--- Monica Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
Sorry - I forgot to send this message to the list as
well as Bill. I'm
always doing that.
Monica
that being the case, i'd like to send my reply to the
list as well as monica because i think it's funny:
thank you for your reply - very detailed. sounds like
a word for all seasons.
shortly after we moved here i remember talking with an
italian woman about the relative smallness - compared
to english - of the standard italian dictionary. she
went on to complain about the english language by
saying how narrow it was; how every word has just one
meaning - whereas... she concluded with an
expansive, all encompassing hand gesture in italian
..
i'll put the question to my charango buddies and see
what they have to say.
- Original Message -
From: Monica Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: bill kilpatrick [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2005 6:38 AM
Subject: Re: vihuelina
This came up some time ago on Lutenet. This is the
message which a Spanish
speaking member sent us -
Dear Stewart, Monica, and all,
This is an answer to your question about how the
spanish word bordón
came to have the meaning of a pilgrim´s staff.
But first let me enlarge the two meanings Monica
Hall mentions, after
consulting three very comprehensive spanish
dictionaries:
- Seco / Andrés / Ramos : Diccionario del español
actual. Madrid 1999.
- María Moliner : Diccionario de uso del español.
Madrid 1986.
- Corominas / Pascual : Diccionario crítico
etimológico castellano e
hispánico. Madrid 1980.
1. Stick with a size bigger than a man's height.
2. Word or phrase which is, because of a bad
habit, unnecesarily
repeated again and again.
3. That fixed group of verses or stanza (the
refrain) that is repeated
in a song: A, refrain, B, refrain, C, refrain, D.
4a. Low accompaniment sound.
4b. In a string instrument, thick string with a
low pitch.
5. Gut string placed diametrically under the lower
plane of a drum.
6. Word referred to things with a cord or lace
shape. For instance, the
uppermost line of tiles where the two slopes of a
roof converge.
7. Gut string for holding open a conduit (med).
8. The omission a typesetter makes when composing
a text (print).
There is also a very interesting meaning under
bordonear, the related
verb which means buzzing, the sound big insects
make when flying. This
meaning of bordonear is: refraining from
working, being lazy !
Now let's go to the etimology and the history of
the meaning:
María Moliner: The origin of bordón is possibly
in bohordo, derived
from germanic huerde, enclosure.
Bohordo means a short spear, but also a certain
type of stalk or stem,
for instance like the one the lily has.
Joan Corominas: The latin word burdo (mule) took
the meaning of
sustainer, therefore bordón means stick, and
also spear.
In any case, nowadays in Spain, and without
consulting dictionaries,
bordón refears to the three thicker strings in
the guitar (E, A, d).
Best regards,
Manolo Laguillo
Barcelona
As you can see it can mean a lot of things! It
doesn't tell us when it
first came into use though. In some contexts it
might mean a drone,
something which is repeated over and over again,
but if Mudarra's phrase
is
translated it has to have a drone on the fourth
course this would mean
that it had to have a string which sounded the
same pitch constantly
throughout the piece, not that it was tuned a
fifth below the 3rd course.
Covarrubias' dictionary is regarded as
authoritative for the 16th century.
There may be other dictionaries closer to Mudarra
but I don't have these
to
hand.
Incidentally Nicolas Doisi de Velasco refers to
bordones on the guitar in
1640 some 30 years before Sanz. He says it is
better to string it with
bourdons than without.
Best wishes
Monica
--
- Original Message -
From: bill kilpatrick [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Lex Eisenhardt [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Monica
Hall
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: vihuela vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 12:10 PM
Subject: Re: vihuelina
--- Lex Eisenhardt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Why is this important? Mudarra's remark would
be by
far the earliest
reference to a guitar in re-entrant tuning.
Bermudo
discusses the high
strings that accompany the usual (?) low ones.
Mudarra would be the first to
do the opposite.
placing its intended meaning aside for the
moment,
what's the earliest documented use of the word
bordon? where did it come from - which
language?
not speaking spanish, i have to ask if cuerda
con
octava or something similar - like strings
that
accompany the usual (?) low ones quoted above -
was
ever mentioned prior to the use of the word
bordon?
couldn't find anything in my latin dictionary to
link
it to border in the
