Vocabulary

Time to look at a few new and useful words. I went swimming with a friend today at the Kempinski. It was totally deserted. Maybe because the wind speed today was an incredible 16 mps! Very strange weather for a sunny day in June. The lifeguards told us to use the lower pool. It was too windy for the ground-level pool. But even the lower level pool had choppy water. The wind blew my friend's sandals into the water. The lifeguard fetched them. She said "Why didn't yours blow in." "They are heavier than yours," was my reply. Famous last words. They went in as well and had to be fetched out. Finally I went for a swim and then one of my towels blew in. OK, time to give up. We decided to go for lunch. I was impatient to go and was urging my friend to hurry. This is when she introduced a new word - yubanmaq. She translated it as "being late or behind schedule".

For example:
Tez gəl! Yubanma!
or
Taksi artıq gəlib. Biz hələ yubanırıq.

So Yubanıram = Gecikirəm

Have you ever eaten səbzi? It is delicious. Greens and lamb. Beh beh beh! Here's a very nice recipe in Azerbaijani with pictures. It has spinach, coriander, and green onions, plus something called kəvər. No one has been able to tell me what this is in English, but it is certainly tasty. We used to eat this in Lebanon as well in something - if I recall correctly - called muhiya. Strangely enough, we had lunch at a Lebanese restaurant today - Beyrut. I highly recommend the place. Authentic Lebanese cuisine and a good place to practice your Azerbaijani with the friendly waiters.

One last random vocab - özünü aparmaq - to behave. I will try to make some sentences for this soon...

Here they are:

Rafiq! Sənin artıq 15 yaşın var amma ozünü lap uşaq kimi aparırsan! 

Rafiq! You are already 15 years old but you behave like a child!

Sabah sən Arzu ilə görüşənda belə hardasa məktəbdə özünü elə aparmalısan ki, o heçnə anlamasın ki, sən onu heçdə xoşlamırsan.

Tomorrow if you meet Arzu at school, you must behave in such a way that she won't realize that you don't like her.

Özünü hər barədə düzgün aparan qadın - əsl xanımdır!

The woman  who knows how to behave in any kind of  situation is a real lady!

Ləhcə

OK, this is definitely my word of the week. For a long time now I have used the word tələffüz to refer to the way someone sounds. Strictly speaking it means pronunciation, but I don't think it means accent. A better word that I have just discovered is ləhcə, which is usually translated as dialect. However, I think this is the correct word to describe how a person pronounces words because of where they are from. I am from Canada, my husband is from Ireland, so our accents are different. Although I would say my husband's accent is clearer, many Azerbaijanis say they find my accent easier to understand.

So, on the subject of accents...

I was recently given a lovely muğam CD by a fellow Canadian who is studying music in Baku. His name is Qoçaq Əskərov. Anyway, he has a beautiful voice. I really love his rendition of Küçələrə su səpmişəm. However, I did notice something. He pronounces samovar like simovar. I asked my taxi driver about this and he said it was a regional accent thing - Bakuvians would say the former, people from Sumgayıt and other places the latter. For some reason I like the sound of simovar better in the song. It seems to me that Bülbül pronounces it this way as well. Strangely enough, I was asking him about srağagün (yes, this difficult-to-pronounce word is used) and then thought of its opposite - birisigün. This word as well has a Baku pronunciation and a regional one, though for the life of me I can't remember what that was now. I will ask again and update you.

  

An update on Memrise

For those who, like me, are new fans of Memrise...

Search both "Azerbaijani" and "Azeri" and you will find more online courses. I am doing one now that has some sound files. Next job: learn how to do this myself!

Sualım var...

I have completed all 18 levels of "Azerbaijani vocab" from Memrise. Well, "planted"at least. Now I have to "water" these seeds. It is definitely a good method of getting vocabulary into your long-term memory. There are a few typos you have to watch out for, but overall it is very accurate in its translation and spelling. However, a few questions arose...

1. The translation of wind is given as ruzgar. My red dictionary says this can also be ruzigar. Now, this is interesting because I have just moved to a new apartment near a Ruzi Market. I thought, Ruzi? - is this someone's name? No. My friend explained that it means something like "plentiful". She used the phrase "ruzi bərəkət", meaning a table that is provided with everything you need for a nice meal. My question is - does ruzi in the word ruzigar have this meaning somehow? It is interesting to note that ruzigar can also mean weather. Even more interesting - a metaphorical meaning for life or existence. The dictionary gives two examples of this usage: pis ruzigar keçirmək (to live badly) and ruzigarı bəd əsmək (to suffer a setback, to fail). But in terms of just referring to wind, I have never, ever heard this word. Would Azerbaijans use this word as an equivalent term for külək?

2. Two words are given that mean international: beynalxalq (which you see everywhere) and beynalmiləl (which I have never seen or heard before). My regular taxi driver says the terms have slightly different meanings, but he couldn't explain. Can anyone out there elucidate?

3. It introduced me to the very strange word srağagün for the day before yesterday. Whoa, can someone pronounce that for me? Is this word commonly used? I would have said iki gündən qabaq.

Hope to hear from someone soon...

I'm back... with a new learning resource

I know I owe everyone who is kind enough to post comments and follow this blog a big apology. So... where have I been all this time? Unfortunately I was very sick for many months, but - təşəkkür! - I am on the mend and ready to apply myself once again to improving my knowledge - and yours - of this wonderful language.

I've had many good intentions over the past couple of weeks to get back to posting. What has finally given me a good swift kick in the pants was a recent article on BBC about ways to improve your memory. Read the article if you are interested. This led me to investigate a company called Memrise, which has developed an app to help follow your learning of a subject (generally learning a new language) in such a way that it prompts you to review and test your knowledge as you yourself need to. Thus, it is a kind of dynamically customized learning tool. It's look and feel is a lot like BYKI, which I reviewed previously on this blog. But it is better for having more variety in the modules, so it really feels more like playing a game than studying something that is really just boring old rote learning.

I went to the site and discovered that you can sign up for free. Members of the "community"- boy, I dislike the way online developers use that term - anyway, anyone who signs up is then free to create their own interactive lesson. If memory serves me (; p), there were 154 lessons online and two were for Azerbaijani! Now, that was exciting to discover. I have been going through one and am quite enjoying it. Even though I know the vocabulary, I have already improved my spelling (and consequently am likely to improve my pronunciation). I am sure there is a lot more to discover on this site. I am curious to find out about inserting sound recordings... I'll post an update once I have explored more.

It would be great to see like-minded people develop more content for Azerbaijani. I certainly hope to get around to this myself soon, inshallah!

Go to www.memrise.com to find out for yourself!

Son sualım...

One final question about the see-saws. Vikipedia seems to suggest that songs are sung by Azerbaijani children on see-saws (yelləncək).
Örpəyi çəhrayı qız,
Adaxlının adın de.
Saçları xurmayı qız,
Adaxlının adın de.
Qaşları sürməli qız,
Adaxlının adın de.
Yaylığı yellənən qız,
Adaxlının adın de.
Bura qonaq gələn qız,
Adaxlının adın de.
Ha yellənə-yellənə
Adaxlının adın de.

Is this true?
In English we used to sing two songs that I can recall:

See-saw Marjory Daw,
Jenny shall have a new master.
She shall earn but a penny a day,
Because she can't work any faster.

Very Victorian that! The other was decidedly more American:
Teeter-totter,
Milk and water,
Wash your face
In dirty water.


Another variant has:
Brush your teeth
with peanut butter.

We also played a game where you would hold the person up in the air until they answered a question to your satisfaction. 

Yeni İliniz Mübarək! Sualım var...

It's New Year's Eve. Yeni İliniz Mübarək!

I'd like to start off the new year with a few odd questions for my Azerbaijani readers.

Apparently it's the Year of the Horse. Some sites online say the "green" horse, some say, even more strangely, the "wooden" horse. Maybe that can account for this image.







Here are a few more images. My first question is - why are Azerbaijanis so fond of Chinese astrology? (Or maybe they aren't, that my impression is wrong.) But an Azerbaijani friend came to have Christmas dinner and said it was auspicious that we had fruit in every course - since it was the Year of the Horse (and horses eat apples). Any other lore about the Zodiac or this particular year would be welcome.

 Other questions that have come up recently...



What do Azerbaijanis say for see-saw? Several dictionaries gave the word yelləncək. But this is a general term, as I understand it, that can be applied equally to swings and related playground equipment. A friend told me that a see-saw in particular is called a yer üstü yelləncək. But another person said that this was not a word in Azerbaijani, and would that make a swing a yeraltı yelləncək? OK, now things are getting rather complicated here. To make matters worse, I contacted a friend who grew up in the rayon. He says that they called it kil-miko oyunu. Huh???



I did a search on Google Translate and it said that it is taxta üzərində yırğalanma, which looks promising to me, since it refers to rocking rather than swinging. This more properly describes a see-saw, or as we also called them when I was a kid, a teeter-totter. (The first is a British usage, the second is North American). Both English language terms refer to the rocking motion of the device. Apparently see-saw is a direct Anglicization of the French term ci-ça - this-that, which again describes the motion. The term teeter-totter is derived from a Norfolk language word tittermatorte. Both terms are examples of "reduplication", where a syllable is repeated, but with a different vowel. It is commonly used for words that describe repeated activity. I wonder if this could be applied to the Azerbaijani way of repeating the same syllable as in - gəzə-gəzə or qaça-qaça.

As one travels through the USA, the names change to tilting-board, dandle-board, ridey-horse, and hickey-horse. Which leads me to my next question - what do Azerbaijanis call a rocking horse? Google Translate says it is sallanan at. Another question for the Year of the Horse!

On a totally different note, does anyone out there know the correct Azerbaijani for the opening part of Mahur Hindi - is it Bərdaşt? Also, is the later part spelled Qərai or Qərayi?


This is the official listing I found in Vikipedia:

1.    Bərdaşt

2.    Mayeyi – Mahur

3.    Üşşaq

4.    Hüseyni

5.    Vilayəti

6.    Şikəsteyi – fars

7.    Əraq

8.    Qərai

However, I am playing 10 parts with these names:

1.    Bərdaş

2.    Mayeyi – Mahur

3.    Üşşaq

4.    Hüseyni

5.    Vilayəti

6.    Şikəsteyi – fars

7.    Mübariqə

8.   Əraq

9.    Qərayi

10. Mahura ayaq

Happy New Year! I am off to play some music. I eagerly await responses!
Colleen