How do you say - - ?

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Liis
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Re: How do you say - - ?

Post by Liis »

Jo UK wrote:The words most commonly used for this activity are brooding, or just "sitting" (on eggs).
On another forum last year, we mentioned "the sitting adult" if we didn't know which parent it was. The activity of keeping the eggs warm and rotated by either adult bird is known as brooding.
Incubation is an accurate, precise word - some may feel it is too formal!

I expect we shall get around it by saying Donna is on the nest now or Sulev is sitting. Language is very mobile!
Thanks - and yes, of course, no problems in the forum. But when it gets into a LK headline - what then? Would Sulev & Linda appreciate to be brooding ...?
(Please, no brooding headlines, until it is settled :cry: )
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Post by Jo UK »

Oh, an LK main page headline?
I suppose that would be an occasion for formality, and incubating?

Otherwise, I would be happy to read that an adult bird is sitting on the eggs, or doing brood duty, or something like that!
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Post by NancyM »

I associate the verb "brood" with domestic fowl (chickens). The English-speaking forums that I read all refer to wild birds incubating their eggs, I have never seen them say "brooding the eggs." (some might, but I have never seen it).

So, I would be in strong favor of saying the the eagles and/or storks are incubating their eggs.

As you know, sometimes "brood" is a noun ... so the eagles/storks can be said to incubate their brood of eggs - or raising a brood of three chicks , etc.
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Post by Jo UK »

It's best to pay attention to bociany - she is an editor!
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Post by NancyM »

:hi: Ha-Ha, Jo - but I edit American English and you are British English, and as we know, sometimes the two have different ideas about how to say/do things!
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Post by Jo UK »

I often wonder if the distinction between American English and British English is important to non-American or non-British speakers of English.

When I was in Estonia last year, I learned that the difference between the two languages is unknown and unimportant to anyone who has English as a second language.
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Post by Liis »

Hauduma = ??, brood, incubate ...
Devious roundabout writings then for a long season to come ... and yes, no brooding headlines, pleeease
I noticed someone using "... hatch (incubate)" :mrgreen: , one word right style, the other correct meaning - smart solution.
Thanks, Bociany! Incubate did feel stiff. But if people do use it, in reasonably everyday writing - say, upper-quality newspaper - then OK
Because LK main page is not meant to be stiffly scientific. Sorry if it has turned out that way in English at times, (small) part of the translation problem: as said before, Estonian has quite a lot of of properly Estonian terminology where many other languages have slightly nativised Latin / international-scientific words. So, an everyday text can work in Estonian with technical words, without looking stiff. Not sure if the terms are more clear to all, but they don't look off-puttingly technical. Like siirdesoo=transition mire: you can hike across a siirdesoo without stumbling on the word.
Those 'sõralised', cloven-hoof-footed animals - pigs & Bambi - are not easy either, BTW: fissipeds? Ugh.
Jo UK wrote:I often wonder if the distinction between American English and British English is important to non-American or non-British speakers of English.
When I was in Estonia last year, I learned that the difference between the two languages is unknown and unimportant to anyone who has English as a second language.
A question of surviving in a foreign language first, style of swimming later? Seeing the varieties of 'English' that MS Word offers, the existence of a differnce can't be avoided once you start writing. But I was better at keeping them apart before Internet, I think.
PS. Back to brood: brood - a nice, productive, happy occupation? - is tied to all sorts of dark meanings, and not only in English: brood on revenge - kättemaksu (muud pahandust) hauduma - ruva på hämnd - Rache brüten*. More languages? Why is that?

*edit & sneak correction, brühen -> brüten: - you can probably brüh = simmer it too, but brüten was the point.
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Post by alice44 »

Jo UK wrote:I often wonder if the distinction between American English and British English is important to non-American or non-British speakers of English.

When I was in Estonia last year, I learned that the difference between the two languages is unknown and unimportant to anyone who has English as a second language.
Jo I have worked teaching English as a second language to kids/young adults from Asia and Saudi Arabia and the difference is sometimes important to them, and sometimes I felt terrible for the students when the head teacher here, would reprimand them for British Englishisims that they had been taught in school.
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Post by Jo UK »

Alice, I suppose it is natural that an American teacher would insist on the American forrm, but that sounds like discrimination to me!
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Post by alice44 »

Jo UK wrote:Alice, I suppose it is natural that an American teacher would insist on the American forrm, but that sounds like discrimination to me!
I guess we are getting a bit off topic but I think many Americans do not know that there are grammatical as well as a few word differences between American and British English. Popular English books (Harry Potter for example) are published here in American versions. I think people who read academic material are used to both styles. This is just part of the fun of communicating in English :slap:
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Post by Jo UK »

I think we are safely on-topic! It's all about "How do we say -"
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Post by Liis »

Anyone native English/American-speaking recognise and understand the English (?)word urman? (No, not misspelling for Urmas!)
The special Estonian wetlands are with us again, if you remember the discussion of in what kind of wetland the winter eagles were fed?
This time it has to do with cloudberry picking http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/4645. In 4 types of precisely specified wetlands, beginning with "soomännik", which one of my dictionaries translated to "urman" , defined as "swampy pine forest marsh"...
If I had used it, would you have understood where to go for the berries? :innocent:
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Post by alice44 »

I do not know the word and when I looked it up using the computer I found people's last names.

(I posted before I finished looking it up because my connection has been iffy!)

Wikipedia mentions that they grow in Moorlands in England and Ireland and "in bogs, marshes and wet meadows (in the US and Canada?) and requires sunny exposures in acidic ground (between 3.5 and 5 pH)."

I think I would use marshes or wet meadows. hmmmm I think bog (outside of a naturalist sphere) has negative connotations -- this may be changing, as it should. But I do not know Cloudberries -- it says it grows in Alpine areas in the US, so places with the climate of a more northerly area -- so I do not know its natural environment.
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Post by Liis »

alice44 wrote:I do not know the word and when I looked it up using the computer I found people's last names.

(I posted before I finished looking it up because my connection has been iffy!)

Wikipedia mentions that they grow in Moorlands in England and Ireland and "in bogs, marshes and wet meadows (in the US and Canada?) and requires sunny exposures in acidic ground (between 3.5 and 5 pH)."

I think I would use marshes or wet meadows. hmmmm I think bog (outside of a naturalist sphere) has negative connotations -- this may be changing, as it should. But I do not know Cloudberries -- it says it grows in Alpine areas in the US, so places with the climate of a more northerly area -- so I do not know its natural environment.
"Urman" appears to be a word from Siberia (no idea which language). Geology and soil sciences are swamped with terms from exotic languages, like "gyttja", from Swedish, for mucky clay.
Marshes seem a bit too wet, meadows I take for something grassy and cloudberries would probably not appreciate that (Edit: not dense hayfield type grass, that is, but sedges and similar are OK)
From the map here cloudberries even seem to grow in Japan - or do I read the map wrong? Anyone know of any Japanese cloudberry dishes?
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Post by unp »

Urman
Wikipedia is brief on 'urman'.
There is a more detailed definition in Elsevier's dictionary of geography.
In general, 'urman' as swampy pine forest (without marsh) is popular (maybe not overly so) according to Google.
According to Turkic glossary, 'urman' exists, with slight variations, at least in Turkish, Crimean Tatar, (Kazan) Tatar, Bashkir, Kumyk, Kazakh, Uzbek, Uyghur, and Chuvash and means 'forest'/'wood' in all of them.
List of English words of Turkic origin contains 'urman', also explanations of 'taiga', 'mammoth' (you live and learn :D ) to name just a couple of them.
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Post by alice44 »

Urman is just not a word used in American English.

I did wonder about a Turkic origin because of Lake Urmia.

Wet meadow is not the same as a plain meadow, I would think it would be a grassy place with some standing water and mushy. I would expect it to dry out in dry periods. I walk in a place with trees and roses and water part of the time and it is referred to as a wet land.

We do use the word taiga -- it is not terribly common but people interested in geology/geography probably know it (Since I worked editing a journal about mammoths and archaeology it is a little familiar to me). Wetland in the Taiga Forest or wet Taiga forest might describe the region for us. I think wetland unlike bog has a positive connotation focusing on the ecological niche it provides.

http://www.northstar.k12.ak.us/schools/ ... orest.html
http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/taiga_plant_page.htm

When I did a search restricted to wikipedia, I got this response " Urman, a term originally from Kazan Tatar urman, "a forest", synonymous with taiga" from the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary. --- ooops Unp I see you posted a link to it.
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Post by Jo UK »

I wanted to make an erudite contribution and hoped to quote from the Oxford English Dictionary (online) They want £255 so I won't do that!

Still, there is the big heavy, hardback version here.
No entry for urman.

I don't know that word, but thanks for the education Liis, Alice and unp!
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Post by Liis »

Yes, aren't journeys by/with/in/because of words fascinating? And you never know where it ends up!
Thanks, Alice44, UNP and Jo (it's the kind thoughts that count ...)! Of course urman is a very unusual word, and, more important here, if the definitions / descriptions are to be believed, not a really good place for successful cloudberry picking, too much trees.
Photo here of a proper cloudberry bog-marsh-mire-fen ...
And some Estonian picking and culinary aspects with mouthwatering photo of berries - sorry, aggregate drupelets.
Wetlands in Estonia are a little like snow for Sami people - who are said to have some 300 words for various snow and ice kinds and phenomena - they have to be specified, there is such a great difference between a peaty, acidy bog and a lush flood-plain meadow. So this will probably be a recurrent theme - unless somebody kindly would describe and list them all, including terminology and suitable translations with definitions, please?
(There were some good wetland links in the beginning of this topic - from Arvi, I think - but "soomännik", the maybe urman, wasn't there)
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Post by NancyM »

alice44 wrote:Urman is just not a word used in American English.
I agree with all of alice's points.
Wetlands in Estonia are a little like snow for Sami people - who are said to have some 300 words for various snow and ice kinds and phenomena - they have to be specified, there is such a great difference between a peaty, acidy bog and a lush flood-plain meadow. So this will probably be a recurrent theme - unless somebody kindly would describe and list them all, including terminology and suitable translations with definitions, please?
The LK articles are meant for the general public rather than scientists, so I think using a general term in the English translations should work just fine. The nuances will be lost on most (if not all) English-speaking readers.

I don't say it enough, Liis, but many thanks to you for the translations ~ they have made a huge difference in my enjoyment (and understanding) of nature in Estonia and this site. :thumbs:
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Post by Liis »

bociany wrote:
The LK articles are meant for the general public rather than scientists, so I think using a general term in the English translations should work just fine. The nuances will be lost on most (if not all) English-speaking readers.
Well, you might learn some wetland - like wine - appreciation, gradually?
Meanwhile, here is a nice list for all us non-English, Easy English. Yes, urman is on it. And why do I feel that there is some slight joke in the title :puzzled: ?



PS. Edit: Easy English list "temporarily unavailable" on server. If it doesn't come up again, try this: Google search "easy english" acyrology (thanks, Jo!), should only give one hit, go for "Cache" in last line
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