The fascinating thing about language
Yes, Lingo24's peculiar pasticcio of language-related news and trivia is back, with the sole goal of helping you to keep your winning run going at the local pub quiz. No prizes for guessing that this month's theme is the 'Joga Bonito'...
Monopoly
A newly-translated book almost 400 years old is on display in Germany during the World Cup and claims something that we at Lingo24 have always suspected - that football was invented in Scotland.
The book, written in 1633 by David Wedderburn, a poet and teacher at Aberdeen Grammar School, includes passages that refer to 'a kick-off', 'passing the ball forward' and trying to 'score past a goalkeeper'. The book predates England's claim that it invented the game.
It was kept at the National Library of Scotland and was recently translated from Latin. It's now on display at a World Cup exhibition at the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Hamburg, along with documents that reveal how Scottish empire-builders helped to spread the game throughout the world. Football was famously introduced in Brazil by Charles Miller in 1894, born in the South American country to a Scottish father.
Alan Duncan, president of the north-east branch of the Tartan Army, points out that, while this is a small victory for Scotland, missing out on this year's football festival still hurts:
"The English are quick to claim they invented football. I think this book proves they didn't. Alas, it is small consolation, considering we aren't in Germany to compete for the World Cup."
Trivial pursuit
Did you know that:
- there are 60 official languages spoken in the 32 countries taking part in the World Cup?
- there are only seven languages that are official languages in more than one competing country - Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish?
- Spanish appears most often in the list, closely followed by English, then French, then Portuguese?
- the official languages in Togo are French, Éwé and Kabiye?
- teams with the same official language have met only six times so far in this year's tournament?
You do now.
Charades
In addition to Spanish, most of the Paraguayan team also speak another language, Guarani, which they frequently use on the field in their South American qualifying matches to bamboozle their opponents. Uruguayans and Bolivians used to hearing 'man on' or 'one-two' in Spanish suddenly have no idea what their opponents are saying. Clever.
Travel Scrabble
A random smattering of tough-to-translate football terms from around Europe:
'Grand pont' (French) - the art of knocking the ball around your opponent, leaving him standing there, while you nip round and collect the ball a couple of metres ahead of him, and continue on with your run. Called a 'big bridge' in contrast to the 'petit pont' ('small bridge'), which entails putting the ball through your opponent's legs. As opposed to 'big bridge', 'little bridge' does have a simple English translation - 'nutmeg'.
'Catenaccio' (Italian) - seen by some as the beautiful game's evil twin, this Italian invention involves an extremely well-organised defensive system, with strict man-to-man marking. Fortunately, it's kind of fallen out of fashion...
'Kicker' (German) - confusingly for Anglophones, the noun 'der Kicker' or 'die Kickerin' in German simply refers to a football player. The verb 'to kick' can take several forms in German (bolzen, treten, schlagen). The verb 'kicken' is usually limited to the sporting domain, however.
'Morbo' (Spanish) - there is no true equivalent to this term in the English language. 'Morbo' is what gives Spanish football its legendary spice - much more than mere rivalry, it sums up the feeling between football clubs divided by politics, history, and, of course, language. Who said translation was easy?