Language of the something

[de_eekhoorn]

The word of the while is the German Glanzwinkel, which if I interpreted my source correctly means ‘angle of refraction’, literally shine-angle. (I had two years of German in secondary school and have thereafter vaguely tried to keep it up by reading, so while my grammar is decent my vocabulary is pretty much nonexistent, and I sail by on Dutch cognates. This means that I have these huh! moments much more often when reading German than with other languages.) In Dutch, ‘winkel’ means shop, not angle, but there is a word ‘winkelhaak’, which means the L-shaped tears you sometimes get in clothing when you catch it on something and it tears along the warp and weft of the fabric. The etymology of this thus turns out to be angle-hook: completely logical. I am now also wondering about wenken (to make a come-here gesture) and wentelen (to rotate, int. and trans.).

The other word of the while is the Pali dhamma-taṇha, which Rahula defines as “desire for, and attachment to, ideas and ideals, views, opinions, theories, conceptions, and beliefs.” I am very charmed that there is such a specific word for this, the desire for ideas.

The grammar of the while is the so-called ethical dative, which my French grammar book told me exists in Dutch as well as French. It applies to the presence of an indirect object in a sentence where the verb does not actually take an indirect object normally, and where it indicates a tangential relationship of the indirect object, which is usually the speaker, to the action. “Qu’on me jette ces papiers au feu!” = “For my part they can throw those papers on the fire!” In colloquial spoken Dutch this is often used just as an intensifier or to indicate surprise: “Daar viel-ie me zomaar van de trap.” = “All of a sudden he fell off the stairs (I was not expecting it).”

Kauderwelsch update: according to an article of the Instituut van de Nederlandse Taal, the ‘waals’/‘welsch’ part indeed is from the same root as Wallon, here in its original meaning of ‘any romance language’; the ‘koeter’/‘Kauder’ part comes from the Kauer region of Tirol (Austria), where a Romance dialect was spoken, and possibly received reinforcement from the German word kaudern, to talk unclearly.

Comments

[luzula]

In Swedish, a "vinkelhake" is this sort of tool. : )

I am now also wondering about wenken (to make a come-here gesture) and wentelen (to rotate, int. and trans.).
These are "vinka" and "vända" respectively in Swedish. The first one seems to be related to "vinkel", at least, but it seems not the second one (according a Swedish etymology book).

[de_eekhoorn]

Thank you for this successful deployment of the etymological dictionary!

[larryhammer]

My word of the day is 埏, which when pronounced yán now means "boundary" and archaically meant "the earth in all eight directions," and when pronounced shān means "to mix water with clay" or "clay mixed with water (and so malleable)."

[larryhammer]

The English Wiktionary entry on the ethical dative has three examples, all from Shakespeare. To my ear, they all sound like phrases where a "for" has been omitted: "Knock [for] me at this gate." Without that "for" it sounds either very odd or very dated.

[sovay]

Without that "for" it sounds either very odd or very dated.

Huh. Following the template of the examples from Shakespeare, I'm not sure the ethical dative sounds odd in modern English, just informal: "I can run you off as many copies as you need."

[larryhammer]

That ... sounds like an ordinary indirect object to me? I think? Hmm.

[sovay]

That ... sounds like an ordinary indirect object to me? I think? Hmm.

It didn't sound grammatically different to me than Petruchio's "Knock me at this gate" or especially Touchstone's "I'll rhyme you so eight years together." I'm not saying it persisted in English with the frequency of Latin, but it doesn't look totally dead. (Elides rabbit hole of personal dative that I fell down trying to find out if they were actually connected.)

[de_eekhoorn]

Sounds like an ethical dative to me too! I am very pleased to find it exists also in colloquial English and will now be on the hunt for opportunities to use it.

[sovay]

In Dutch, ‘winkel’ means shop, not angle, but there is a word ‘winkelhaak’, which means the L-shaped tears you sometimes get in clothing when you catch it on something and it tears along the warp and weft of the fabric. The etymology of this thus turns out to be angle-hook: completely logical.

And I know a Winkelhaken via German as one of the five basic wedges a cut-reed stylus can leave in the clay when composing the signs of Akkadian cuneiform. It's the chevron-shaped one you get from impressing the stylus end-on (𒌋). The others are the horizontal, vertical, and two diagonal wedges (𒀸 𒁹 𒀹 𒀺) and to my knowledge they have no specific names. You can see how an angle-hook names the particular one. I had no idea it had cognates. Thank you!