Singapore Airlines Champagne Label Explained

 

Champagne on Singapore Airlines. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

On a Singapore Airlines flight in December 2023 I saw on the back of the top of the trolley a tall bottle with a waisted cork covered in foil. The heavy corks, normally covered in a wire net like a tennis net, are to stop the expanding gassy bubbles blowing the cork out. I was sitting in Economy, so I thought it must be a cheap Prosecco or sparkling wine, even a non alcholic drink imitating Champagne. 

It was good enough to please me. Although it was slightly too warm, and not very bubbly. I don't know how long it had been opened. 

Later, I went to the galley and asked to see the bottle. To my surprise, it was real Champagne, that is to say, from the Champagne region of France. Champange is a protected name. You cannot legally call your drink Champagne unless it comes from the place in France called Champagne (or in recent times, from the USA, run by a French Champagne company). You can say Champagne method, which is not the same as coming from Champagne, with their soil, water, grapes, and centuries of expertise. (And probably payment to some collective marketing company and lawyers fighting to remove fakes pretending to be from your region when they are not.)

I do not know Charles de Casenove. I am more familiar with Moet et Chandon and Veuve Cliquot.

Here's a quick reminder of what the French words mean. Et is French for and. Veuve is French for widow. 

On the label on the bottle in the photo I took you can read these words:

Champagne - the region of France

Cazanove is from the Occitan for new house.

Occitan (English: /ˈɒksɪtən, -tæn, -tɑːn/;^[10][11] Occitan: occitan [utsiˈta, uksiˈta]),^[a] also known as lenga d'òc (Occitan: [ˈleŋɡɔ ˈðɔ(k)] ^ⓘ; French: langue d'oc) by its native speakers, sometimes also referred to as Provençal, is a Romance language spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Valleys, as well as Spain's Val d'Aran in Catalonia; collectively, these regions are sometimes referred to as Occitania. It is also spoken in Calabria (Southern Italy) in a linguistic enclave of Cosenza area (mostly Guardia Piemontese). Some include Catalan in Occitan, as the distance between this language and some Occitan dialects (such as the Gascon language) is similar to the distance between different Occitan dialects. Catalan was considered a dialect of Occitan until the end of the 19th century^[12] and still today remains its closest relative.^[13]

Occitan is an official language of Catalonia, Spain.

de means of in French. (Charles de Cazanove, Charles of Cazanove)

Maison fondée ) à Reims en ...  means in English - house (business) founded at Reims in

acute accent (l'accent aigu) é 

pere is French for father

fils is French for son

tete de cuvee

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/name-origin?surname=cazenove

Code words for travellers

 

What are useful code words for families. 

Anticipated Dangers

When I was in Hong Kong with my son, we had already arranged a code word for let's get out of here, or away from these people trying to sell us fakes watches and engage us in conversation or lead us down dark alleys or up staircases away from other people.

Family Member Code words

We weren't going to see my husband who was working until after 5 pm. So any comment about meeting Dad for lunch or tea, was a signal to get away. 

Other possible messages could be speaking to your grandparents (who are dead).

Pets

You can use the names of pets, or feeding pets (who are dead).

Vehicles

You can mention cars you no longer own, to indicate we must get away

Sport

Use code words from football teams or tennis games or golf or snooker if you don't play these sports.

Bargains

You can also arrange for codes when bargaining, to indicate you don't want the goods at any price, or think the price is too high, or you should accept.  Do you have any (your local currency) could mean its cheaper back home, or we already have these. 

Useful Websites

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-12616047/Criminologist-simple-hack-family-safe.html

Please share links to your favourite posts

An easy language for travellers - ten words which are almost the same

 

Swedish - I wish I had started it earlier. It is like a cross between English and German. 

Look at these words

Swedish - English

är - are

bruna - brown

cat - katt

dotter - daughter

kaffe - coffee

katt - cat

sommar - summer

son - son

syster - sister

tomat - tomato

vinter - winter

English - Swedish

are - är

brown - bruna

daughter - dotter

coffee - kaffe

sister - syster

son - son

summer - sommar

tomato - tomat

winter - vinter

I could not find how to change to Swedish in blogger so I copied the letter a with the two dots above it from translategoogle.

Useful Websites

duolingo.com

https://translate.google.com/

Handy tips which make travelling easy and fun from Angela.

Please share links to your favourite posts. 

Further Spanish words - my name, wife, son and so on

People
English-Spanish

the boy - el nino

the girl (is) - la nina ...

English

my wife

my husband

my son

my daughter-in-law

his fiancee

my name is

his name is

her name is

Spanish

mi mujer (Mujer is woman, which is apparently the ok translation for wife in economical Spanish but in English it sounds rude to call your wife 'my woman'.)

mi esposo (The Spanish word esposo sounds like the English word spouse. Note that o for man and a for a woman.)

mi hijo

mi nuera

su prometida (like the English word promised)

Me llamo

se llama

su nombre es

I picked out a series of sentences I wanted to say in Spanish and ran them through Google Translate (which is translate google in the search).

I laboriously copied each translated word. On returning to a set which I had not yet matched up, I found it interesting to test whether I could translate back from the Spanish to the English and vice versa. So I have decided to leave the untranslated version so that you can read down and go back and try doing this until you know every word or most words.

About The Author

Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer, blogger, author of 20 books including an ebook on Improve Your English, from Amazon, and teacher of English and Business English and other languages to individuals, colleges and companies. For more information on learning languages see the previous posts. For information on sites to see in Spain and Portugal see the other posts. Please bookmark your favourite posts and share the links with your family, friends and colleagues.

A Vietnamese Funeral

Seen in the Ethnology museum in Hanoi, North Vietnam.

As I walked towards it, I thought, what a jolly scene. Then I read the captions and realized it wasn't a jolly occasion at all. However, the colour helps the mourners cope, in my opinion. All black funerals make you feel worse. The colours are significant. A distant relative or passer-by could easily identify the son performing the rites and the daughter-in-law.

This scene is one of many intriguing items at the Ethnology museum. It has two sections in adjacent buildings, one ticket for both. Allow time to see them both.

We flew on Vietjet and stayed at the delightful Sunline Paon hotel. See my previous posts on Hanoi restaurants and attractions.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Author and Speaker. Teacher and trainer of English and language and etiquette.

All the people called Angela Lansbury - and all the people sharing your name

Problem
How many people are called by your name?

Answer
When I was aged about 21 in New York there were only two people called Angela Lansbury. I had thought I was the only one. But the hotel receptionist remembered my name. When I went out into the street I could see why. The name Angela Lansbury, the actress, was in lights across the streets of New York.

Until this time last year I thought there was a maximum of four people called Angela Lansbury. Then a website asked me to give my LinkedIn details. I looked up my name and was horrified to discover that there were as many as 13 people just on Linkedin.

Writers
What do I and the actress have in common, apart from our mutual name? We are both writers.

Sons with the same names
We both have a son called Anthony. (The actress has more children.)

Sleeping In The Nude
What do we not have in common? I read that the actress sleeps in the nude. I never sleep in the nude. I am a travel writer and travel a lot. I have never been in a hotel fire but I have been in at least two hotels where the fire alarm rang and we had to get out of the hotel sharpish, just in case.

You don't want to be hunting around in the dark for your clothes when the lights go out and the fire alarm rings. Well, maybe you do. But I don't.

Greetings to all the people who share my name and all those who want to read about people who share names.

I went around a conference recently asking all the people how many other people had the same name. On Facebook you often find several. I have other posts on the Name Angela Lansbury, and on sharing your name with other people. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, 

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Learning Ukrainian - First steps

Problem
Ukrainian is in the Cyrillic script like Russian.
How do I learn the letters?
How do I type them?
How do I recognise and remember Ukrainian words?

Answers
I searched on the internet for a website with a Ukrainian keyboard and found yluhovy.com

UKRAINIAN KEYBOARD
With the help of a family member I downloaded the ap and found keyboard on my laptop and installed it. I now have the Ukrainian flag symbol in the list of flags which coma up as options in a drop down box when I clock on the UK flag for British English keyboard.

So far, so good. But how do I know which letter on my keyboard to type to get the Ukrainian equivalent.

My first thought was to type the English alphabet. But I didn't know what the Ukrainian equivalents were, nor where to find them.

QWERTY
So I typed out querty, the top line of my UK keyboard.

The only trouble was I had just clicked on the Ukrainian, so I got all the Ukrainian letters first, then the English keyboard.

My first thought was to type the Ukrainian letters followed by the English not he same line.

However, typing the Ukrainian underneath the Qwerty, or above, made comparison of one letter and another easier for learning easier. It was also easier to find the equivalent letter to type it.

I looked at the three lines and thought that was too many letters together and too muddling for my eyes. So I typed it again, larger, with the three keyboard lines separated by a space.

I printed it out, intending to cut out the largest version and stick it only my laptop.

Display
If you don't want to deface your laptop, you could make yourself an upright card, or even a card the size of a business card and display it in a business card holder, or the top of a business card box.

Now it is easy to see which letters are identical: Most of the vowels: aeio .

A few consonants: KXM.

Some letters are almost the same.

wш

mм

бb

тt

Story
I want to visit Ukraine because my late father's grandfather came from Ukraine and I am writing a novel inspired by research into my family history, based on the city of Lemberg, as it was known under the Austro-Hungarian empire. The city of Lemberg is also known as Lvov or Lviv.

Tips

Ukrainian - English
The Ukrainian word for son looks like sin, but spelled with a C to start. C pronounced S the same as in the English words place and p a l a c e and p o l i c e . The son who sins.

The Ukrainian word for garden looks like sad, starting with the letter c for sad. The garden is sad.

The word for juice looks like sick, shortened to SIK, starting with the letter c for S.   The juice is sick or made me sick.

Not very pretty pictures, but effective in teaching me to recognize and remember the words and the letters.

More Tips On Languages
www.duolingo.com

Video on numbers:
https://www.linguajunkie.com/learn-bulgarian

Flights to Ukraine
https://www.cheapflights.co.uk/find-flights/to-Ukraine/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have many more posts and tips on learning languages, also travels to Cambodia, Italy, Romania, the UK, USA and the world. Please share links to your favourite posts.

French words of the day: denouement and lumiere

French - English
denouement - literally un tying of a knot, the solution to the mystery in a whodunnit
lumiere - light or illumination
noue - knot as in noose
son - sound (remove the u and the d and it is the same word; sonorous is noisy
son et lumière - sound and light - generally a show at tourist attractions with tickets

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer