आज का शब्द aaj kaa shabd / ਅੱਜ ਦਾ ਸ਼ਬਦ ajj daa shabad

[muckefuck]

New feature, everyone! wwidsith proposed that I add Hindi to my list of Words of the Day, but the problem there is that my Hindi is simply too basic and my lexicographical resources too insufficient to do that without dumbing down the rest of the vocabulary.

Today's word is कद्दू/ਕੱਦੂ kaddoo which means "gourd" or "pumpkin". To specify the latter, Panjabi uses the modified terms ਹਲਵਾ ਕੱਦੂ halvaa kaddoo "halwa gourd" and ਮਿੱਠਾ ਕੱਦੂ siTTa kaddoo "sugar gourd". An alternative word is लौकी/ਲੌਕੀ ~ ਲਉਕੀ laukee and I couldn't tell you what the difference in usage is. The whole field is more confusing than I realised, since pumpkins are not a single species of squash, as I previously thought, but cultivars from at least four different ones: Cucurbita pepo, mixta, maxima, and moschata. In Panjabi at least, some of these also have specific names, e.g. ਮਿਠਾ ਕੱਦੂ miTaa kaddoo ("sweet") or ਵੱਡਾ ਕੱਦੂ vaDDaa kaddoo ("big") for C. maxima; ਸਫ਼ੈਦ ਕੱਦੂ safaid kaddoo ("white") for C. pepo, etc.

ETA: So, mollpeartree, any film songs that talk about gourds? A search on "Bollywood kaddoo" brought up this quote from Shabana Azmi (on her role in the BBC2 production Banglatown Banquet): "I play a strange kind of woman with a thing for growing kaddoo in my small balcony."

FETA: Wait, a further search turned up baigan bhindi kaddoo shaljam khaate hain dilwaale ("Those with heart are eating eggplant, okra, squash, turnip") from the 1950 film Baksheesh.

Comments

[tyrannio.livejournal.com]

To me, lauki is a bottle gourd, greenish on the outside, whitish on the inside. ("葫蘆" in wikipedia matches the name given in Beyond Bok Choy, "葫蘆瓜".)

In general, I've found specialized food reference works to be more useful than dictionaries for foodstuffs. (I have a Chinese-French dictionary which translates "白菜" as "chou".)

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Alas, I know of no gourd songs.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could find some of the songs that mention laddoo and change the first letter.

[wiped.livejournal.com]

interesting that panjabi has "halvaa kaddoo," as halvaa (sweet) is an arabic loan. as you know, most arabic loanwords entered panjabi via persian, but halvaa is extremely rare in persian (which prefers the indigenous word shirin).

i've taken a shining to panjabi as of late, but i don't think i'll do anything with it just yet, aside from continue to listen to music in the language. i'd like to get a solid grasp of urdu before i start messing with any other indic tongues.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

One of the denizens of learn_hindi posted a great comment on the similarities between various Neo-Indo-Aryan languages: "I speak Hindi, if I can get the meaning but it just doesn't sound right it's Panjabi". I'm worried that concentrating only on Hindi will wipe out my fading knowledge of Panjabi from my studies two years back so I'm trying to study the two in tandem right now. It's confusing and I wouldn't recommend it.

BTW, at the time I made a few remarks in my journal about the differences and similarities between the two languages. I've been planning a few more articles in the same vein.