Romanian Culinary Delicacies and Linguistic Curiosities

[Mandryka]

The odd one there for me is Etienne. I used to wonder why people from Saint-Etienne are called Stéphanois.  The strangest thing is that Stéphane is a French name I think.

[Florestan]

The odd one there for me is Etienne. I used to wonder why people from Saint-Etienne are called Stéphanois.  The strangest thing is that Stéphane is a French name I think.

Stéphane Mallarmé

[André]

Odicolon was the phonetic spelling of the Romanianized pronunciation of the French Eau de Cologne. 

Obviously 😆

[Christo]

Eau de Cologne in Romanian is apă de Colonia.

In Low Saxon: 'n niet te zoepm slok met 'n ra luchie'n uut Keuln

[Florestan]

In Low Saxon: 'n niet te zoepm slok met 'n ra luchie'n uut Keuln

You "Saxons" are too talkative: twelve words to say what Frenchmen and Romanians say in three. 


 

[Florestan]

I used to amaze my Latin students, when I revealed that the Latin word aqua (water) evolved into the French word (sound?) "eau."

The French is quite an oddity in this respect: it's an Indo-European language and therefore a synthetic one. Nevertheless, there are lots of words which on paper look polysyllabic (or at least long) but in pronunciation are actually monosyllabic, giving it the appearance of an analytical language. If the French spelling were phonetic this phenomenon would be striking.

[Wanderer]

The odd one there for me is Etienne. I used to wonder why people from Saint-Etienne are called Stéphanois.  The strangest thing is that Stéphane is a French name I think.

Stéphane/Stéphanois go back to the original Greek Στέφανος.

[Florestan]

Stéphane/Stéphanois go back to the original Greek Στέφανος.

Meaning "crown", if I'm not mistaken.

[Wanderer]

Meaning "crown", if I'm not mistaken.

Crown is στέμμα* (the equivalent of the Latin corona, which itself also comes from the Greek κορώνη, which was a type of crown).

Στέφανος means wreath. Wreaths (made of olive branches in Olympia for the Olympic Games, of daphne branches in Delphi for the Pythian Games, etc.) were the traditional prizes awarded to winning athletes in Panhellenic Games.

Despite athletes being "crowned"** with wreaths/στέφανοι, these were symbols of awarded excellence (athletic, artistic, virtuous, later a symbol of martyrdom) and not crowns of authority (στέμματα). Case in point to accentuate the different connotations: Christ's "Crown of Thorns" in Greek is Ακάνθινος Στέφανος (not "ακάνθινον στέμμα").


*Also in astronomic terminology: the Sun's corona in Greek is called ηλιακόν στέμμα.
**not the verb used in Greek

[Christo]

You "Saxons" are too talkative: twelve words to say what Frenchmen and Romanians say in three. 

Like Americans, "Anglo"-Saxons who swam over the pond twice, still retaing some kind of their former language, we swallow them all. You'll hear just one or two words at most.
BTW: extremely confusing for "Hollanders" -- known for their blunt- and directness since they appeared on the stage as late as the 17th century, I'm very well capable to be myself, I lived in Amsterdam and Utrecht half of my life -- is the Low Saxon habitus of understatement, very much the English way (but without stiff upperlip). Nothing is ever stated plainly, only dimmed down to the extreme. "We" use four words for yes and no: two of them sounding familiar, but meaning the opposite. Comparable to an English gentleman saying "very nice" after your miserable failure shown straight into his face. Every "Hollander" will always hear something completely different and respond hopelessly. End of conversation, in which "we" only invested to discernable wordings anyway. It's called intercultural relations, and its great to have them with our beloved neighbours. 

[Christo]

Stéphane/Stéphanois go back to the original Greek Στέφανος.

Which derives from the language of Paradise, Low Saxon. That old Homer's Odyssey was set around the North Sea is a well-known fact too, both established by Renaissance scholars. Place names like Zierikzee (Xerxe, he made of it) and Vlissingen ('Ulysses') are Homeric, goes without saying. There is even a small library to prove the obvious. Don't tell us, Low Saxons, who the Cyclope actually was! 

[Florestan]

Place names like Zierikzee (Xerxe, he made of it) and Vlissingen ('Ulyssesz') are Homeric, goes without saying.

The irrefutable evidence is actually Ajax Amsterdam.   

[Christo]

The irrefutable evidence is actually Ajax Amsterdam.

Although I must confess it is my favourite club on earth -- at least as long as they play football like Low Saxons do, as they did in 2014-2020 and again at the moment -- this concerns an obvious 'invention of tradition', made in Holland. Indeed, we Low Saxons invented football, in Amsterdam they only started around World War I (which only affected Belgians, hence).