Ji Trnka: Sen Noci Svatojnsk(1959) | A Midsummer Nights Dream

Jiří Trnka: Sen noci svatojánské (1959) |  A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Johann Strauss: Unter Donner und Blitz

Listening to the Czech Philharmonic’s New Year's Gala Concert reminded me of my favourite light-hearted piece. Manfred Honeck conducted it quite similarly to this version from Kleiber, which is my favourite.

Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse (1927)

"It partook, she felt, carefully helping Mr Bankes to a specially tender piece, of eternity."

Interesting etymologies: part 2

Some words in different languages beginning with al- which are borrowings from Arabic (e.g. alcohol, algebra, alchemy, algorithm) are actually the result of reanalysis.

In this case, al is originally an article in Arabic, preceding the word itself (so e.g.  al  + kuḥl → alcohol,  al + jabr → algebra), but it was reanalysed as one word in the process of borrowing.

The word algorithm comes from al Ḵwārizmī, a name of a Persian mathematician.

In the case of admiral, the original boundary was between the word and the article following it, i.e.  amīr + al, because it was a military title often followed by another noun (‘commander of + noun’). The reanalysis was also influenced by the Latin suffix -alis. (This is, however, only a theory “not borne out by the textual evidence in either Arabic or the Western languages”, according to the OED.)

Jiří Trnka: Sen noci svatojánské (1959) | A Midsummer Night's Dream