Amsterdã(o)

É assim e não sou eu que vou (ou posso) mudar, mas nem Amsterdã (preferida no Brasil) nem Amsterdão (preferida em Portugal) estão completamente conformes às regras ortográficas da língua portuguesa. Também se poderia dizer que são adaptações pela metade do holandês Amsterdam. Não me ocorre nenhuma outra palavra na nossa língua, que repugna acúmulos de consoantes, com a combinação mst. O mais escorreito teria sido Am(a/e/i/o/u)sterdã(o), mas agora já é tarde demais.

Marco Pollo

Ho visto oggi sulla vetrina di una pizzeria ceca: pizza Marco Pollo. Non sapevo che Marco Polo fosse un gallinaceo. :)

Provádíme opravu oděvů

To stojí na stojánku před obchodem. Není snažší a nezabírá méně místa psát Opravujeme oděvy? To mi připomíná upozornění z madridského metra El tren está efectuando la entrada en la estación místo jednoduššího a kratšího En tren está entrando en la estación.

Prepositions before Romance verbs

A student of mine was puzzled by the following Italian structure: cominciare (to start, to begin, to commence) + a (preposition to) + infinitive. Her comment was that she had never seen prepositions before an infinitive and went on to say that in Czech that is impossible. She is right, but I had never noticed it. There's nothing that prevents Romance verbs to be followed by prepositions, but the same does not hold true for other languages. Other Indo-European groups only allow nouns and pronouns to be followed by a preposition. The same thing happens in English. You say I'm dreaming of a new car but you can't say I'm dreaming of buy a new car. You have to turn that verb into a noun first: I'm dreaming of buying a new car. Where did Romance languages acquire that ability? Not from Latin, at least not from Classical Latin. In Latin you had to do something close to English, you had to turn an infinitive into a nominal form: amare - ad amandum, ab amando, etc. Maybe Late Latin had no problem with prepositions plus verbs and that's how that arose in Romance languages.

Latin and Russian Neuter Nouns

I have just learnt that a very limited number of Russian neuter nouns have an irregular plural ending. Those with -мя in singular nominative have -мени. There are only 11 of them:

бремя burden, время time, вымя udder, знамя banner, flag, племя tribe, имя name, пламя flame, полымя flame (archaic), семя seed, semen, стремя stirrup, темя cinciput (sic)

Some of them have good similarities with Latin neuter nouns such as семя vs. semen; полымя vs. fulmen (lightning). The Latin neuter nouns ending in -men have -mina for the nominative plural. Comparing the two systems, we see the following pattern:
L: -men → -mina
R: -mja → -meni

If they are really systematic parallels, then the Russian singular may have lost the final -n as the result of an earlier nasalization. Blaming it to nasalization often justifies Greek ties that trace the origin of the language back to Proto-Indo-European.

Migrânea

http://www.sbce.med.br/dor-de-cabeca/tudo-o-que-voce-queria-saber/210-enxaqueca-ou-migranea

Há duas pequenas incorreções etimológicas: não é do grego hemigrania, mas sim hemikrania (hemi, metade, crânia, crânio) e não é do árabe jaqueca. Jaqueca é a palavra espanhola que veio (Del árabe hispánico šaqíqa, y este del árabe clásico šaqīqah).

E algo que não tem lógica nenhuma:

O nome migrânea tem sido utilizado desde a antiguidade

Procurando seguir a nomenclatura greco-latina que é usual na terminologia médica foi proposto há 20 anos o termo migrânea.

Tem sido usado significa que a palavra existe desde a antiguidade. Se ela existe desde a antiguidade, não haveria necessidade de que alguém a propusesse 20 anos atrás.

Se é que se preza tanto pela suposta nomenclatura greco-latina, que se utilize hemicrânia ou hemicrania então (como em italiano emicrania), que faz muito mais sentido etimológico do que essa cópia furada do inglês/francês.

Nenhum dos dicionários a que tenho acesso, Priberam, infopédia e Aulete, registra essa palavra. Ou será um palabro, como dizem os espanhóis?

Se quiserem usar nas comunicações oficiais essa forma espúria, que estejam à vontade para macaquearem a língua do dominador, mas que não tentem enfiar isso goela abaixo dos pobres pacientes (ou pior ainda, da mídia) só porque são doutores e se acham tão conhecedores da antiguidade greco-latina.

Em espanhol está registrado migraña, que o dicionário remete a jaqueca.

Žabomyší válka

My Czech-English dictionary translates žabomyší válka as a storm in a teacup. It could also be more literally translated as batrachomyomachia.

Chefa

Algumas vezes, o feminino ganha ar pejorativo. Por isso, chefa nunca pegou, embora o dicionário registre!

Acho que a única pessoa que conheço que usa chefa é a Bebel da Grande Família para se referir à Marilda, personagem de Andréa Beltrão, que aliás nem está mais no programa. Mas trata-se de um programa de humor e isso tem que ser levado em consideração.

Pronunciation of hospice

I heard Mickey Rourke say hospice as hah-spice (Lincoln Presbyterian Hospice) in Angel Heart. No dictionary countenances that and I don't know anybody else who says it like this. The funny thing is that such mispronunciation appeared in a movie, which has a script and is followed by so many people on the set, and nobody cringed when they heard that?

Jesu Christu

In the book I'm reading, The 52, by Mario Reading, a Gypsy uses the expletive Jesu Christu. I can't figure out what language that is. I'm a reading a German translation, but the German would be Jesus Christus. Jesu points to the Latin form in the vocative, but then the entire expression should be Jesu Christe (Jesus is a fourth declension and Christus a second declension noun), I wonder if it's Romani, since the story revolves around Roma and is uttered by Alexi, a Gypsy youngster.

Clean animal

Words like mýval (Czech), Waschbär (German), mosómedve (Hungarian), araiguma (Japanese) and szop pracz (Polish) to refer to the raccoon seem to have nothing in common and to have been chosen randomly, but that is not so. All of these words are due to this animal's having the habit of washing its food before eating it. The Czech noun comes from mýt (to wash), the German from waschen (to wash) plus Bär (bear), the Hungarian from mosó (washer, from mosni, to wash) plus medve (bear, a word of Slavic origin, cf. Czech medvěd, Croatian medvjed, Polish niedźwiedź, Slovak medveď, Russian медведь, pronounced medveď), the Japanese from arau (to wash) plus kuma (bear) and the Polish from prać (to wash). In Brazil it is known as guaxinim, which has clearly an Amerindian origin, but I wonder what exactly this word means.

One or two?

I think this part from Říše čínských znaků (in English: China: Empire of Living Symbols), a Czech translation from the Swedish original Tecknens Rike via English, is quite strange:

Zlatá rybka a kapr jsou nejoblíbenější rybou v Číně.
Goldfish and carp are the most popular fish in China.

This sounds fine in English, as fish can be both singular and plural, but doesn't in Czech, where the plural should be used since we are dealing with two types of fish. The translator must have been misled by the apparent use of the singular in English. A better translation would be: Zlatá rybka a kapr jsou nejoblíbenějšími rybami (plural) v Číně.