an odd, specific contraption.
In other neighborhood news, someone’s shooting a new state lottery commercial. Tomorrow.
Title refers to a new mini-addiction: watching Le Meilleur Pâtissier. In French, no subtitles. A challenge. I did know what beurre noisette means and how to make it; yay!
Posted at 8:27 PM |
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In one of those species naming mysteries, this lovely flower is in the genus Ranunculus, which refers to little frogs.
Posted at 7:52 PM |
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