Seems that you're right, despite two possible pronunciations. The origin seems to be OFr deschevelé from dis + French chevel , old word for 'hair', from Latin capillus . So, the primary meaning would have been '(of hair) in disorder, ruffled' and then '(of persons) untidy, with clothes, hair &c,...

Loved it, and saved it for future use. But shouldn't it be "her clothing hevelled" rahter than "her clothing shevelled"?

Seems to be very different from Chinese. In most cases, you can make a Chinese question out of an indicative by adding the particle "ma" at the end of the sentence, changing nothing else. If you use a question word, you mustn't use the "ma" marker. And for the homework for Monday...

It's interesting to note that on answering, I can view the Hebrew in a much nicer font. One huge problem arises for me, though. I had planned to devote this semester completely to Chinese, but now I'm tempted to get into Japanese, which I know from nothing (/Tom Lehrer), as well. At least I understa...

你好... Anders , 你好 ! And how nice to see you on this forum ! But you must tell me how you worked the above magic.... Henri I use Win XP and have installed all kinds of foreign language support. I just switch to CH using a keboard shortcut and start typing in pinyin. Arabic, and Indian languages are ...

I'm just too happy that we're all back. There are several schemes on different boards to get to new posts or active topics or whatever. I really liked the 10 last posts, but OTOH it sometimes made me overlook the 11th-15th last posts hidden by newcomers (and I really tried to check out at least twic...

I grew up in Maine where unthaw is in regular usage, but everyone makes fun of it. Any ideas? I think it is idiomatic since I suppose the correct spelling would be "un-thaw." Not being a native speaker of English, I still think that the hyphen is uncalled for. The confusing "un"...

I don't believe in the "Carbon Copy" interpretation. A carbon copy was the only practical means in those days of obtaining a true copy, so there was no need to state how the copy was made. As an aside, I made my first commercial translation using a portable typewriter and making a carbon c...

In 1929, the Frech Academy announced that the number of languages in the world was exactly 2796. Disregarding the difficult question of what is a language, I'd say that the general opinion is that there are some 4500 languages or more around, perhaps as many as 6000-6500. There will never be a conse...

This question, and the one on kn-, brings up a point that can be discussed for generations. What would we lose and what would we gain by a "simplification"? In the first place, it is terribly difficult to be consistent. If you delete the k- in kn-, you should also change the name of king C...

One of my first encounters with this principle, which I haven't yet noted in, say, Arabic, Hindi or Chinese, (but sure will be looking for) was Swedish "hemskt gott" ('(tasting) terribly good'). We use it all the time, not always reproducible in print for mixed audiences.

... chief tautalogist Speaking of tautologies, the Norwegians have a wonderful expression for these constructions : « smør på flesk » («butter on lard»).... Henri Beats the Swedish "tårta på tårta" ('layer cake on layer cake') or "kaka på kaka" ('cookie on cookie') and "grä...

The WC reference should go down the drain. He never said so. Have a look at www.languagelog.com at its archives for December 12, 2004.

Chinese is very flexible in this department as well. The two most common ways to signal a question are, like, "You all right huh?", and "You all right not right?". When translating from English, I normally can skip the tag, or replace it by a final "va?" ('huh?'), in mo...

你好
Does Unicode work?
سلام
anyway

Anders

GRRRREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!