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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
This one’s a personal eggcorn which cropped up when I wasn’t being attentive…
There was talk about Grieg’s piano concerto on the radio recently, and at least a couple times I heard it as Greeks’ piano concerto. The basis for this mindset seemed to be other works like Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony and Liszt’s Hungarian rhapsodies, etc. I found the mishearing a bit amusing but didn’t locate any examples of the same on the net.
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Any chance “Grieg†means “el Grecoâ€? (The normal Spanish for that one would be “el griegoâ€.)
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I tend to think of it as more a mondegreen or a mishearing than a full-fledged eggcorn, given that it is not really standard for you, or anybody else that I know of.
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Later: surnamedb.com says not, but some eggcorning (folk etymology) went on in its history:
this is ultimately a surname of Greek origins. It is a diminutive of the given name Gregory, from the Greek Gregorios, meaning to be watchful. Later, in its Latin form of Gregorius, it came to be associated by folk etymology with “gregis”, meaning a flock or herd, and thus was interpreted as the Christian image of “The good shepherd”. The name was a Crusader introduction. That is to say a name brought back to Northern Europe by returning Crusader knights from the Holy Land in the 12th century. It generated a number of spellings in different parts of Europe being mainly Greig and Grieg in Scotland, and Gregg or Grigg in England. Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Greig#ixzz11cQ3AGJd
This is the same “grex, gregis†that David B was telling us about w.r.t. “egregiousâ€.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-10-06 17:05:07)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Valid points David. Even the Spanish name for the letter y—which I will try to spell the best that I can: “i griega” alludes to its Greek origin, so I’m surprised that didn’t tip me off sooner.
With two separate mishearing of the same thing, geez! It sure seems like it was on it’s way to being standard usage for me!
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I remember the flash of insight when I realized an “i griega†was a “Greek Y†(It comes from the upsilon of the Greek alphabet, whose capital form is “Yâ€.) Essentially the same think happened when one day I realized that the omega and omicron of the Greek alphabet were simply big O and little o, and that the rounded w shape of the minuscule omega (ω) probably came from a quickly written “oo†pair.
(The upsilon was a “bare uâ€, in contrast with diphthongs like ou (ου) which were pronounced similarly.)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Wow! To this day, I never noticed mega and micron hiding behind those boulders (o) nor psilon hiding behind that bush (u). Lots of great insight David.
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The only English name for a letter of the alphabet that has a descriptive component is, I think, double-u. The others are all the letters themselves combined with vowels before or after the letter to make them easier to say.
Double-u is also the only letter name that does not have the letter itself in it (except for aitch, though many say and write the letter as “haitch”). Arguably, double-u is also the only letter name that, when spoken, does not contain one of the common sounds represented by the letter (but in my pronunciation, which is “DUB-a-you,” I hear the beginning of the <w> at the end of the word).
I’ve wondered why the English alphabet words for “c” and “g” represent the soft sounds for the two letters (“cee” and “gee”). The hard sounds of the letters are much more common in English than their soft sounds, aren’t they?
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Dubya is sometimes (in some traditions and/or places) called “doble-u†in Spanish, which corresponds to the cursive written form, and sometimes “doble-v(e)â€, which fits the standard printed form of the letter. It’s a pretty marginal letter in the Spanish alphabet. Certain leftists rail against it as a harbinger of capitalist/US imperialism, probably since the main place you see it in Spanish is in the words Washington and VolksWagen.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-10-10 16:44:22)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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And btw and fwiw, despite its now hackneyed status, I still find that Greek piano concerto to be glorious music.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Kem wrote:
I’ve wondered why the English alphabet words for “c†and “g†represent the soft sounds for the two letters (“cee†and “geeâ€). The hard sounds of the letters are much more common in English than their soft sounds, aren’t they?
I suspect that we use the soft sound as an inheritance from French—the use of the soft version makes sense in front of the front vowel used to vocalize the names of most French letters. Though I have to admit that Kem’s question makes me realize that I can’t recall ever having read that explanation anywhere—I’m assuming.
My response to Kem’s second question is “Huh, don’t know.” If we’re defining the terms of the question as asking whether more individual words use hard or soft g/c, my guess would be that Kem’s guess is right. To get a definitive answer one would probably either need some programming skills, or you’d need to make pretty clever use of existing dictionaries/databases.
Last edited by patschwieterman (2010-10-10 17:20:19)
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