When you pronounce ‘hurdy gurdy’ in English you sound vowels a bit like German “ö” in it; Hungarian has the same vowel too. Now, each parts of the word ‘hurdy gurdy’ rhymes with a Hungarian word: hurdy with the verb ‘hördül’, meaning “growls”; gurdy with the verb ‘gördül’, meaning “turns round”. Well, ‘tekerö’ means also ‘turn round a crank’, but I wonder why they don’t call the instrument ‘hördül- gördül’ in Hungarian:-).
I hope your computers eat these unicode characters, if not, here are the same words with flying versions: ho”rdu”l and go”rdu”l.
By the way, I have been thinking of a good name for a HG society just yesterday. If it was Hungarian, it’d be nice to abbreviate: HUHUGU or even better HUNHURGUR. And well, it wouldn’t be called a society, instead I’d call it Hungarian Hurdy Gurdy Heritage, so HUHUGUHE or HUNHURGURHER:-)
Better stop it, it flows out of me in a particular state of end-of-the-day tiredness...
Cecilia
On 13/9/06 20:04, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Ooh, great thread!
Collective nouns for multiple hurdy-gurdies I have considered over the past 21 years:
The aforementioned "hurd"
The aforementioned "crank"
A brace of hurdy-gurdies--makes sense if you're a builder, and I like the sound of it
A blast of hurdy-gurdies--makes sense if you've ever heard MY gurdy
A spin of hurdy-gurdies (& would a group of players be spinsters?)
A gaggle of hurdy-gurdies (well, sometimes they squawk)
A pack of hurdy-gurdies (dog reference)
A howl of hurdy-gurdies
Anna
Seattle, WA
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Question: Is there an appropriate collective noun for a group of HG players?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dan
