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It's that time of year again where the good folks of Gavle, Sweden build a gigantic goat and the bad folks of Gavle try to burn it down. For five decades, Gavle has built a Gavlebocken, a large scale Yule Goat made out of straw. For decades Santa will be putting coal in their stocking for trying to destroy the gigantic goat. In its 52nd year, technology and goat protection methods have improved including fireproofing and a live web cam. Only 15 out of 51 goats built were not destroyed in years past. Let's hope this one survives.
[The linked story has incorrect spelling of the name of the town in Sweden and goat — it should be Gävle and Gävlebocken, respectively. --martyb]
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Gävle, Sweden Gears Up to Defend their Goat
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Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason.
-- Charles Curtis, "A Commonplace Book"
(Score: 5, Informative) by Arik on Wednesday December 26 2018, @08:29AM (15 children)
Gothenberg is a particularly egregious misspelling actually; you meant Gothenburg. Geats Fort, not Geats Mountain. This is actually a /translation/ of the name - Gothen substituted for Göta, burg for borg, so those are cognate roots with the same meaning but we use the English form instead of the Swedish. Copenhagen, on the other hand, was borrowed directly from the Dutch. (Danish /Köpenhavn/ is pretty close in spelling but like with Gävle the two pricks change both the initial consonant and vowel in pronunciation - it's something like sherp-en-han.)
Both of these cities, like Florence (Firenze, worn down over centuries of use from Florentia) and Vienna (Wienne, if you must anglicize this is the best way to do it, the English spelling matches the actual pronunciation fairly closely) are places that English speakers have been visiting and talking about constantly for centuries - this is why we have these wierd old names for them that are centuries old - these are words that have been in common use the whole time. So, it does make some sense in those cases.
But in the case of Gävle none of this applies. It's never been a hot spot for English travellers, whether for business or pleasure. There's no tradition of using a different name in English for it, and "Gavle" is not an independent word with an independent history, it's just Gävle misspelled because someone couldn't find their pricks.
I understand the writers are Aussies and therefore working from a handicap, and I wasn't trying to be snarky pointing it out, but it's a fact. There just isn't any such place.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Funny) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 26 2018, @11:33AM (7 children)
I can't tell if you're just Swedish, or Swedish and being a funny prick about the dots...
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday December 26 2018, @11:37PM (6 children)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prick
Particularly sense 3, "A dot or other diacritical mark used in writing; a point."
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday December 27 2018, @12:59AM (1 child)
Huh, whadya know. Learned something new, cheers! I do note that's it's considered obsolete these days, and as far as I'm aware in both British and Australian English they're referred to simply as "dots".
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday December 28 2018, @03:12AM
Best I can tell, it should be translated 'non-bullshit.'
Only they don't even give me the courtesy of two pricks. And I really miss that. I can live with being archaïc but I will never ever be archaic. You can't even pronounce that with a straight face.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Friday December 28 2018, @02:07AM (3 children)
I'd always heard them referred to either as a diaeresis [wikipedia.org] or as an umlaut.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Friday December 28 2018, @03:05AM (2 children)
'Diæresis' is one of my favorite words. Just as /nephritis/ is neo-latin for 'inflamed kidneys', /diæresis/ is neo-greek for 'the two pricks.'
'Umlaut' is a different sort of a beast. The primary meaning of it is the sound shift, the compression of the two syllables ae or oe to a single umlaut vowel. In many languages, the umlaut is habitually referenced with the diæresis, and so they have become in common usage synonymous.
But in a language or in a mind that does not habitually equate the two, they might be seen as different things - one a matter of orthography, the other a matter of pronunciation.
In English, the diæresis was traditionally used for a purpose quite distinct from that of /umlaut/. It was used, in fact is still used, last I checked, per a minority of style guides at least, to indicate the exact *opposite* of an umlaut; that is to indicate when two vowels that might otherwise be expected to umlaut are still pronounced as two distinct syllables.
For example, naïve. Without the diæresis this should rhyme with knife, the pricks are used to remind us that this word still has two syllables.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Friday December 28 2018, @03:17AM (1 child)
Not exclusively those two combinations of syllables. U+E=Y is another. But the fundamental pattern, which is a pattern of pronunciation, is implied. Orthography comes only as a secondary level - if the umlaut is normally represented with the pricks in your language you associate them (and this is mostly the case, even in danish for example the o umlaut is not written that way but the a is so it still makes somewhat sense.)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Sunday December 30 2018, @02:32PM
Thank-you for that! Had seen it used in so many places, but there was something about your explanation that helped make it clear for me. In essence, the 'pricks' are the syntax, and the semantics depend on context and serve to indicate whether the adjacent vowels should be pronounced as one unit or separately!
It's comments like this that make my time spent on the site worthwhile! Thanks again!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Wednesday December 26 2018, @03:35PM (6 children)
Me thinks you must be Swedish, Copenhagen is København [wikipedia.org]. Or maybe you just find Danish spelling to be too crazy to take seriously.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday December 26 2018, @11:07PM (5 children)
{Ø, Ö, Œ} are different ways of writing an O+E digraph. The first is traditional in Danish, so strictly speaking I should have used it, but when Danes write Danish on an English typewriter or PC and can't find it they quickly fall back to just typing 'oe' just as Swedes do when they can't find ö and the same as Frenchmen (and the occasional literate Englishman) does when œ is unavailable. I tend to use the ö because my fingers find if most quickly, if it was for a real formal setting I might have changed it in edit.
So anyway as I see it köpenhavn, køpenhavn, kœpenhavn, or even koepenhavn are exactly the same spelling. And that's the Danish spelling.
The Swedish spelling is actually köpenhamn, with an m instead of a v.
But since you mentioned it being crazy, yes, I actually do find that glyph a bit crazy and tend to avoid it. It's just too close to a 0.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday December 27 2018, @01:07AM (4 children)
You missed to pick on the p vs b thing (which I'd best explain by Danish having quite the incomprehensible drawl to it, but maybe I'm just bitter about never having had an easy time understanding Danes).
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday December 27 2018, @01:28AM (3 children)
Yes, there's also an alternation between b and p and I completely overlooked it.
Mea culpa.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday December 27 2018, @02:38AM (2 children)
Hmm... I'd say that places you Stockholm or further north :P
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday December 29 2018, @02:26AM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Saturday December 29 2018, @03:05AM
045{4,6}, men det var, som sagt, då :)