Spanglish of the Day

Window sign in a grocery on the way home: FROZEN FOODS / COMIDA FRISADA.

In Academy Spanish, frisar is an obscure term from the field of textile production. It means to rub cloth in order to raise the nap on it (i.e. as is done in the production of woolen frieze). Its only really colloquial use is to express approximate age, e.g. Frisaban en los cincuenta "They were getting to be in their fifties." The prescribed term for "freeze" is helar or--with foods--congelar, so "frozen foods" should be alimentos congelados (or just congelados for short).

WotD: fieldfare

1. der Krammetsvogel, die Wacholderdrossel
2. de kramsvogel
3. el zorzal real
4. la griva cerdana,el tord burell
5. la grive litorne
6. y socan eira
7. an siocán [sneachta], an glaisneach
8. kwiczoł
9. 개똥지빠귀
10. 田鶇 tiāndōng

Notes: This term is an illustration of how sometimes the most obscure items are the most easily translated with a dictionary and yet this is of no use when reading. I'm happily chugging through Fontane's Stechlin right now and the other night came across Krammetsvögelbrüste in a description of a dish served at a dinner party. Okay, obviously we're talking about some sort of fowl, but that alone isn't enough colour for my colourtext.

I was in bed, however, with the Langenscheidt at my side, so I cracked it open and found Krammetsvogel there glossed as "fieldfare". Not a word I know and I wondered aloud if it was some kind of archaic collective for "all the small winged things what we caught in the net". monshu didn't know it either, but he guessed maybe they were talking about ortolans[*]. If Fontane had used the synonym Wacholderdrossel ("juniper thrush") I'd've known at once we were talking about a particular species, but I still wouldn't've been able to put an image to the name.

Pretty much every page of the novel has at least one word like this. Something called a Rundell features very prominently in the garden of the big house. The old lord has a Karoline in billiards room that he treasures very much. A whole exchange between him and a guest was rendered obscure by several mentions of Renommisterei. It's still more fun than annoying hunting down the meanings for these old words, but sometimes I wish I had a Fontane-Lexikon from some diligent philologist who had done all the hunting down for me.

[*] He wasn't the only one to suggest this, so for the record the German word for "ortolan" is Ortolan or Gartenammer--Fettammer if you mean an ortolan that's been kept in the dark and tricked into gorging itself prior to being drowned in Armagnac. And you thought veal calves had it bad!

Selamat jalan!

Last week, scurrying to the el, I ran into a former student employee of mine. He had me at a disadvantage; it was several minutes after we parted before I recalled him name and I probably never would've remembered he was a journalism student if he hadn't told me he was being sent to Jakarta as part of a pilot placement programme. It was a freaky coincidence, because another student of mine--this one slated to return in the fall--was just there doing some volunteer work for her church.

A couple years ago now, my coworker Mr Smith decided he would likely never learn Indonesian and gave me about a dozen volumes he'd bought when he'd thought he would. I told my ex-worker he'd be welcome to these and he promised to stop by. I wasn't sure he would, but I brought back the textbook I'd found most helpful during my brief flirtation with the language in January just in case. Today he came by to collect it, along with a couple of skimpy phrasebooks he said he'd give to his two fellow participants.

He says he hasn't committed to blogging the experience yet since there's nothing sadder than saying you will and then letting it die after a couple months. I envied him for arriving the day before the likely date of Eid and cautioned him about the briar patch of Indonesian forms of address. ("I'll read that chapter before I get there," he promised.) The whole conversation gave me a vicarious thrill, reminding me of when I thought about taking a job abroad after graduation (they were certainly thin enough on the ground here!) but ultimately decided it wasn't the best move for me.