Barbaric languages

glauber · Post by **glauber** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 11:21 am

How do you say whistle in non-English languages?

My native language is Portuguese, and i have no idea. Assovio, maybe?

I know in Irish it's Feadog Stain.

Any other languages? I'd really like to know if there is an "official" word for whistle in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French or any of the other Romance languages.

aderyn_du · Post by **aderyn_du** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 11:37 am

If I've translated correctly, "whistle" in Welsh is chwibanogl...

~Andrea

lixnaw · Post by **lixnaw** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 11:39 am

in ooold mexico they'd say "el silbato"

burnsbyrne · Post by **burnsbyrne** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 11:45 am

The Italian for whistle is fischio (fis-key-o). This is the term used for what you do to call a dog, the sound a train makes, etc. But I think that if an Italian was to play tinwhistle he would call it "wee-stell".

Mike

avanutria · Post by **avanutria** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 11:49 am

Barbaric?

My dictionaries say:

Spanish: silbato or pito, both masculine nouns

French: sifflet, masculine noun

German: flöte, pfeife, both feminine nouns

Russian: cbeectók, masculine, where "ee" represents the letter that looks like a backwards capital N. Pronounced roughly "sveestohk"

Somewhat understandably, my American Sign Language dictionary doesn't mention it. But I'm sure there's a sign for it.

By the way, the "stáin" part of the Irish term actually means tin. Even though the word for tin is normally stán. It gets adapted because it's coming after a noun. So feadóg on its own would be whistle in Irish.

pthouron · Post by **pthouron** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 11:57 am

My native language is French and I have no clue (does that surprise anyone?

). I'm sure Zoob can help. How about "Le Ouissel"?

Post by **Nanohedron** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 11:58 am

Japanese: kuchibue (pron. ku-chi-bu-eh). Suzubue (su-dzu-bu-eh) could mean "tinwhistle" literally, but on searching around, all I could find was a reference to a racehorse with that name, and no translation of it.

pthouron · Post by **pthouron** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 11:58 am

avanutria wrote:Barbaric?

My dictionaries say:

Spanish: silbato or pito, both masculine nouns

French: sifflet, masculine noun

German: flöte, pfeife, both feminine nouns

Russian: cbeectók, masculine, where "ee" represents the letter that looks like a backwards capital N. Pronounced roughly "sveestohk"

Somewhat understandably, my American Sign Language dictionary doesn't mention it. But I'm sure there's a sign for it.

By the way, the "stáin" part of the Irish term actually means tin. Even though the word for tin is normally stán. It gets adapted because it's coming after a noun. So feadóg on its own would be whistle in Irish.

Ava,
As far as the French is concerned, "sifflet" would only refer to those noisy things used by sports coaches and referees.
PT.

glauber · Post by **glauber** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 12:00 pm

avanutria wrote:Barbaric?

Well, that's what they call stuff that's outside the Empire. It's not always a bad thing these days.

avanutria wrote: My dictionaries say:

The problem with dictionaries is you don't know if this is the word really used. Especially since the English word whistle has several meanings. For example, read on...

avanutria wrote: Spanish: silbato or pito, both masculine nouns

Well, in Portuguese (the closest language to Spanish), apito is a whistle, but more in the sense of a policeman's (or referee's) whistle. Silvo is an archaic word for making a whistling noise with your lips, probably good for the policeman's whistle too. Assovio is also for when you use your lips to whistle. I don't think there's a word for the musical instrument. Flauta is flute and flauta doce is a rec*rder.

In Slovak, by the way, it's pistalka (soft t, accent on first sillable). They're lucky, because they have their own whistles, so there's a word.

avanutria wrote: Somewhat understandably, my American Sign Language disctionary doesn't mention it. But I'm sure there's a sign for it.

The universal sign for loud whistles is covering both your ears with your hands.

g

glauber · Post by **glauber** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 12:07 pm

avanutria wrote:Yes, that's why I specified that my source was a dictionary.

That's fine. I'm hoping other barbarians will chip in. The folks from Portugal are much better for creating their own words than we Brazilians. We just use the foreign word.

No fair, removing your post while i was replying to it!

skh · Post by **skh** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 1:02 pm

German: "Tin Whistle" or "Pennywhistle", maybe "Flageolet". "Bleistiftfloete" is only used by clueless ebay sellers. "Floete" is the generic term, but I'd rather expect a silver flute or (clueless people again) a recorder called that.

Edited to add: the referee whistle is a "Trillerpfeife" and a fife might in certain areas be called "Querpfeife" instead of the more common "Querfloete".

Sonja

skh · Post by **skh** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 1:09 pm

If I recall correctly, by the way, a barbarian is any person not speaking ancient greek. (greek for flute is - erm - aulos? I'm not sure they had end-blown fipple thingies.)

Sonja

claudine · Post by **claudine** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 1:27 pm

How about "Blechflöte" or "Blechpfeife"? Certainly "Bleistiftflöte" doesn't make any sense, but it may prove the power of imagination that some people can have. (Bleistift = pencil)
I met a french guy at an irish music workshop, he said he was in the beginners' flute class. I was a bit surprised as there was only one flute class which I attended, and I hadn't seen him there. Finally I understood that he was just discovering the tinwhistle there, and hadn't noticed that whistles are different from flutes.
There are probably no specific words in the languages of countries where the tinwhistle did not exist. So people use either a literal translation or the english designation.
Nevertheless we could create a french word, how about "crayfflet" (crayon-sifflet). Sounds interesting to me, kind of folky ...

pthouron · Post by **pthouron** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 1:29 pm

claudine wrote:Nevertheless we could create a french word, how about "crayfflet" (crayon-sifflet). Sounds interesting to me, kind of folky ...

And so close to crayfish, it's downright appetizing, too!

claudine · Post by **claudine** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 1:32 pm

But do you think a vegetarian could play the crayfishllet?