Old Spanish Knife

[kronckew]

i blame google: i shall fire off an error report to them.

i also blame hannibal and julius caesar and all the countries that have mangled latin into the babel of romance languages.

how anyone understands anyone else is a mystery.

p.s. - we have a 'curved', er, crow, living in a leylandii in our garden. poppy visits it every time we go out there walking, and stares at it by pushing into the branches around the base. the bird is not amused. poppy never barks or tries to attack it there tho.

[fernando]

The problem is that you got a translation from the portuguese, in which Corvo is a crow; whereas in castillian Corvo means curved and Cuervo is the one living in your garden; subtle differences beween similar (not equal) languages.
On the other hand, Hannibal and Caesar, after a dozen pints of bitter would tell that the beak of your corvu has a curvu shape .


.

[Jim McDougall]

Since we all enjoy linguistics so much, let me throw in another, uh, 'curve'.

Again, travelling through these states these past months, in Montana we drove through the Absaroka Range of mountains. I was curious to know what the word meant. We are in regions of the Crow tribe, and learned that Absaroka apparently was a Hidatsa (tribes to east of here in Dakotas) word for 'children of the big beaked bird' which also I have seen as curved beak.
This could mean either raven or crow if used indiscriminately, as often occurs in transliterations and descriptions cross linguistically.

These two birds are of the genus 'corvus' which seems to mean curved as well, and wonder if the term applies to the beak of these, even though the raven has the more curved.

If this is the case, then although 'corvus' means curved in Spanish, perhaps the meaning might have been extended to the avian meaning as it seems to be in some other instances.

A quandary indeed.

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

...Since we all enjoy linguistics so much ...

So true Jim; only that in this corner there exists no anathema for non academic terms; all corruptions allowed .
I guess we are dealing with heirs of two distinct etymologies here; corvu/s is a bird which name comes from the Indo-Europeia KOR-, as imitative of his croaking (onomatopoeic); whereas Corvo (portuguese curvo from latin curvu) means curved, bent, arcuate. So you have a cuchillo corvo and a navaja corva.
And as i read out there, connotating a bird with a corvo (curved) beak is more in the instance of those with a more accentuated curved extremity.

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

...A quandary indeed.

I hope it is a bit 'unquanderied' now ... as i hope you din't fall asleep during this boring injection .

[Jim McDougall]

LOL! Not a chance of dropping off in your entries Nando!
As always I very much appreciate your 'unquandriment' (not sure that's a word ) and I love to learn....so your patient explanations are a win, win deal to me.

I did not know about the croaking thing (I think of frogs) but that does well describe the loud sounds these often huge birds make. I admit I rather liked the crow/raven analogy, and especially presently being in the Native American frame of mind with their uses of it.

Actually in another digression, the term corvo always in a phonetic sense brings to mind the well known tequila (ta kill ya, in Southern Calif. beach party parlance some years back) Jose Cuervo, which often had more of an octane rating than a proof number.
Whether margaritas or shots, that stuff would throw ya for a loop (curve?)

While tedious at times, sometimes the dynamics and color of these linguistic anomalies really do add some dimension to these weapon terms.
Around here....always learning ....that's a good thing.

[fernando]

I keep telling the dudes that surround me that, if it weren't for this hobby, i wouldn't have acquired an infinitesimal slice of the general culture i have gathered... linguistics included .

[kronckew]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

...

Actually in another digression, the term corvo always in a phonetic sense brings to mind the well known tequila (ta kill ya, in Southern Calif. beach party parlance some years back) Jose Cuervo, which often had more of an octane rating than a proof number.
Whether margaritas or shots, that stuff would throw ya for a loop (curve?)

While tedious at times, sometimes the dynamics and color of these linguistic anomalies really do add some dimension to these weapon terms.
Around here....always learning ....that's a good thing.

my early exposure to spanish was of course flavoured by the colonial version spoken south of the border, in my years in texas and california. also flavoured by liberal internal applications of the above mentioned tequilla (in margharitas). what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

surprise! when i got to valencia on a summer training cruise, they all lithp their S's! apparently, one of the royals way back had a lisp, so rather than embarrass him and lose their heads, everyone around him always lisped too. it became fashionable, and the custom perpetuates to this day, but never made it to the new world. so for a few days i was called by the local female wildlife as 'that crazy mexican'. the portugese also seems to have resisted the lisp.

[rickystl]

LOL!!!!! Can't believe my Thread started all this !!! But interesting.

Rick

[Victrix]

Originally Posted by kronckew

my early exposure to spanish was of course flavoured by the colonial version spoken south of the border, in my years in texas and california. also flavoured by liberal internal applications of the above mentioned tequilla (in margharitas). what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

surprise! when i got to valencia on a summer training cruise, they all lithp their S's! apparently, one of the royals way back had a lisp, so rather than embarrass him and lose their heads, everyone around him always lisped too. it became fashionable, and the custom perpetuates to this day, but never made it to the new world. so for a few days i was called by the local female wildlife as 'that crazy mexican'. the portugese also seems to have resisted the lisp.

Wonderful story!

[David R]

Originally Posted by kronckew

my early exposure to spanish was of course flavoured by the colonial version spoken south of the border, in my years in texas and california. also flavoured by liberal internal applications of the above mentioned tequilla (in margharitas). what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

surprise! when i got to valencia on a summer training cruise, they all lithp their S's! apparently, one of the royals way back had a lisp, so rather than embarrass him and lose their heads, everyone around him always lisped too. it became fashionable, and the custom perpetuates to this day, but never made it to the new world. so for a few days i was called by the local female wildlife as 'that crazy mexican'. the portugese also seems to have resisted the lisp.

I had two teachers of Spanish, about 20 years ago, one from Colombia and the other from Spain, so I can confirm your experience. The differences go beyond the lisp, and even effect the vocabulary. One explanation being that many of the colonists were actually Italian, another that archaic forms were preserved in the colonial patois (as with US Anglic) and the other that the colonists picked up sailors slang on the voyage.