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The foreign words that seem like English, but aren't

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Re: The foreign words that seem like English, but aren't

#91

Post by fenomas »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #30

Japanese word for "blue" is apparently "boo-roo" “The Japanese language has no exact word for the color blue. The term the Japanese use, ao, is ambiguous – best translated as blue-green. Ao has the connotations of immaturity and inexperience that the English word green has. When the Japanese wish to be exact – when describing the color of Siamese cats' eyes, for example – they will sometimes resort to the English wor…

I don't think that passage came within ten feet of anyone who speaks Japanese. Ao doesn't mean blue-green, it's more of a word that spans both, with set usages for things we'd consider unambiguously one or the other (e.g. a cloudless sky, or the "go" part of a traffic light). In the context of eyes it always means blue though, so the example doesn't make much sense.

Re: The foreign words that seem like English, but aren't

#92

Post by UncleSlacky »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #68
skykooler wrote: post #35

Reminds me of "handy", the German word for "cell phone". My German friend said "we just use the English word for that." I have yet to find an English speaker who calls a mobile phone a "handy".

Japan had several cell phone networks using an alternative to GSM called the Personal Handy-phone System. This was an urban only network with extremely small cells that let them make ridiculously small and inexpensive phones.

Reminds me of the short-lived Rabbit phone system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_(telecommunications)

Re: The foreign words that seem like English, but aren't

#93

Post by contingencies »

yaowenjiaozi wrote: post #75
Lxr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, thanks for the clarification!

"Handphone" is from 手提电话, meaning hand-held telephone.

Also interesting to me in this area was the emergence of the so-called IP卡 ("IP card") referring to pre-paid long distance telephone cards sold within mainland China. These were big business until the mid to late noughties.

Re: The foreign words that seem like English, but aren't

#94

Post by bshimmin »

funkyy wrote: post #89
eternauta3k wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also "pendrive", which native speakers call "USB drive".

Pendrive is common across whole English and the non-English speaking world.

There are a hell of a lot of names for them, and I think native speakers of English use a variety: http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/rdcheck.py?p...

I think most native speakers who aren't technical would pick something from that list which probably doesn't have "USB" in it and then wrap it with "little" and "thing" - eg. "little thumb drive thing".

Re: The foreign words that seem like English, but aren't

#95

Post by Armisael16 »

funkyy wrote: post #89
eternauta3k wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also "pendrive", which native speakers call "USB drive".

Pendrive is common across whole English and the non-English speaking world.

As a resident of the English speaking world I'm going to have to disagree with you.

Re: The foreign words that seem like English, but aren't

#96

Post by bshimmin »

raquo wrote: post #42
pandaman wrote: post #13

I don't think Russian "face control" is borrowed from English entirely. "Control" (контроль) is a proper Russian word, borrowed from French/German and in this context means "checking","verification".

Yep, like passport control or customs control (at the airport).

It's a funny one. In English we say "passport control" and "border control", but we would mostly otherwise use the word "check". I've encountered Italian speakers saying "Have they controlled your ticket?" when they mean "checked" (or "inspected"), simply because "controllare" in Italian means "to check", and feels like it ought to make sense in English, but doesn't.

On a related note, I have yet to encounter a French speaker saying in English "Sorry to derange you", but I am hopeful it will one day happen.

Re: The foreign words that seem like English, but aren't

#99

Post by pluma »

allendoerfer wrote: post #87
thisonetime wrote: post #24

Russians like taking plurals of English words, add a Russian ending that denotes plural and attach a specific meaning to the newly minted word. For example, бутсы. It's pronounced "boots-y" where 'y' denotes plural. The word referes to these things https://www.google.com/search?q=%D0%B1%D1%83%D1%82%D1%81%D1%... . Also, "le week-end" comes to mind although it's not different from its English original. "Naan bread" is…

In German the grammatical rules are to take the English singular and then apply German inflection to it. So for example "community, communities" becomes "die Community, die Communitys". I personally struggle with this rule, because I think the number of German people knowing the English plural "communities" is actually higher than those knowing the inflection rules for foreign words, making you look stupid when using…

Fun fact: loan words can become "naturalized" as their usage increases. Originally "Computer" was a loan word but now it's considered standard German, so "Computerspiel" is fine now but would have been written as "Computer-Spiel" before.

I'm not sure how this distinction is made. As far as I can tell "Business" and "Software" aren't quite there yet ("Softwareentwickler" is something I see relatively frequently but as far as I know it's still considered non-standard).

Re: The foreign words that seem like English, but aren't

#100

Post by Digit-Al »

skykooler wrote: post #35

Reminds me of "handy", the German word for "cell phone". My German friend said "we just use the English word for that." I have yet to find an English speaker who calls a mobile phone a "handy".

In England, if you said "my wife gave me a hnady for my birthday" it would mean something very different :-)
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