Backtalk

Bilingual palindromes, offered by Luc Étienne in Palindromes Bilingues, 1984:

  • Mon Eva rêve ton image, bidet! = Ted, I beg, am I not ever a venom?
  • Untrodden russet! = T’es sûr, Ned dort nu?
  • Sir, I ate merely on it. = Tino, y le remet à Iris.
  • Isadora rêve = Ever a rod as I?
  • Ton minet t’adora = A rod, at ten, I’m not!
  • Crop, editor, not any Bob = Bob, y n’a ton rôti de porc!

I offer you a sentence which does not indeed read backward and forward the same, but reads forward in English and backward in Latin,– making sense, it seems to me, both ways; granting that it is hardly classical Latin.

Anger? ‘t is safe never. Bar it! Use love!

Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!

Which being freely translated, may mean,

Rise up, in order that your anger may be but a brief madness; control it!

— John Townsend Trowbridge, ed., Our Young Folks, 1866

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Another Equivoque

This poem takes a pretty dark view of marriage — unless you read only the alternate lines:

That man must lead a happy life
Who’s free from matrimonial chains,
Who is directed by a wife
Is sure to suffer for his pains.
Adam could find no solid peace
When Eve was given for a mate;
Until he saw a woman’s face
Adam was in a happy state.
In all the female race appear
Hypocrisy, deceit, and pride;
Truth, darling of a heart sincere,
In woman never did reside.
What tongue is able to unfold
The failings that in woman dwell;
The worths in woman we behold
Are almost imperceptible.
Confusion take the man, I say,
Who changes from his singleness,
Who will not yield to woman’s sway,
Is sure of earthly blessedness.

— W.S. Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892

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Rich Talk

Some favorite words of Stockholm University linguist Mikael Parkvall, from his Limits of Language (2006):

  • klunen (Dutch): “to walk or run overland with skates on (usually from one body of frozen water to another)”
  • aɣone (Kuot): “to drink from a bottle in such a fashion that drool trickles from the mouth back into the bottle”
  • fringsen (German): “to steal coal from railway wagons or potatoes from fields in order to survive”
  • knedlikový (Czech): “rather partial to dumplings”
  • qamigartuk (Yup’ik): “he goes seal-hunting with a small sled and kayak in the spring”
  • baleŋga (Chavacano): “excessive swinging of arms while walking”
  • kallsup (Swedish): “a gulp of water that a bather accidentally inhales”
  • googly (English): “(of an off-breaking cricket ball) disguised by the bowler with an apparent leg-break action”

Gunwinggu, spoken in northwestern Australia, uses different verbs to describe the hopping of a black wallaroo (Macropus bernardus) (kamurlbardme), the hopping of an agile wallaby (Macropus agilis) (kalurlhlurme), the hopping of a male antilopine wallaroo (Macropus antilopinus) (kamawudme), and the hopping of a female antilopine wallaroo (kadjalwahme).

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In a Word

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Coulter_-_San_Francisco.jpg

bibliotaph
n. a hoarder of books

In the rare book collection of the archives at Caltech is a copy of Adrien-Marie Legendre’s 1808 text on number theory. It comes from the collection of Eric Temple Bell, who taught mathematics at Caltech from 1926 to 1953. Inside the book is an inscription in Bell’s handwriting:

This book survived the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 18 April, 1906. It was buried with about 600 others, in a vacant lot, before the fire reached the spot. The house next door to the lot fell upon the cache; the tar from the roof baked the 4 feet of dirt, covering the books, to brick, and incinerated all but 4 books, of which this is one. Signed: E. T. Bell. Book buried just below Grace Church, at California and Stockton Streets. House number 729 California Street.

During the Great Fire of London in 1666, Samuel Pepys came upon Sir William Batten burying his wine in a pit in his garden. Pepys “took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of” and later buried “my Parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things.” I don’t know whether he ever recovered them.

| Language · Literature · Science & Math

Sound Language

http://openclipart.org/detail/169725/pow-vintage-comic-book-sound-effect-by-studio_hades

Ernst Havlik’s (1981) Lexikon der Onomatopoien is an entire dictionary consisting only of comic strip sound effects. It contains an introductory analysis, 2222 onomatopoeic items, and 111 illustrations. The section on kissing, for instance, contains glork, schmatz, schuic, shluk, smack, smurp and shmersh — quite a poetic collection in itself. More unexpected are woin and töff, both of which are intended to represent the sound of a car horn. A breaking car apparently goes tata in at least one source, and from a ‘scientific laboratory,’ one gets to hear foodle, grink, and sqwunk. Perhaps even more interesting are the sounds floop, flop and flomp, which represent the sound of a bra being taken off. Anyone prejudiced against the genre as such, may see it as a confirmation that the sections on ‘violence’ take up 17 pages, while that devoted to ‘thinking’ consists of a mere five lines.

— Mikael Parkvall, Limits of Language, 2006

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