The snow behind our house is melting, but I can’t yet say that it’s almost gone. While I was out in the garden taking this picture, the rotten snow under my boots collapsed and I sank into it up to my mid-thigh.
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A Bad Guide 
Mid-thigh? Golly.
On Wednesday we were on the high clay-lands west of Cambridge (“high” hereabouts implies around 60m above sea-level): there were still deep patches of snow beneath the hedges (“deep” implying, oh, 10 cms). What was most striking was that field after field was still under stubble: we guessed that the ground has been wet for so long that the farmers have not had a chance to put a tractor on it. But stubble in April – how medieval.
Yes, it must be water. There’s never any ploughing to do here in the Spring.
Mid-thigh: I’m hoping it’s drifts and that the whole garden’s not that deep in snow. But you never know…
I hope you’re ok, Crown.
I have to look up the word ‘stubble’. In Spanish is ‘rastrojo’ and when I found it I thought that it may be difficult for anglophones to pronounce it…
The last tiny remnant of the snow that we shoveled off our driveway last month melted away yesterday or today. Meanwhile on the other side of the house daffodils and primroses are blooming.
“Daffodils” is a mixed-up form of “asphodels”. I learned this in the Freelance column (by A.E. Stallings this time) of the latest TLS. A Greek man turns up on the author’s doorstep murmuring “entropy, entropy” – meaning “shame”.
Gosh, that’s really interesting, Grumbly. I suppose I ought to get the TLS. Like The Times newspaper I’ve never been seriously interested in it, because I have a feeling it’s owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Ø, I may have mentioned this is the time of year I’m envious of you people in Massachusetts with your springs that come so much earlier than mine. We won’t see any flowers for weeks.
Yes, I’m ok, Julia. I only got a bit of snow in my wellingtons, absolutely nothing compared to the horrors that you and Siganus have been through, but thanks for asking. Rastrojo could well be difficult to pronounce. If I had a clue where to begin… does the j sound like a y does in English?
No, the j sounds more like your h in ‘how’ but stronger. The r at the beginning may be also difficult, it’s like “Rat”, but also stronger (we Spanish-speakers always have difficulties pronouncing it as light as we should in English). Perhaps is like the strong rs the scotsmen use (?).
I found this in youtube
For the r:
For the j:
The last tiny remnant of the snow that we shoveled off our driveway last month melted away yesterday or today.
Yes, this is what it’s like here too. It’s supposed to get quite warm today and even warmer tomorrow (shirtsleeve weather!).
Oh, thank you! Yes, that’s hard to say, if you aren’t used to it. Is that an Argentine accent? I like the idea of developing a mysteriously derived Argentine accent.
My French teacher said he enjoyed the Marseille accent I had developed off my own bat, without an exemplar. If I learned Spanish would I sound Galician?
To find the answer to that, Dearie you must ask Jesus.
Sorry. I mean Jesús. Ask Jesús.
Is that an Argentine accent?
No, actually it’s a Spanish accent (I can’t say if it has any regional marks).
Why Galician, dearie?
Jesus and Jesús would have all the answers…
Where I was this weekend, 30 km inland and 500 m above sea level, there was 75 cm of snow. We went to build an igloo, actually, but the snow was useless. I had reckoned that the mild weather would have packed it, but under a cm of crust there was only sugar-like powder all the way down to the moss. We ended up shoveling powder for two hours just to have something to put the tent poles and the stove on. But the weather was beautiful, so some of the older boys slept outside under the clear moonless sky and heard the tiurleik in the early morning hours.
“Why Galician, dearie?” The bagpipes.
Of course, the Gaelic connection!!!
Lovely, Trond. I had to look up tiurleik, and found that its English name (“capercaillie”) is a word I knew and liked, but not a bird I know except by hearsay. What do they sound like?
The tiurleik is the “capercaillie’s play”. In early spring the males meet on an open spot in the forest to fight for the females. The fight looks like a dance, of the traditional Norwegian kind, with the two contestants circling eachother, making loud noises, and doing occasional attacks with the beak. The capercaillie is a sort of poultry and has the sound of it. Well, not like a rooster, more like a turkey — a series of deep guttural clucks. I’ve been thinking that ‘capercaillie’ could be onomatopoietic. (It’s not. We’ve discussed it here before.)
Guttural is probably not right from the bird’s point of vi… articulation, but it’s how it sounds to me.
According to Wikipedia,
Which is too bad, because I’d been wondering if it was related to capon or caper (to dance in a lively way).
…although now it strikes me that “horse of the woods” is a damn silly name for a moorland bird, and maybe the etymology is wrong.
… and what’s ‘Modern Latin’? Linnaeus?
Oh, that’s an urogallo!
I’ve read its name many times in Spanish texts of the xvi-xvii centuries, but I’ve never seen one.
I’ve found this video (you’ll need to wait, the capercaillie appears at minute 2)
(Well, in fact I don’t know if this one is like those that Trond was talking about)
Great video of a FANTASTIC bird! What the hell is it saying and doing, I wonder? Thank you so much for that. It is living in a wood that looks exactly like the one behind our house. I’ve never seen any here, though.
‘Uro’ means disturbios, conflictividad, desasosiego, in Norwegian – unrest.
‘Uro’ means disturbios, conflictividad, desasosiego, in Norwegian – unrest.
That’s funny! He looks a bit like a bully doing his wooing dance.
Those woods are fantastic. You are very lucky for living there.
Yes, that’s the bird calling for a mate. If another male comes along, they’ll start fighting. I’ve never seen it in the wild myself, though. Neither the play nor the bird.
I’d think that the genus name Tetrao is a Latinization of Sw. tjäder, cognate of No. tiur, while the species name urogallus is a latinization of German Auerhahn “capercaillie”. The Norwegian cognate orrhane denotes Tetrao tetrix, the black grouse, a smaller relative of the capercaillie, so from a Scandinavian point of view, the Latin names are misnomers.
Here’s a video showing both species playing in southern Norway. The capercaillie and the black grouse have similar lifestyles and habitats, often playing in the same places. It may well happen that a male capercaillie gets involved in the black grouse play, beats the male grice to the prize and mates with the females. The result is a rackelhahn, the mule of the moorland.
Deer have become pestilential vermin over much of Britain. If you want to keep them out of your woodland in the low country you just put up a deer fence, but apparently if you do that on the high moors the grouse (in all varieties I assume) kill themselves in large numbers by flying full pelt into the fences. This is a bit of a bugger if grouse are the only money-making crop on your moor.
FANTASTIC video, thank you Trond!
Those mating dances are so… ridiculous and funny.
It always amazes me the fact that in Nature are the males the ones who carry all the artifice and the shocking look
I just posted this on Language Hat:
Crossover from A Bad Guide:
The birdname No. tiur “capercaillie”, Gk. tethrax “capercaillie, black grouse” etc. is suggested by Chantraine (as followed by Bjorvand & Lindeman) to be reduplicated from IE *tar- “talk”.
>Dearieme
Linking “urogallo” and Galician accent I tell you that Galician has a singsong sound.
By the way, there is even a subspecies of capercaillie in the north of Spain, where Galicia is: “Tetraos urogallos cantabricus”.
P.S.: Today the temperature reached 21º C here in Badajoz, being the minimum 13º C.
Trying to write something according to even a few minutes old memories is not a good thing. I should have said that the genus name Tetrao is a latinization of Greek tetráòn, cognate of Sw. etc. Later i should have written Gk. tétraks. Sorry!
“P.S.: Today the temperature reached 21º C here in Badajoz”:here’s a rather silly story but with nice pics.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2307018/UK-weather-Finally-theres-sun-thing-smile-Forecasters-say-Sundays-temperature-rise-20C-making-hottest-day-2013.html
>Dearieme
Seeing these pics I think people have rolled up their sleeves very soon.
Most of the pictures are of people in punts. When I think of punting, I think of D. L. Sayers: Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane punting the old-fashioned way, while the misguided young people crash around.
@Jesús, we tend to roll our sleeves up at the first encouragement, just as people with convertibles lower their roofs at the first chance. We’ll many of us be in shorts on Sunday – 20C: phew, what a scorcher! Mind you, I had my shorts on last year at the very end of February. Unfortunately our summer last year ended late in March. Or so my ever-fallible memory tells me.
Unfortunately our summer last year ended late in March. Or so my ever-fallible memory tells me.
It did. But what a March!
After weeks of cold and clear, today it’s been snowing since morning, but not enough to cover the roads. Now it looks as it’s about to turn into rain, just in time for me to cycle home.
>Dearieme
I should be too sensitive to the cold. Although the temperature is 20º C in my living-room now I have an electric heater switched on to my feet. We are going to a nearby ski resort tomorrow but I’ll survive.
>Dearieme
I’m sorry.
“I must be too…”
I sat outside last weekend, on the slow Easter holiday mornings, enjoying my breakfast coffee i solveggen with my sleeves rolled up.
It kept snowing lightly and didn’t become rain before this afternoon. Now it’s grey and drizzling, with a cold northerly wind. But it will probably speed up the melting and do wonders for the spring.
It’s gray and drizzling here, too, and chilly. We’ve actually lit the wood stove again. And I hear weeping coming from the living room, but that’s because my wife is watching Call the Midwife.
Well, let’s continue with the weather reports.
It’s a perfect autum day in Buenos Aires. We’re at noon now, it’s sunny and the temperature is 18ºC, for us, at noon, this means the winter is near, But not yet, ¡por suerte!
This has become a weather blog. Oh well, I started it, I suppose. My wife is watching Derrick, the tall old German TV detective with a blonde toupée. Today he’s wearing a bizarrely incongruous 1980s white double-breasted leather jacket with his grey flannel suit trousers. It has been snowing for 24 hours now, without any of it settling, thank God, but I wish Language would come and light our wood stove.
If my wife had been watching TV now, I could have helped you turn it into a watching wives watching TV blog. So I lit the stove.
Tomorrow they are re-showing the First Ever Episode of Inspector Morse. We’ll DVD it. Though I suppose we could video-tape it for that contemporary feel.
I suggest Sony beta-max in b&w and a pint of beer.
Trond, will our snow melt before next winter or has the North Pole just shifted in our direction?
I don’t know, but I think an early Thaw is the right remedy.
I love Morse! What’s the name of the first episode? Was Lewis already with him?
Hats off, Mr Engen.
@Julia, the TV guide doesn’t mention the title or Sgt Lewis. I’ll try to remember to report back tomorrow.
Oh, Trond. That’s really outstanding.
The first episode is called The Dead of Jericho, and Kevin Whately is in the cast. I seem to remember them being teamed up, very much against Morse’s good will.
But I’m a little surprised it’s as late as 1987. I remember it as running for years while I still lived with my parents. And I could have sworn my grandmother loved the series, and she died that summer.
I hear they’ll replace the rerun with a new series called No Remorse,
Oh, yes, now I began to remember!
Here a TV channel called “Film & Arts” only began to include Morse in 2000 or 2001.
I could have sworn my grandmother loved the series, and she died that summer.
This is the same problem as the one I have concerning my grandmother and the first episode of Dr Who, broadcast on 23 November 1963. I remember her serving me Patum (anchovy paste) on hot buttered-toast while I watched it, but I also know she was in hospital on that date, and she died two months later.
Over Easter in Norway they showed the (I think) final episode of the Lewis series that followed Morse when John Thaw died.
Tomorrow they’re broadcasting the first of a four part prequel series (after the success of the pilot last year). It’s called Endeavour and includes Roger Allam as the wise old owl who teaches the young ‘tec a thing or two – a very watchable actor with a superb voice. You know where we will be at eight tomorrow evening. Unless we record it and spend the evening listening to Eva Taylor on youtubes which seems unlikely as that’s what I’m doing now.
Thanks, dearie. My wife will be pleased to hear that. (Now she’s watching a 20 year old Poirot while I’m mining even older dictionaries.)