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South African bird names (1 Viewer)

'Guise' is of Germanic origin, but entered English via Old French. The suffix '-wise' is basically the same word which did not do the detour through French. The original meaning of the word is 'manner', 'fashion'.
'Vis' in Swedish ?
På så vis!

(Or in English: Aha, thus/such is the case).

;)
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'Guise' is of Germanic origin, but entered English via Old French. The suffix '-wise' is basically the same word which did not do the detour through French. The original meaning of the word is 'manner', 'fashion'.
'Vis' in Swedish ?

As an aside, a digression. Every year here in the UK around the end of October we see complaints about the Americanisation of Halloween by “trick or treating”. However, this is just an American version of the Scots tradition of “guising”.

When “guising” Scots children traditionally put on costumes and pretended that they were malicious spirits as they went ‘guising’ around the local streets. The belief was that, in disguising themselves, they would not be recognised by any wandering spirits and stay safe from harm. Once they had performed their tricks or songs, the guisers were given gifts to help ward off evil.

Nothing to do with birds, but maybe of some interest to someone.

David
 
As an aside, a digression. Every year here in the UK around the end of October we see complaints about the Americanisation of Halloween by “trick or treating”. However, this is just an American version of the Scots tradition of “guising”.

When “guising” Scots children traditionally put on costumes and pretended that they were malicious spirits as they went ‘guising’ around the local streets. The belief was that, in disguising themselves, they would not be recognised by any wandering spirits and stay safe from harm. Once they had performed their tricks or songs, the guisers were given gifts to help ward off evil.

Nothing to do with birds, but maybe of some interest to someone.

David

Interesting. Going on my experience of observing children trick or treating when our visit to Machu Picchu coincided with halloween, I can only conclude that Elsa from Frozen and Spiderman are of Inca origin ;)
 
Indeed, but unfortunately I've been seen more and more frequently the Portuguese word being ignored in Portugal and the derived word Jacana used instead (very different sounding: Jaçanã being read "Jass-a-nan", with a stress on the "nan", sounding very differently from the harder "Ja-ka-nah").

Is this perhaps due to people in Portugal taking their cue from birding information written in English? You'll rarely find people writing in English and using diacritically marked letters like "ç", and the species is called "Jacana" in all of the major field guides.
 
Is this perhaps due to people in Portugal taking their cue from birding information written in English? You'll rarely find people writing in English and using diacritically marked letters like "ç", and the species is called "Jacana" in all of the major field guides.

I made exactly this point in another thread and if they were used, I doubt anyway that many would know what they denote. We don't have an 'acute', umlaut or cedilla. In some Slavic languages, there is also a similar mark that turns a C in to a 'ch' sound so where does it end?

Maybe there is an argument for a phonetic spelling in cases where there isn't a true, alphabetic representation when using a non English word with such an indication as to pronunciation, hence 'Jasana'?
 
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I made exactly this point in another thread and if they were used, I doubt anyway that many would know what they denote. We don't have an 'acute', umlaut or cedilla. In some Slavic languages, there is also a similar mark that turns a C in to a 'ch' sound so where does it end?

Maybe there is an argument for a phonetic spelling in cases where there isn't a true, alphabetic representation when using a non English word with such an indication as to pronunciation, hence 'Jasana'?

Or maybe the Anglicisation of words is just a thing, so get over it?

Having been brought up by a secondary school French teacher and not only defied her frequent demands for French pronunciation to be applied to words long-Anglicised but argued that in such cases regardless of her special knowledge she was just wrong, I haven't much time for this sort of thing except where it damages understanding: for which we have scientific names that hardly anybody pronounces as the ancients would have..... 3:)

Incidentally you should have been with us in the Italian restaurant when Mum thought Lasagne must enjoy the same pronunciation as Dordogne... oh how we laughed. :-O

John
 
As an aside, a digression. Every year here in the UK around the end of October we see complaints about the Americanisation of Halloween by “trick or treating”. However, this is just an American version of the Scots tradition of “guising”.

When “guising” Scots children traditionally put on costumes and pretended that they were malicious spirits as they went ‘guising’ around the local streets. The belief was that, in disguising themselves, they would not be recognised by any wandering spirits and stay safe from harm. Once they had performed their tricks or songs, the guisers were given gifts to help ward off evil.

Nothing to do with birds, but maybe of some interest to someone. David

The word 'disguise' may come from the same ancient root, if by a roundabout way via Old French...
MJB
 
Or maybe the Anglicisation of words is just a thing, so get over it?

Having been brought up by a secondary school French teacher and not only defied her frequent demands for French pronunciation to be applied to words long-Anglicised but argued that in such cases regardless of her special knowledge she was just wrong, I haven't much time for this sort of thing except where it damages understanding: for which we have scientific names that hardly anybody pronounces as the ancients would have..... 3:)

Incidentally you should have been with us in the Italian restaurant when Mum thought Lasagne must enjoy the same pronunciation as Dordogne... oh how we laughed. :-O

John

Back in the late 70's, a mate and I were in Greece with a group of people having dinner. The waiter approched my mate who sat back confidently in his seat and in such a wordly way, he said, I'll start with the 'Mine-strone' soup, I actually fell off my chair..................
 
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You'll rarely find people writing in English and using diacritically marked letters like "ç", and the species is called "Jacana" in all of the major field guides.
But, on the other hand, Araçari is written with a cedilla in a number of English-language sources (still recently in HBW, including HBW Alive -- e.g. https://www.hbw.com/species/green-aracari-pteroglossus-viridis -- probably doomed to vanish soon, though :-C). In French, despite we use cedillas, we do the same thing: araçari with one, but not jacana.
It used to be written Jassana in German. But this then gave way to the "pure German" Blatthühnchen (= leaf-gallinule), and the original spelling of the word may be on its way to oblivion (in any case, Wikipedia now says "oder Jacanas"...).
 
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But, on the other hand, Araçari is written with a cedilla in a number of English-language sources (still recently in HBW, including HBW Alive -- e.g. https://www.hbw.com/species/green-aracari-pteroglossus-viridis -- probably doomed to vanish soon, though :-C). In French, despite we use cedillas, we do the same thing: araçari with one, but not jacana.
It used to be written Jassana in German. But this then gave way to the "pure German" Blatthühnchen (= leaf-gallinule), and the original spelling of the word may be on its way to oblivion (in any case, Wikipedia now says "oder Jacanas"...).

Not a million miles from the childhood name I knew, Lilly-trotter.
 
Or maybe the Anglicisation of words is just a thing, so get over it?

Well, yeah, it is a thing. When English borrows a word from another language (which it does frequently), it takes a certain length of time but eventually the word becomes naturalized in English. The naturalization period varies depending on many conditions but eventually people won't even remember that it was naturalized. For example people don't think of "ketchup" as coming from a Malay word for "fish sauce", it's just that sweet red goopy tomato sauce.

Likewise "jaçana" is being naturalized in English and it's going to be pronounced "ja-KA-na".
 
Well, yeah, it is a thing. When English borrows a word from another language (which it does frequently), it takes a certain length of time but eventually the word becomes naturalized in English. The naturalization period varies depending on many conditions but eventually people won't even remember that it was naturalized. For example people don't think of "ketchup" as coming from a Malay word for "fish sauce", it's just that sweet red goopy tomato sauce.

Likewise "jaçana" is being naturalized in English and it's going to be pronounced "ja-KA-na".

That's seems to be not quite true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup

Or

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/food/the-plate/2014/04/21/how-was-ketchup-invented/

Whilst travelling in Asia in the past, I've also seen it written as 'ketsup'.
 
Likewise "jaçana" is being naturalized in English and it's going to be pronounced "ja-KA-na".

The 2 words are phonetically distinct. While the Portuguese word derives from the phonetically similar Tupi spoken word "ñaha'nã", the English language word seems to result from an old "mistake" (I stress the commas), where the ç was just replaced by the the letter that looks morphologically closer (the "c"), perhaps from a word written on a tag of a specimen from Brazil (just speculating here). However the "ç" does not have anything to do with a "c" phonetically. Thus an entirely new word was created (as the Portuguese word also is). All languages are fluid and evolving, I'm not saying one is better than the other, just thought with would be interesting to mention it above. In the case of the Açores islands, the problem was solved by writing it Azores (which is closer, but not quite, to the original sound, which is also the name of a bird).
Note also that the stress or the word "Jaçanã" is on the last syllable, not on the middle one.
However, I could list quite a few Hawaiian species where adapting the word to the English language was not clearly the rule followed, where birds received names that attempted to approach phonetically as much as possible the known local names (also others, from NZ, and some other places).
 
Back in the late 70's, a mate and I were in Greece with a group of people having dinner. The waiter approched my mate who sat back confidently in his seat and in such a wordly way, he said, I'll start with the 'Mine-strone' soup, I actually fell off my chair..................
He presumably meant 'mine strewn' . . . did it blow up in his face? 3:)
 
You'll rarely find people writing in English and using diacritically marked letters like "ç", and the species is called "Jacana" in all of the major field guides.
Could be English, but it could also be scholarly Latin, which also doesn't use cedillas - the scientific name was coined by Linnaeus (here) wrongly as 'jacana' (and thus inevitably a "k" sound as 'c' always is in Latin); he probably should have transliterated Portuguese 'jaçana' into Latin as 'jassana'; if he had done, then likely that spelling, rather than 'jacana', would be the standard today.
 
Could be English, but it could also be scholarly Latin, which also doesn't use cedillas - the scientific name was coined by Linnaeus (here) wrongly as 'jacana' (and thus inevitably a "k" sound as 'c' always is in Latin); he probably should have transliterated Portuguese 'jaçana' into Latin as 'jassana'; if he had done, then likely that spelling, rather than 'jacana', would be the standard today.

That was more or less my point above. Thanks.
 
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