Nice way to visualise Dutch words

Check out this visual artist's blog who translates Dutch words into interesting visual scenes….

http://adutchwordaday.tumblr.com

To bowl a maiden over > Mijden?

Whilst playing cricket yesterday I spent some time scoring our first innings and chatting with one of the Flemish players. We mulled a little over the term 'Maiden' (a scoreless over) and I offered that the etymology is more to do with the older sense of being 'unproductive'. I quizzed him if there was a similar word in Dutch and he came up with the possibility of 'mijden' which means to avoid.

The etymology of maiden shows simply a root meaning of 'unmarried' but I can't link it to mijden whose etymology is more associated with the Anglo-Saxon 'mīðan', which also meant to avoid.

It seems my fancy research was all for nothing. It was unproductive: a maiden! I looked back into the etymology to find German, 'mädchen', Dutch 'meid/magd' and English 'maiden'  (ongehuwde, unmarried, unproductive…) to be most likely to have given the word to the cricket over.

The might of language

Having mused about the connection between Dutch -acht/-ocht endings and English -ought ending I was further interested to read David Crystal's comment on the word 'might'.

In Crystal's great book 'The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language' he makes a study on the Middle English variations of the word might (note: the -ght ending). In this little aside he shows that the written evidence for this particular word during the Middle English period was varied due to scribal error, context or dialectal variant.

He adds as an example that the North Eastern dialect form of 'might' was 'micht'. Furthermore as David Simpson states in his fantastically entertaining book 'Aal Aboot Geordie', Northern dialect was chiefly influenced by Saxon (a West Germanic language) and not, as is commonly thought, Viking (North Germanic) languages. So we see that the Saxon (or North Eastern English) equivalent of might was close to 'micht'. This further proves a link between the -ght of English today and its equivalent Germanic -cht.

Street lesson to help you remember

I learnt this….what does gedachtenis mean again? I seem to have forgotten...

A biography of the Dutch language

This is definitely a book I'm putting on my Christmas list! A biography of the Dutch language, written in English by Flemish linguist Roland Willemyns. I heard him being interviewed on Dutch language radio een (I think!) but I didn't quite understand the author's name so I was glad when I spotted an article in the English language paper 'Flanders Today'.

The book, printed by Oxford University Press, covers the history of Dutch as well as the influence of Dutch today. For someone like me who is interested (obsessed?) by the etymology of the English language I think it's pretty indispensable. Part of the joy of this blog is spotting links between English and Dutch to help me remember what sometimes seem at first glance super-complex words. And of course as a learner of the Dutch language it'll be fairly interesting to see the development of the language; knowing the history will help me understand the grammar more. I hope.

Of course, I can't say too much about it as I haven't read it yet.

Maybe I'll move this from the Christmas list to my birthday list.

Or maybe I'll just buy it tomorrow….

Werchter 2013 Dutch

Essential word learned at Rock Werchter this year:
'Muilen'

Apparently a West Flemish dialect word for intense French kissing.

Muilen means muzzles or mouths.

Woord van de dag: zenuwachtig

Love it!

What a fantastic word, "zenuwachtig". I could say it all day….

It means nervous, or jumpy.
From zenuw, nerve (poss also sinew?)