the benefits of research in a second language

 It has been a long time since I put anything new here. I'll just write a quick post to keep the blog alive. 

At the beginning of the long lockdowns here in Victoria, Australia, I, like many others, was looking for some intellectual stimulation to help me deal with the stress.

It occurred to me to take up my study of German again, after many decades of not reading or speaking the language. 

I was very lucky to come across a great class run by the CAE here in Melbourne - German language online.

At first, to me it was a matter of learning the language, then after a while it became learning in that language, and finally I've arrived at the stage where it's learning about things in the new language.

This ability to discover information in German has opened up many new doors for me. For instance, recently my dog Peppa had a grass seed in her foot. (Major bother and major expense.) When I went to the vet today for what I hope is the final check-up on her recovery, he told me how grass seeds drill into the flesh of dogs, and are formed in such a way that they resist being pulled out.

I felt quite pleased to say that I'd read about this recently on a German website. I'd visited lots of blogs and webpages about the problem, as any concerned dog owner would, but that specific piece about the structure of grass had been in German. 

I'd taken notice of it because I was looking for the translation of the word Grannen on the German site: the word means awn in English. Wikipedia has a rather scary explanation of how the awns of wild emmer wheat bury themselves in the soil. I'd better not go down that rabbit hole, or I'll never take my dog to a grassy area again. Here's hoping the grasses around here are less active. 

Knowing German is great fun, because there's so much of the internet to explore.

nestlé's milk - how do we say this brand name?

Bright in Victoria is beautiful in the winter, if the sun shines and not a cloud appears in the sky, as was the case when I was there recently.

The Old-Fashioned Lolly Shop was one of the highlights as far as I was concerned. I felt as if I had revisited Britain, as I browsed the array of fudges. I love fudge!

Because I enjoy pictures of dogs, my eye was caught by this lovely reproduction post-card and I bought it. 

It's interesting to think they were advertising the richness of the milk in those days. Today we're always on the look-out for milk that tastes great but has reduced fat.

The shopkeeper - who looked great in old-fashioned costume -  agreed with me that he would probably say the brand-name Nestlé as nest-uhls, as was the usual way when we were young.

Looking around the Internet to see how other people say it, I came across this thread. It seems it's still a debatable question as to whether it's nest-uhls, or ness-lee, or even nesslay.

I'd agree with the following British take on it:

It was always ness-uhlz when I was young, and, to the very very slight extent that I'm called on to say the word today, that is how I say it now. It was most notably heard in the jingle "Ness-uhlz Milky Bar (The Milky Bars are on me!)". Never heard it in the "singular": Nessul. We tend to like our esses on the end of store names: Woolworths, Marks and Spencers, etc., and for some reason the same always went for "Nestles" and some brands. No one in Britain seemed to have noticed the é until relatively recently, but I do understand that we are now expected to pronounce it.

I'll have to research what people are saying around me. All I have to do is mention Nestlé's condensed milk, I reckon, and tell them I love eating it straight from the tin, and I'll get a conversation going. (My friend from Argentina boils it up in the tin before eating it. Yumm!)

cynical about quinsy

Last week I had a quinsy.

Well, I probably didn't have a full-blown case of quinsy, because that would involve 'a severe sore throat', and mine wasn't too bad. Annoying and inconvenient, though.

I came across the word quinsy in a book called growing berries and currants, a directory of how to cultivate them successfully. (I love growing berries and I'm excited that my raspberries already have flower buds.)



Currants were often used in the past as a cure for quinsy. If I'd known about that perhaps I'd have drunk black currant juice each day, instead of lemon and honey drinks, and spared myself the sore stomach this week.

Curiosity about the word's origin sent me to the Net, and I discovered that, like the word cynic, it comes from the old Greek word for dog. The Online Etymology Dictionary says:

quinsy
"severe sore throat," c.1300, qwinaci, from O.Fr. quinancie, from L.L. cynanche, from Gk. kynankhe "dog strangling," originally "dog collar," from kyon (gen. kynos) "dog" + ankhein "to strangle," cognate with L. angere (see anger).

As I said on my dog blog, I only have to see my dog straining at the lead when she sees something interesting ahead of us, to visualise a sore throat as a strangling collar. Observing the way she gargles and gags, I suspect she does at times give herself a temporary quinsy.

are crepuscular dogs active at sunset?

Crepuscular...I just came across this favorite word in a book about dogs. I've enjoyed the word since reading and loving the hilarious novels of P G Wodehouse about Bertie Wooster, who was crepuscular. (Maybe it was another of Wodehouse's wonderful characters who was crepuscular, but I think it was Bertie Wooster.)

I'm chuffed to see that someone else loves this word; it's number 26 on the BBC News Magazine's list of fifty favorite words. (I'm being tough with myself here. I will not, will not, will not get distracted by the other 49 wonderful words.)

The American Heritage Dictionary give two definitions, and the second one relates to zoology:

Becoming active at twilight or before sunrise, as do bats and certain insects and birds.

So, dogs are supposedly crepuscular...That may explain why my dog Penny happily lies around all day and becomes active at sunset. I had the impression it was the thought of dinner that got her going. As to sunrise...no way is she active at that hour!