Comments on: Confused by cerveza?

By: Drama Recaps: One Pound Gospel episode 5 « Néojyanisme

Drama Recaps: One Pound Gospel episode 5 « Néojyanisme — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:35:13 +0000

[...] is, er, ‘choco’, fair enough. Is ‘chocolate’ the same in every language? Alix did a great linguistic analysis on the words for ‘beer’ once, concerning the complete seeming lack of … – but I can’t think of any language where the word for chocolate is considerably different. [...]

By: Debs

Debs — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 11:28:49 +0000

I too was gripped by this quirky history of language and would also like to know if anyone has any recommendations for pieces similar to this?

By: Richard Durkan

Richard Durkan — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:56:52 +0000

I was fascinated by Aliz’s piece on beer. Is there anywhere else I can read about more roots linked and explained like this?

By: Tracer Hand

Tracer Hand — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:51:24 +0000

“Langue d’oc” still exists in some places in the south of France!

Although it is just called “d’oc” now. It apparently sounds very strange.

By: Pete

Pete — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 08:03:56 +0000

I NEVER SAID IT WAS FROM THE BASQUE! I got the basics of the above from the Pete Brown book infact (Three Sheets To The Wind). Barely any Spanish words come from Basque, for obvious reasons.

(Unless the Pete you refer to is Pete Brown).

By: CarsmileSteve

CarsmileSteve — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:30:23 +0000

also pete clearly wrong about it deriving from basque if they use “garagardoa” then (although we can check this out in a few weeks, guess we’ll get away with asking for cerveza though)

By: CarsmileSteve

CarsmileSteve — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:10:23 +0000

see, now i’m really glad i asked you about this :)

i’m sure pete brown could get a whole book out of this…

By: Alix

Alix — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:37:31 +0000

http://www.geocities.com/mosvends/beer.html

By: Pete

Pete — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 12:53:24 +0000

Veitnamese for Beer is Bia!

By: Alix

Alix — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 11:58:33 +0000

I am quite intrigued now by the history of beer drinking/ production, as the etymol is entwined with the development of this. I haven’t gone into as much detail as I wanted, mainly because I don’t know much about it! It does seem like an instance of the world shaping language rather than vice versa; beer traditions (or lack of) in various countries seems to be key in working out why particular words were favoured. It’d be bloody hard though to untangle it all, I suspect.

Beer production for tourist markets is an interesting area - I would be interested to find out more, I would imagine it would be a case of either words deriving from modern English, due to the Empire and all that, or perhaps much more ancient PIE and Sanskrit influence on South Asian words. Who knows?

By: Pete

Pete — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 11:07:33 +0000

I concur that this anomoly in the French and Italian words comes from there not being much of a tradition of social beer brewing or drinking in those cultures. Not just due to the strength of wine production, but I am sure that has a hand in it. I’d be interested to know what the peasant drinks were from C10th to C19th. Your theory about production methods would then hold, as lack of demand would make the extant name go out of fashion. Particularly if beer was being brewed for a social mobile or tourist market (look at the names for beer in South East Asia for example).

By: Kat

Kat — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:40:05 +0000

Hooray! Awesome stuff. Welsh fans may also be interested to know that when ‘cwrw’ is used with a preposition it mutates to ‘gwrw’, e.g. ‘Dau peint o gwrw ac baced crisps, plis’.

By: Alix

Alix — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:22:35 +0000

I really wanted to get something about everything being PIE into it.

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:05:50 +0000

PIE