23 replies to this topic

[hammeringal]

Can anyone tell me a little about "Noite de Veran": the tune used as a processional at the Squeeze-in. What country is it from, (what language is that), what kind of tune, etc. Seems to be a good walking tune, but is there a dance for it also?
Thanks,
Britt

[Henk van Aalten]

As far as I know it is a Galician tune (Galicia is the NW coast-region of Spain). The Galician word "noite" means probably "night". I could not find the meaning of the word "veran".
The problem is that Galician language is different from Spanish so maybe you should ask our C.Net member Felix. He might help you as he is from Galicia.

[lildogturpy]

I still have the sheet from the Squeeze-In and I believe it has some notes on the tunes origin - I'll see what I can dig up. I posted the tune here in the tune-o-ton

[David Barnert]

As far as I know it is a Galician tune (Galicia is the NW coast-region of Spain). The Galician word "noite" means probably "night". I could not find the meaning of the word "veran".

The Spanish word for Summer" is "Verano."

The problem is that Galician language is different from Spanish

Perhaps, but there must be some similar words, and this looks like a good candidate.

My guess is that "Noite De Veran" means "Night of Summer." or "Summer Night." Does anyone doubt that "de" means "of," as it does in Spanish?

[Henk van Aalten]

My guess is that "Noite De Veran" means "Night of Summer." or "Summer Night." Does anyone doubt that "de" means "of," as it does in Spanish?

David

Your guess sounds OK to me. There is no doubt about the meaning of "de". I can add that the Portuguese word "noite" means "night". The Spanish word for "night" is "noche".
So Galician has influences from the Portuguese as well as the Spanish language.

Edited to add: some indirect evidence was found during a google search. I found this page with the text:
.....baseado libremente en O sono dunha noite de verán de William Shakespeare....
Must be the midsummernight dream of William Shakespeare.

Edited by Henk van Aalten, 28 September 2004 - 01:16 AM.

[JimLucas]

My guess is that "Noite De Veran" means "Night of Summer." or "Summer Night." Does anyone doubt that "de" means "of," as it does in Spanish?

Galego-English dictionary resources on the web seem pretty limited, but they do exist. "Noite" does mean "night". "Verán" does mean "summer". I didn't find "de" -- or any other conjunctions or prepositions, -- but "of" is almost certain. Unlike Euskara (Basque), Galego is a Romance language, closely related to Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and numerous others (e.g., langue d'oc) that are spoken in southwestern Europe and are variously classed as languages, dialects, or "corruptions", depending on who you ask. They're pretty consistent in that the English "of" is one or more variants of "de" -- de, du, di, des, d', do, ....

Which is a lot of words to say, I think David nailed it!

[Ivan Viehoff]

I have a book in Galician/Galego, and accounting for few differences in the spelling rules, it is more than 95% the same as Portuguese. In Portuguese, night of summer is: "noite de verão". There are several dialects of Galician, and the way you pronounce a word such as verán is a major diagnostic of which dialect you have: there are more than 5 possibilities. A good compromise for the outsider is to pronounce it like (European) Portuguese, but with a B instead of a V, and a rolled r (rather than the gutteral r you would hear in Lisbon). So something like: noit' d' be-row(ng), where ow(ng) indicates the sound you would make if you said ow while holding your nose, and the apostrophe is a vowel sound that has almost completely disappeared.

[lildogturpy]

According to the Squeeze-In sheet the tune is from the Galacian band "Milladoiro"

[wes williams]

Google produces this Milladoiro track:
"O insonio dunha noite de verán" composed by A. Seoane
so perhaps something like sounds/music on a summer night?

[Ivan Viehoff]

"O insonio dunha noite de verán" composed by A. Seoane

means "The insomnia of a summer's night"

[JimLucas]

"O insonio dunha noite de verán" composed by A. Seoane

means "The insomnia of a summer's night"

Ivan, is that definite, or a guess? (Or even a joke?)

My own guess would be that "sonio" would be "sound", rather than "sleep", and that "insonio" would be "non-sound" or "silence".

[Ivan Viehoff]

"O insonio dunha noite de verán" composed by A. Seoane

means "The insomnia of a summer's night"

Ivan, is that definite, or a guess? (Or even a joke?)

It could be a better joke than those in a parallel thread...

According a web Galician dictionary, insomnia in Galician is insómnio, which is essentially the same as Spanish insomnio. This may mean there isn't an established word in Galician. Additionally, insonio is seen as a mispelling in Spanish, and in Portuguese the word is insónia. With a lack of clear authority on Galician spelling, and the absence of a plausible alternative meaning, I think I am on firm ground.

Sound is son in Galician, som in Portuguese, sonido in Spanish. Insonio isn't a plausible construction from that.

Edited by Ivan Viehoff, 29 September 2004 - 10:38 AM.

[wes williams]

With a lack of clear authority on Galician spelling, and the absence of a plausible alternative meaning, I think I am on firm ground.

Sound is son in Galician, som in Portuguese, sonido in Spanish. Insonio isn't a plausible construction from that.

... and neither would 'Nuit blanche' be plausible using the same logic? I use the word 'Insonification' almost daily, so maybe its a 'borrowed' word?

[Ivan Viehoff]

... and neither would 'Nuit blanche' be plausible using the same logic? I use the word 'Insonification' almost daily, so maybe its a 'borrowed' word?

That wasn't the kind of "logic" I had in mind, Wes. I was thinking more of the logic of how people in that part of the world put words together, even with nonce meanings.

For example, in English, with a word like insonification, the "-ification"/"-ify" is a normal way of extending a word (linguists call it a "productive" ending, meaning people are still making new words that way). This derives from an imitative process in late Latin, in which words like clarificare=clarify (from clarus=clear)were constructed by analogy with words magnificare=magnify, mistaking this as coming from magnus=big, though in fact it came from magnificus=magnificent, but helped along the way by the fact that -ficare/-fictum sound rather like facere=make and fictum=confected (hence fiction), riding on the fact that facere has irregular vowel changes (eg fecit=he made) (though fictum is from fingere).

Here the "in-" means "into" (as in injection), rather than "not" (as in insane). Observe that in latinate languages "in-" can normally mean "not" only when, at the original time of prefixing, it was stuck onto an adjective (in+sanus); if it was originally stuck onto a verb it is normally going to mean "into", though of course we then later make nouns and adjectives out of the original verb (in+iacere -> inicere -> injectum -> injection). This results in the terrible confusion over inflame = flare up vs inflammable = non-flammable. We in English/German can stick in- on nouns to make, eg, insight, but I am not aware of that being normal in Latinate languages. Here we derive insonification from in+son+ify.

I can't exclude the possibility that there is a sound meaning or pun here. There are surprising irregularities which occasionally challenge my preconceptions, and the Spanish word for sound is one of them. If I wanted to construct a concept like "sounding", remembering that to sound is an -ar verb (Sp sonar, Pt soar, Lat/It sonare), I would come up with something like sonanza or soança, with -a-. Observe that from Italian sonare we have the past participle sonato, which gives us sonata. This is very normal, and latinate words are remarkably faithful at preserving -a- in derivations from -are verbs and -i/e- in derivations from -i/ere verbs.

However, oddly, the Spanish word for sound has -i-, sonido. And since a -d- between two vowels is pronounced faintly if at all in Spanish, especially towards the end of a word, it is hardly surprising that sonio turns up as an occasional misspelling (in fact when I found a reference to an Ingeniero de Sonio, a sound engineer, it took me a little while to convince myself that this is misspelling, possibly becoming established in Sp sound engineering circles; but we find it more often spelt correctly - ingeniero de sonido - and it hasn't made it into the dictionary). Where could this -ido come from? A -d- in that situation normally represents a -t- in latin, so is there putative <sonito>? In fact sonito is a word in Italian, (accented on first syllable), meaning a small sound, a murmuring, because -ito is a diminuitive ending. So I can only think that the Spanish have taken the word straight from the diminuitive. Or perhaps the diminuitive became established as the "politer" word (this is common Lat Am Spanish, where you should be careful to use diminuitives to avoid giving offence, eg, viejito - oldish, is politer than viejo - really old), and the original was then lost as too vulgar; so perhaps the -t- became -d- alongside similar sound changes. It must have been diminuitive fairly early, because -ido is not a productive diminuitive ending in Spanish today, rather -ito/a (eg chiquita = little girl).

But of course we are interested in Galcian, not Spanish, and Gal/Pt never got that odd -ido/ito ending on their word for sound, though of course Galicians are heavily exposed to Spanish in everyday life. But it set me thinking - perhaps someone would form a diminuitive sonillo, because -illo (or -ilho in Pt) is a common diminuitive (eg, cigarillo). And since -ll/lh- is rather weak, it isn't implausible that might come out as sonio. (Though this isn't a dictionary word). This would be accented on -i-, rather than accent on -o- which characterises insomnia meanings. This provides a test - if the word turns up in the song does it accent on the 2nd syllable, or the 3rd?

And what about that in-? In- isn't normally a noun prefix. If I'm going to start with a putative <inso[n]ar>, I'm not going to get to insonio, because it takes me in the inso[n]-a- direction. I only found a way to sonio because I started with son. And that's why I think insonio isn't a very likely "constructed" word from son. But I'm prepared to be told I'm wrong.

[wes williams]

..but given that Millodoiro are Galician, but don't play exclusively Galician music (O Berro Secco has a few Irish/English named tracks) and that the track's composer is given so we should assume its his title and may not be Galician, it could even be plausible that its from next door and Asturian or Cantabrian dialect, and we are on the wrong track? The name "A.Seoane" is not that far from the well known Asturian piper Susana Seivane.

[JimLucas]

...fictum=confected (hence fiction),...

So fiction is confections for the mind? How sweet.

This results in the terrible confusion over inflame = flare up vs inflammable = non-flammable.

'Scuse me? "Inflammable" is synonymous with "flammable"; it does not mean "non-flammable". (Another example-pair of two words that seem like they should be opposites but aren't is "unravel" and "ravel".)

However, oddly, the Spanish word for sound has -i-, sonido.  ...  Where could this -ido come from? ...  I can only think that the Spanish have taken the word straight from the diminuitive.

My limited Spanish includes some other nouns similar endings -- "venida" and "bienvenida", "ruido", "comida", "partida", "partido", -- which lead me to suspect it is -- or was -- a gerund-formation ending. But even if I'm right, that's español, not galego, and it's "-ido/a", not "-io".

This provides a test - if the word turns up in the song does it accent on the 2nd syllable, or the 3rd?

Another test -- assuming that it is a song (not just a tune) and that we can get all the words -- would be to see what meaning is implied by the context of the other words in the song.

I'm generally one to speculate as widely as possible, and not settle on a single answer unless it can be demonstrated to be the only correct one. But I've just done a little more dredging (not to be confused with "trolling" ), and...

On this web page I found the text, "...Milladoiro chamou 'O soño dunha noite de verán'...," in the notes on a 1987 Celtic festival. "Aha!" sez I. "Could 'sonio' be an alternate spelling for 'soño'?" Meaning "sleep", I presume, like the Spanish "sueño"? So I'm suddenly much more receptive to "insonio" -- without an "m" -- meaning "insomnia". And if "O soño dunha noite de verán" is some traditional Galician song or tune, then a new composition named "O insonio dunha noite de verán" could be a deliberate parody. With my love of puns, you know I like the idea.

EXCEPT... In Spanish "sueño" doesn't just mean "sleep", it also means "dream".
AND... "Dream" in Spanish can be not only "sueño", but also "ensueño". (So says my little dictionary.) Oops! Sueño=ensueño -> soño=insoño=insonio ?
SO... Another intriguing possibility seems to be that the above titles may really be two dialect variations of a single title, and that title is probably taken from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". (And the web page David quoted misspelled "soño" as "sono". Be wary of things you read on the internet. Be very wary. )

"O" seems to mean "the". Ivan, can you tell us what "dunha" means?

[JimLucas]

..but given that Millodoiro are Galician, but don't play exclusively Galician music ... and that the track's composer is given so we should assume its his title and may not be Galician,...

An interesting speculation, Wes, but since it says on this web page, that "Antón Seoane, ... plays keyboards, accordion and acoustic guitar [in Milladoiro]", I think there's a strong likelihood that the title is in Galician.

[wes williams]

Nice bit of web research, Jim! But I'd still point out that Asturias and Galicia are closely tied together, and although we only tend to hear about Galicia on the music scene, there is a lot of music in Asturias, and they do intermingle. Unlike Cantabria - when I asked a local what their regional music was, I was told "disco"