h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OK, so others are hiccough (a later, stupid spelling of hiccup under the mistaken impression that the second syllable was cough), tawdry (from a silk 'lace' or necktie associated with the East Anglian saint St Audrey, much worn by women in the 16c. and early 17c. - the final t of 'Saint' wrongly carried across to the name) and Welsh rarebit (first recorded in 1785 as 'an etymologizing alteration' of the earlier Welsh rabbit - which is at least less insulting).

It's not really the same thing, but I was amazed when learning German to find that 'gangway' came from the past participle of the verb 'to go'.

'gehen, gegangen'

Will ye gang to the highlands, Lizzie Lindsey?

yeah, a gang is a 'going', kind of. They still use gang to mean 'go' in Scotland.

I'm going to have to get out of the blocks quicker.

Jack, some more for your list:

A p was added to the start of tarmigan to make it look more pretentious.

An s was added to iland to make island because they thought it shared a common root with the Old French isle. It doesn't.

which might be related to the slang word 'gan', as in 'where yer ganning then?'. Or totally unrelated?

There are loads, but the only one I can find in the labyrinths of my mind at the moment is the proper name "Rothschild" which the English assume to be Roth's Child, but which is actually "Roth Schild" - meaning red shield or red sign. The "th" for "t" is often still found in German proper names, whereas it was phased out in everyday use during a reform at the beginning of the 20th century.

At present we are going through another reform which is to have been completely implemented by 2006.

So Rothschild should be pronounced "rote shilt"?

Speaking of German names, I performed piece of recorder music by a German composer called Scheidt yesterday.

...Scheidt!

Thanks for that, Gnomon. More pretentious :

F19585?thread=100569&post=1962922#p1962922

It did recently occur to me about the [rotshilt] pronunciation - any more examples?

Outrage as 'out-of-age' ?
I'm having a hard time explaining that one to myself - no fool like an old one I guess.

Umbrage I thought was one of those high-faluting intellectual creations from 'Italian/Latin' sources. Aren't there several Iatlian words like 'umbraglio' and such like representing a whole series of peevish artistic moods. There are groups of such words in each of several leisure class/artsy activities, like all the musical terms 'pianisimo, fortisimo' and food-words like 'el dente'.

A basinette is portable folding babies' bed consisting of some material slung on a frame with handles like a shopping or picnic basket. The wicker variety (very much like a classic picnic basket) used to give visual credance to the Moses in the bullrushes story.

Maybe 'act your age' is a clearer reflection of 'outr-age'. Yes?
There are many 'outrageous' behaviors. It's a bit sad really that the apparent formation of 'rage' is allowing anger to become the only meaning of the noun, outrage.

outrageously yours,
jwf

No, outrage as in the prefix 'out-' plus the word 'rage'. Anyway, it's inevitable that people see the word as constructed in this way.

There are loads of Italian words borrowed into English - lots of them, like pianissimo and fortissimo (double s in Italian, single in Spanish) from music, some also from food, like al dente (to the tooth). As for whether they're pretentious, maybe it's a question of what you're familiar with...

You can be as pretentious as you like here. But so we can join you, are you going to tell us what th "Wo chü dao Zhongguo" in your name means?

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Ni zhe Zhonguo ren ma?

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Gaelic, the Celtic language spoken in parts of Ireland and Scotland, is very unusual in that it uses a Verb Subject Object order.

Jack, I'd agree with you about Italian and Japanese. They both have a syllabic structure with more or less all syllables consisting of consonant vowel. But Italians cheat when they're singing, packing three or four different syllables onto the one note.

Oops. Why did that get moderated, but not Duncan's "Are you Chinese?"?
I shoud probably add that the subject here means "I don't speak Chinese very well."