Sunday, April 11, 2010
Vocabulary lessons
Pulled up this morning by the BH who had the temerity to read the blurb on the back of Nothomb No.2, 'Stupeur et tremblements'. What does 'embauchee' mean sezzshe. And I am supposed to know since I am learnedly reading the thing. Well, sort of swallowed up, sezzaye. Maybe something unpleasant to do with bouches. Probably bashed around a bit. A guess driven by what has happened in the story so far. On checking, it turns out to be derived from bauche, an old word for workshop. So to be em-baucher'd is to be taken into a workplace (which fits the context perfectly), while to be de-baucher'd is to be removed from a workplace, possibly tempted by wine, women and song. There is the complication that embaucher also seems to be used for poaching someone else's staff and for persuading soldiers to desert. Nothing to do with em-busquer, from whence our ambush. And with ambushes originally being mounted from behind a bosquet, that is to say wood or thicket. Drifted over in our version to bush. Well at least I now know and am unlikely to forget for a day or two. Reminded of the advice I was given many years ago. If you want to get your French vocabulary up to speed, use the dictionary every time you hit a new word. Don't guess! Which is all very well, but you need self discipline to keep this up when reading in bed. Perhaps with one of these new reading tablets you could have a feature whereby clicking on a word brought up the relevant entry from the nominated dictionary. Would old-school language teachers regard this as cheating? You probably would not browse the dictionary entry in the way that you would if you had had to stop and find it yourself; rather just settle for the first one-word translation which fitted the context.
All that aside, a good read. She deserves the many prizes she is said to have collected.
Yesterday to hear the Conchords at the Dorking Halls, that is to say the ensemble variety rather than the flight of variety. Continuing in the vocabulary vein, curious about where the word came from, the flight variant and the neighbouring condors having left me with the idea that maybe there was a bird of this name: OED for once unhelpful, not providing anything more than a heap of conch words, some long and curious, to do with conches in particular or shells in general. And http://www.conchord.co.uk/ not much help either.
Programme was the Beethoven Septet followed by the Schubert Octet, both pieces which I thought I knew quite well but which I do not think I have heard live before. The point here being that I had missed a lot. Didn't know them as well as I had thought. Interesting line up including a stand-in first violin for the proper one who had flu, a second violin for the Octet who was very visibly pregnant and a change of cello between the Septet and the Octet. All very splendid, although I found it took a movement or so to switch between the controlled and classical mood of the first and the romantic chiaroscuro of the second. And hearing these pieces on the box, I had realised neither how big the parts are for the first violin and the clarinet nor how important the cello and the double-bass are as a pivot between the rest of the string section and the wind section. Tremendous climax to the Schubert, requiring an energy from the cello which perhaps explains the half-time switch. BH very impressed. We shall keep an eye out for repeat performances - although I do not think I have noticed either being done before. Is it a number of people problem? There being fewer mouths to feed in a quartet than in an ensemble?
# posted by Jim @ 9:45 AM 
