Archive for the ‘Switzerland and Swiss things’ Category

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Urs on drums

May 14, 2020

So I’ve got a rock musician, a drummer, and his name is Urs. What else can you say about him? Well, he’s almost surely Swiss German, or of Swiss German descent; almost every guy named Urs is. If I tell you that his full name is Urs Zwicky, well, it’s pretty much a sure thing. And here he is, drumstick in hand, in a photo of the Swiss band he’s been in for years, Daytona (now, that’s a surprise):


(#1) A Zwicky who can rock you

Now in the music news because of a new mix of their old standard “We Stand Together” (apparently from 1993), reviewed a few days ago in World Front News.

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Posted in Art, Music, Names, Switzerland and Swiss things, Zwickys | 1 Comment »

With spear, shield, robe, and wreath

May 6, 2020

… Helvetia stands guard over the Matterhorn, and by extension, all of her Swiss domain, in this excellent poster (source still untraced):


(#1) Not only the Matterhorn in the background, but also the shields of the 22 cantons of the time when the poster was published (I point to the Zwicky-Canton, Glarus, with its figure of Fridolin, the patron saint of the canton)

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Posted in Art, History, Signs and symbols, Switzerland and Swiss things | 2 Comments »

Schwinger outet sich als schwul

March 11, 2020

The news from gay Switzerland, in headline form: ‘Swinger [Swiss swing wrestler] outs himself as gay’. From the Outsports site: “Swiss wrestler Curdin Orlik comes out as gay, first out active male athlete in nation: The Swiss wrestler competes in an [un]usual version of the sport, but his coming out as gay is universal”, by Jim Buzinski on 3/10/20:


(#1) Orlik in ceremonial regalia, wearing a victor’s wreath and a jacket with edelweiss embroidered on the lapels

(more…)

Posted in Gender and sexuality, German, Homosexuality, Language and sports, Names, Switzerland and Swiss things | 3 Comments »

Revisiting 43: the Socka Hitsch nominal on the rural Swiss roadside

February 15, 2020

In my “Socka Hitsch” posting yesterday, Christian Zwicky / Socka Hitsch described by the nominal

old eccentric rural Swiss roadside sock vendor ‘old, eccentric sock vendor on the roadside of rural Switzerland’, ‘seller of socks along the road in the countryside of Switzerland who is of advanced age and exhibits unconventional behavior’

An unusually long nominal — I was showing off some — but not one with unusual components, put together in unusual ways. In the middle of it, rural Swiss roadside, with the complex adjectival rural Swiss, modifying the compound noun roadside — a perfectly routine and unremarkable expression    (compare rural Dutch in the attested rural Dutch landscape, urban English in the attested urban English roadworks, etc.), but one of some interest to people who fret about how the form — the morphology and syntax — of expressions (like rural Swiss) links to their meaning — their semantics and pragmatics.

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Language and plants, Lexical semantics, Modification, Semantics, Semantics of compounds, Switzerland and Swiss things, Syntactic categories, Syntax, Words and things | Leave a Comment »

Socka Hitsch

February 14, 2020

… otherwise known as Christian Zwicky, which is why I note the death of an old eccentric rural Swiss roadside sock vendor. The big picture:


(#1) On the Archyde news website on 2/12

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Posted in Death notices, Switzerland and Swiss things, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »

The Dread Pirate Swisserhand

February 7, 2020

A Dave Coverly Speed Bump cartoon from 2012:


(#1) Not just the pirate captain of legend — Captain Hook from Peter Pan — with his hook, but one with a whole Swiss Army knife of tools as his (right) hand, in the spirit of Edward Scissorhands (this is where the prisoner says, “That’s funny, you don’t look Swiss”)

(more…)

Posted in Books, Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Switzerland and Swiss things | Leave a Comment »

Zwicky with a beat

January 2, 2020

Thanks to Google Alerts, I can report that the beat goes on in Zürich, with the electro / ambient / techno music of André Zwicky, notably a single released on 5/31/19, “The Storyteller”:


(#1) Cover artwork by Jasmin Mynt Art for the piece (6:39 long)

(more…)

Posted in Art, Language and food, Language and plants, Music, Switzerland and Swiss things, Zwickys | 3 Comments »

Marc-Olivier Zwicky

October 31, 2019

Via Google Alerts, Zwicky news from Basel CH — about Marc-Olivier Z. Posted on 10/29/19 by European Seed Videos: “Marc-Olivier Zwicky, Head of Seedcare Europe, Africa and Middle East for Syngenta, talks with Shawn Brook at the Euroseeds 2019 Congress in Stockholm, Sweden from 13 to 15 October, 2019”. Thumbnail of MOZ:

(#1)

Born in Basel 2/18/83; played professional ice hockey (as a forward) for EHC (Eishockey Club) Basel in 2012-13 ; now an exec in Basel for Syngenta.

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Posted in Language and plants, Switzerland and Swiss things, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »

Der Migros-Sprecher Gabriel Zwicky

October 9, 2019

In the Swiss German-language daily Blick, a 10/6 story by Marc Iseli, “Neues Gastro-Konzept kommt nach Zürich: Migros bringt den Metzger zum Anfassen” (‘A new gastronomic concept comes to Zürich: Migros makes the butcher accessible’), about a new program — some combination of Retail, Gastronomie und Event — that is somehow supposed to bring the consumer closer to the producers of food (the butcher, the baker, the fisherman, the farmer), at least in the giant supermarket by the main railway station in Zürich:


(#1) From the butcher’s hands to yours, in the new “Meet Food” (yes, with a name borrowed from English) program (note: I didn’t choose this photo; Blick did; I will, however, inventory it in my files under “Phallicity: The Wurst”, where it deserves some sort of vividness trophy)

The story is about this still not fully defined program, but its primary interest for me is that it comes from der Migros-Sprecher (‘the Migros spokesperson’) Gabriel Zwicky, who gets his name in the news quite a lot, Migros being a very big thing in Switzerland. Zwickys, we are everywhere.

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Posted in German, Language and food, Lexical semantics, Names, Phallicity, Switzerland and Swiss things, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »

Sexy Dark Swiss

August 22, 2019

Specifically “pinksalt floyd rocks” Sexy Dark Swiss. Oh, it’s chocolate and it’s really trendy, because it’s prebiotic, and it’s whimsical too (the name Gutsii playing on gutsy and alluding to the gut, the playful allusion to the rock band Pink Floyd), plus it parades itself as dark and sexy, like a forbidden lover who steals into your bed in the dark of night. It came to me from the snack drawer at LiveJournal, brought by Kim Darnell, who works there.

From the Food Navigator site, the piece “Prebiotic chocolate? Gutsii enters US market on a mission to make gut health simple” by Mary Ellen Shoup on 2/11/19:

(#1)

(more…)

Posted in Language and food, Language and medicine, Language and plants, Language play, Metaphor, Semantics of compounds, Switzerland and Swiss things | Leave a Comment »

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