An Academic Blog Duo
Sloe to the finish line… Caveat lector—the spelling in the blog title belies a non-native German speaker’s meager approximation of two terms encountered in travels through Carinthia (Austria). Lo, in the Jauntal did I find two fruits referred to with these terms, both of which referenced dark-skinned (reddish-purple and bluish-purple), fairly small stone fruits. To […]
Food offers a bountiful table from which to dine when it comes to linguistics and etymology. A name that has long puzzled me is Tamerl, one which I’ve only encounted while dining at the Most & Weinschenke Tamerl in Griffen, and this is a seldom, but cherished, occurrence. My first, and clearly wrong, thought was […]
It’s always a pleasure to have a dialect word that properly belongs in a garden, and this one definitely does. I think the written form probably has an <ö> but is pronounced with an unrounded vowel, hence the <e> in “Merdlan.” I had no idea what this way when I heard first it (on April […]
Here’s where I keep a list of words to harvest later. If you have any dialect word suggestions, please leave a comment! herummurksen
In the Mundartgarten there’s also a plot set out for flowers and the wonderful names they have in dialect. In this entry we’re looking at the term “Naglstock,” which appears in Mathilde Ressmann’s poem “Wenn ih niama bin”: Tua die Vogalan fuattern, wenn ih niama bin, und die Bamlan beguatn im Obstgartlan drin. Die Blüamlan […]
Many of the dialect words I encounter are in printed. Though I interact with dialect speakers fairly frequently, there’s an element of on-the-spot communication that keeps me from remembering new words that might sprout up in the conversation. Sometimes I can figure out the meaning from context while I might be lost at other times […]
K-a-j-o-n. This word does not look German to me. It has a flair that hints at an origin not in the Germanic family. How did it end up in the language? What’s it doing? A windy path will lead us to an answer connected to human anatomy. Walk with me! My first encounter (as best […]