So yesterday there was a tragically rare moment of banter at work, and we were talking about something that was very old, prehistoric even.
I threw “primordial” into the mixer as my comedy adjective. Then I was legitimately trumped with the suggestion, “ur-”. This rang some bells but I wasn’t sure of the exact intent, so with a quick trip to answers.com I found out it’s a German prefix meaning “original, prototypical”.
Useful to know, but I was most pleased by the relevance of the answer provided by Yahoo on the same page:
Yahoo Answers: About “ur–”:
Who’s ur favorite Golden Girl? Mine is Blanche! I love how she’s like an old lady skank!!
16-Feb-07 at 12:39 pm | Permalink
uralt is a great German adjective, ur- as above, alt- old. You can’t get any older than uralt.
Unrelated, denkfaul is the best word ever, it means you could be smart but you can’t be bothered making the effort.
German is amazing at sticking two words together and coming up with a whole new word – the possibilities are endless. So in many ways it is one language that can actually compete with English in terms of the number of words it contains.
21-Feb-07 at 12:31 am | Permalink
This is the kind of interesting language trivia that I hoped might be prompted by the post.
So normally I would say thank you, but in this case I have realised uralt describes my impending state so in fact you can sod off.
02-Mar-07 at 12:56 pm | Permalink
>you can sod off
Nice, I’m going to be there in a few months myself and do I tell people to sod off when my biological clock is ticking, when my looks are fading, my boobs are sagging and my sanity is going? I am not!!
Anyway, enough self-righteousness. I sodded (?) all the way off to Mali and it was amazing. I’ve interpreted on a thousand forums before, but the Food Sovereignty Forum has been the first to move me to such an extent: the way we live comes at a cost and Africa is paying the bill for it.
02-Mar-07 at 12:59 pm | Permalink
> I am not
Really that should be “I do not”. Tut, tut to myself.
03-Mar-07 at 12:19 pm | Permalink
Tut tut indeed. Loss of looks- pah. I’ve always thought that the loss of looks was a fair price to pay for increased knowledge and wisdom. Just be grateful that you have talent and intelligence (as well as looks) lady!
Our being in the world is entirely contingent and as long as we make the most of the time we’ve got and make our free choices then we’re alright. The only thing I worry about is running out of time. The feisty old people in my Latin class are making good use of their time, the ones stuck in clinics getting botox and face lifts are not!
And you’re only 30 ffs.
03-Mar-07 at 12:29 pm | Permalink
PS. Apologies for the existentialist jargon.
I guess you could argue that learning a dead language was quite pointless : /