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Inquiet i bellugadís
My new favourite word is bellugadís. Given the sad state of my memory banks, I'm not sure if it's a word I once knew and let evaporate from the sponge or a truly new discovery. For all of my languages, there is a solid core of words that are in my active vocabulary or at least the brighter areas of my passive vocabulary. Surrounding them is a vast expanse of darkness shrouding thousands of words and expressions that I've never learned. And then there at the border is a wide penumbra of words that are only somewhat familiar. Most likely, I came across them a few times in texts here and there. Context gave me a vague grasp of their meaning, so I never bothered to look them up; I can recognise them, but I can't define them.
In any case, what brought this gem in from either the inner or the outer darkness is reading the short stories of Martínez Ferrando, an early 20th-century author from Valencia. He's very fond of bellugar and its derivatives--at least, if it was used as much by other authors like Pere Calders or Mercè Rodoreda, I'm sure it would've stuck. In origin, it's a metathesised variant of bullegar from Vulgar Latin *bullicare "bubble" and has the basic meaning of "move about". (French bouger is a cognate.) Bellugadís is a derived adjective meaning "always moving about". When I first read it, I thought it meant "making noise", probably because of a subconscious association with German bellen. And, of course, interference from English causes me to associate it with whales and caviar, even though it's pronounced quite different. The ll is palatal consonant as in Spanish, which triggers an association with Catalan bell "beautiful". All in all, quite a rich little web of meaning.
In any case, what brought this gem in from either the inner or the outer darkness is reading the short stories of Martínez Ferrando, an early 20th-century author from Valencia. He's very fond of bellugar and its derivatives--at least, if it was used as much by other authors like Pere Calders or Mercè Rodoreda, I'm sure it would've stuck. In origin, it's a metathesised variant of bullegar from Vulgar Latin *bullicare "bubble" and has the basic meaning of "move about". (French bouger is a cognate.) Bellugadís is a derived adjective meaning "always moving about". When I first read it, I thought it meant "making noise", probably because of a subconscious association with German bellen. And, of course, interference from English causes me to associate it with whales and caviar, even though it's pronounced quite different. The ll is palatal consonant as in Spanish, which triggers an association with Catalan bell "beautiful". All in all, quite a rich little web of meaning.
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Ja saps, bellugadís i mandrós :)
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you've never studied Russian?
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