Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 May 1

Language desk
< April 30	<< Apr | May | Jun >>	May 2 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

May 1

Geese

While sorting the contents of Commons:Category:Branta canadensis, I've discovered lots of French and Quebecois images with "Bernaches du Canada" in the title, e.g. File:Bernaches du Canada, avec un malard ( femelle).jpg. No difficulty in understanding what "Bernaches" are. To my surprise, some Czech images of the same species use a similar name, as seen in File:Berneška kanadská 2.jpg. Geese in general being found worldwide, including the greylag goose being found in Bohemia (see map), I was surprised that these languages would share a word for "goose": has Czech borrowed the French term, or vice versa, or have they both borrowed from a common source? Is there any history that would explain this situation? I initially wondered if it were borrowed as a compound, e.g. French explorers' "Bernache du Canada" got copied wholesale into Czech without regard for a Slavic word for "goose", but cz:Berneška covers the entire Branta genus. Nyttend (talk) 13:57, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Larousse gives the etymology of French bernache as "possibly from the medieval Latin bernecla, from the Irish bairnech." 184.147.128.57 (talk) 17:38, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Both words are cognate with English barnacle, which originally denoted the barnacle goose. French and Czech seem to use bernache and berneška to refer to Branta species, whereas they use oie and husa, respectively, to refer to Anser species. Whether the Czech term was adapted from French, I haven't been able to determine, though the fact that English barnacle has a French (and perhaps ultimately Celtic) origin suggests that it may be so. Deor (talk) 20:51, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Etymology online has; "The goose nests in the Arctic in summer and returns to Europe in the winter, hence the mystery surrounding its reproduction. It was believed in ancient superstition to hatch from barnacle's shell, possibly because the crustacean's feathery stalks resemble goose down." It also cites "Breton bernik, a kind of shellfish". Alansplodge (talk) 08:32, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Dhingo

In the movie The Last Time I Saw Paris, the Café Dhingo plays an important role. What does the word "dhingo" mean? The movie was based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "Babylon Revisited", but I don't know whether FSF created the name of the café, or the scriptwriters did. Surely it has nothing to do with the dingo. But what? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 14:02, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Is "dhingo" pronounced like "dingo", or like "ðingo", i.e. a voiced version of Spanish "cinco"? Nyttend (talk) 14:08, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Exactly the way we say 'dingo'. I came in late to the movie on TV, and my ears pricked up when I heard Liz Taylor utter the word 'dingo'. What's this, I thought. Another obscure Aussie connection in a movie that has nothing whatsoever to do with Australia? But later, I saw the sign when Van Johnson went back there - "Café Dhingo" (I presume the h is there because otherwise the French would say sort of like 'dango'). I thought maybe it would be explained, because it's such an odd-sounding name for a Parisian joint and surely I'm not the first person ever to have been bemused by this, but I watched to the end and nothing. Naturally, I googled it, but got nothing of any value. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:35, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Good day. I'm French and I never read "dhingo", I've no idea about this spelling. Hear [1] you can read seemingly interesting informations (there's an optional choice of translations). No "dhingo" in this article !--Jojodesbatignoles (talk) 16:03, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Apparently there's there was a Dingo Bar (unreferenced article, but with a link to a photo) in Paris, where FSF met Hemingway, so maybe the H was added to make the name look more exotic? AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:23, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

And here's what it looks like now. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:27, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Maybe the screenwriters knew this, and adopted the name but in a frenchified format. Or maybe to avoid legal issues. But that leads me to a further question. What was the Dingo in Dingo Bar a reference to? Octave Mirbeau's novel Dingo, which was about a dog named Dingo? Or what the French call the Disney character Goofy? Something else? Since the Dingo Bar was an American place, what would that name mean to the average American Joe back then? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:45, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

• So, there no "Café Dhingo" in Fitzgerald's original short story. Hence, it seems to be a confection of the screenwriters, Julius J. Epstein, his brother Philip G. Epstein (who died 2 years before the movie was released), and Richard Brooks. The basic concept of the film came from the short story, but the content (including the names of all the characters) was almost completely the work of the screenwriters. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:58, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

A confection?? I must get down to the patisserie. Martinevans123 (talk)

Tee hee. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:10, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

@JackofOz: This is a long shot but may be something for you to investigate. The famous jazz guitar player Django Reinhardt was Belgian-born and of French lineage. I'm not sure of the pronunciation of his first name, but the "j" may be silent or it may be pronounced D'hango, perhaps fairly close to Dhingo (D'hingo?). His article says Django is Romani for 'I awake'. Perhaps Dhingo is some variation on 'wake', such as 'wake up!', an appropriate name for a café. I'm not suggesting that F. Scott Fitzgerald named the café after Reinhardt - Babylon Revisited was written and published in 1930 and 1931 respectively, long before Reinhardt became famous. The meaning of Dhingo might be answered by a study of the Romani language. Akld guy (talk) 19:04, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Blimey! "You say Django, I say Dhingo; you say Dingo, I say Dhango....." By Jingo! Martinevans123 (talk) 19:22, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, 'By Jingo' was another source that I was investigating, but you beat me to it. Akld guy (talk) 20:21, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

One other round of that special beat (this time it's the Paris beat). --Askedonty (talk) 20:52, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Believe it or not, Django R did occur to me early on in my cogitations on this question. I'm sure it's pronounced 'jango'; the francophones add a D because otherwise they'd call him 'zhango'. And the Dingo Club was opened in 1932, also too early to be named after him, I think. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:10, 2 May 2016 (UTC)