A blog about the implications of the statistical properties of language
Wandering the neighborhood at night, but totally staying out of trouble
You can’t read the caption, but it says “special machine for couettes.” I was a little worried that the scary-looking guys inside this laundromat were going to come outside and beat me up for taking their pictures, so you can imagine my surprise when I got home and learned that “une couette” turns out to be a quilt; it can also mean “pony tail.”
During the summer time, it stays light really late in Paris. The sun didn’t set until around 10 PM in June, and I tend to go to sleep early, so I never really saw my own neighborhood in the dark. Now that it’s December, the days are quite short, so when I went outside early yesterday evening for a stroll, I saw the entire neighborhood lit up, for the first time. With the electric signs shining in all of the storefronts, I noticed places that had never caught my attention before–even within a block or two of my apartment! Zipf’s Law strikes during an evening stroll as often as it does any other time–here are some pictures of signs with words that I had to look up. Scroll down for the full range of words that I just didn’t know.
You’ve gotta love a country where the news kiosk by the taxi stop advertises a philosophy magazine, right? “Subir” has a bunch meanings related to suffering (probably the intended sense in a philosophy magazine), putting up with, dealing with, undergoing, and enduring.Two words here: la remise, which can mean a number of things, but in this is “discount, reduction”; and effectuer, which is to make, perform, or carry out. I bought a lamp here, which required me to ask the word for “lightbulb”–it turns out to be “ampoule.”“Raquer” is “to pay,” or colloquially, “to cough up.”“Oser” is “to dare.” If it has a complement, it will be a verb in the infinitive–there doesn’t seem to be a preposition.
Zipf's Law 