Language distributions around the world.

I recently ran into the following maps posted on Wikipedia. I found them interesting and useful, so I thought I'd share them with you.

The Anglophone world (original):

The Francophone world (original):

The Hispanophone world (original):

The Lusophone world (original):

Diddly-eye, what?

One of our favorite new romantic comedies is Leap Year. In it, the male lead character, Declan, repeatedly uses the phrase "Diddly-eye". So, Cindy and I embarked on a search to determine what "Diddly-eye" means. Here are our preliminary results, listed in what we see as the most likely options (together with our sources).

1) In Scottish a Diddie (or Diddy) is a twit, confused person.[1] So, maybe this is an adjectival use of the term diddy, implying that she is a twit by the look in her eyes.

2) Apparently the Dublin eye is known, in true Dublinese, as the Diddly eye![2] So, maybe since she was focused on going to Dublin, she was Diddly-eyed.

3) In a variety of Scottish songs, the term diddly-eye appears in a series of what appears to be nonsensical terms.[3] In addition, this seems to be how it is used by Ned Flanders in an episode of the Simpsons.[4] So, maybe this is just a nonsensical expression.

4) Apparently there is such a things as Diddly-eye music.[5] But that use does not make much sense to me.

So, any thoughts? Any Irish people out there who can shed some light on this expression?

Latin / Greek / Arabic / Old Norse Study Tool

Here is a site that might help all the Latin / Greek / Arabic / Old Norse students out there.

perseus digital library