Thursday, 12 July 2007

pne: A picture of a plush toy, halfway between a duck and a platypus, with a green body and a yellow bill and feet. (Default)

The thought came to me that apparently in Maltese, "egg" literally means "a white thing" -- for example, "a white egg" would be "bajda bajda", if I'm not mistaken, i.e. roughly "a white white-thing". (So I suppose Casablanca, or Ad-dar al-Bayda [Id-Dar il-Bajda], could also be "The Egg House" in Maltese, not just "The White House". Casadelhuevo? But "the egg white" is, I believe, "l-abjad tal-bajda", i.e. "the white[masc.] of the white[fem.]")

Also strangely enough, one of the dictionaries I had seemed not to have an entry for "bajda", which is unfortunate since it would be good to know the individual and collective plurals (bajdiet; bajd), for example. Fortunately, the other one I have does. (But that one doesn't list "bajda" and "bojod" [feminine and plural, respectively] s.v. "abjad" [the masculine/citation form of the adjective "white"], so it has its shortcomings, too.)

pne: A picture of a plush toy, halfway between a duck and a platypus, with a green body and a yellow bill and feet. (Default)

Sometimes I think that the fact that my idiolect has the TRAP/BATH split means that I speak a prestige dialect.

(And that British varieties which don't have the split are not as close to the standard.)

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pne: A picture of a plush toy, halfway between a duck and a platypus, with a green body and a yellow bill and feet. (Default)
Philip Newton

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