Sunday, 28 May 2006

Linguistic food for thought

Isn't this just wonderful? Although personally, as a pernickety, Lynne Truss-type individual, my first comment would be on the lack of punctuation: I think I would have expected to see:
Garlicky, pork sausage-stuffed, crisp-fried Maryland soft-shell crab.

posted by qaminante @ 00:17   1 comments

Saturday, 27 May 2006

Boatiful Gruž

This bridge over Rijeka Dubrovačka, the inlet to the North of Dubrovnik that leads to the city's port and marina, was opened in May 2002, after a delay because of a dispute over the name. The compromise was that on the Dubrovnik side, it is called Dubrovački Most, while on the other, the sign reads "Dr. Franjo Tudjman Most" - Tudjman being of course the first president of an independent Croatia from the year before its independence in 1991 until his death in 1999 (apologies to any Croatian speakers out there who would prefer to see the character đ that appears in his name!).

The passenger port of Dubrovnik was right outside the hotel I was staying at, and is called (Luka) Gruž, which rhymes with rouge: the saucer on the top of the z makes the sound spellt "zh" in "Zhivago". Coincidentally this "saucer" mark, which in Croatian is apparently called kvaka, which seems to mean door handle, or kvačica, which means check mark or tick (or little hook) - is the subject of a recent post in Language Hat as regards its name in English, which is either haček (from Czech) or, in unicode, caron (the opposite "hat" mark, or circumflex, being called a caret). Croatian has a lot of diacritics, another important one is the "accute" accent that makes a c into a ts as in "Orebić" - which, strangely, does not seem to be used in "Cavtat" even though it is pronounced Tsavtat not Kavtat.

posted by qaminante @ 10:27   1 comments