DICCIONARI.

That’s the Catalan word for ‘dictionary,’ and I’ve just discovered the wonderful Diccionari català-valencià-balear, where you can enter a Catalan word and get definition, pronunciation, and etymology with historical excursus, for example:

TIBIDABO topon.
Muntanya de 532 metres, situada al nord de la ciutat de Barcelona, la vista de la qual es domina esplèndidament des del cim d’aquella.
    Fon.: tiβiδáβu (Barc.).
    Etim.: del llatí tibi dabo, ‘te daré’, frase presa de l’evangeli de Sant Mateu quan conta que el dimoni temptà Jesucrist des del cim d’una alta muntanya dient-li: «Haec omnia tibi dabo si cadens adoraveris me». El nom medieval de la muntanya del Tibidabo era Collserola.

(Via a kaleboel entry in which Trevor bashes poor Bill Poser for alleged sloppy dialectal description. Bill defends himself manfully, and MM quite properly complains about the lack of comments at Language Log. Yes, yes, comment spam, I know. Delete it, what’s the big deal? Your readers want to kvetch in situ! Oh, and I found the Battle of the Linguists via Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey.)

Comments

  1. I think I’ve found a way to enter an RSS feed automatically into MT, so an unofficial LL comments section is being contemplated. They take the kudos, Barcelona drunk takes the advertising

  2. Excellent!

  3. Agreed, though I can’t see why an official one should be so problematical. If languagehat.com is anything to go by, LL doesn’t strike me as a genre of weblog much prone to comment spamming.

  4. Doesn’t language hat get periodical spammy blitzes? (And didn’t it use to get them in buckets before The Respected Host started closing old threads to new comments?)

  5. Yes, I’m afraid LH is quite subject to spam, and your host spends more time than he’d like weeding it out. But it’s worth it!

  6. There was a little flurry in my comments here:
    http://www.margaret-marks.com/Transblawg/archives/000882.html

  7. From MM’s comment thread:
    Every blogger should carefully consider how comments can help or hinder communication with their readership.
    I don’t understand this. How could having comments possibly “hinder communication”? If someone wants to simply broadcast their thoughts and isn’t interested in feedback, that’s one thing, but communication with readership is all about feedback. Or so it seems to me. As for the Log, I occasionally write e-mails when I have something I really want to communicate, but it’s a lot more trouble than leaving a comment. I hope they add comment functionality. (They could require registration or something if they wanted to avoid spam, I imagine.)

  8. I wish they had comments as well, as I’m sure they have a lot of reader overlap with this place, and I sure do love the comments here.

  9. Antoni Jaume says

    This diccionari is my favorite. While on the whole I tend to be prescriptivist, what I call “academical language”, with regard of syntax, on the part of vocabulari and pronunciation I tend to a more descriptivist standing, which I feel is logical when the language has strong dialectal variants, each as genuine as the rest.
    DSW

  10. Ach. Quand le chat n’est pas là, les souris dansent.

Speak Your Mind

*