Re: Homonymy (hot stuff dept.)

Hello!

On 6/22/05, Carsten Becker <naranoieati@...> wrote:
> From: "Roger Mills" <rfmilly@MSN.COM <mailto:rfmilly@...>>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 11:35 PM
> Subject: Re: Homonymy (hot stuff dept.)
>
>
>  > Like Spanish, and I imagine many languages, Indonesian has two distinct
>  > words:
>  >
>  > pedas [p@'das] spicy hot (also: astringent, smarting)
>  > panas ['panas] hot (temp.)
>  >
>  > Coincidentally, so does Kash:
>  > pripit - spicy hot (also: astringent, smarting)
>  > fasan - hot temp.
>
> German does that as well, having nothing to do in the least with Bahasa
> Indonesia. I guess the same goes for most of the other Germanic langs as
> well:
>
>  scharf [SA:f]  - spicy hot (also: astringent)
>  heiß   [hAI)s] - hot (temp.)
Darn! I wanted to write that! ;-)

Anyway, I don't know too many other Germanic languages, but I *am*
pretty sure that in Swedish, _het_ ("hot") refers to temperature, not
spiciness, just like its German cognate.

I'm not sure, though, what word I should use for the other kind of
"hot" -- I should probably find myself some Swedish-speaking friends
who like to cook, so that I have a reason to learn the technical
vocabulary. ;-) In any case, the mustard brand Turun Sinappi/Åbo Senap
uses the words _mild_ ("mild"), _stark_ ("strong"), and _eldig_
("fiery", < _eld_ "fire") for its three "degrees" of mustard
"strength"; but here _eldig_ may just be a literal translation of
Finnish _tulinen_ ("fiery", < _tuli_ "fire"). (For the record, in
Finnish _kuuma_ is used for "hot=not cold" and _tulinen_ is used for
"hot=not mild", even though technically, fire is "hot=not cold".
Linguistics is *fun*.)

[rest snipped]

Regards,
Julia

--
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)

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