The foreign words that seem like English, but aren't • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by pluma » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 2:21 PM UTC

allendoerfer wrote: post #88

villedespommes wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what we really like to do is to append a bunch of affectionate diminutive suffixes to English common and proper nouns. It's just soooo entertaining. You can do it all day. Here's a few examples: Mr. Obama (Обама) -> Obamushka (Обамушка) Mr. Trump (Трамп) -> Trumpuoshechka (Трампушечка) My personal favorite: Okay (Окэй) -> Okaayshki (Океюшки) If you curious you can fire up Google Translate and make it say all these wo…

Do you use them to make fun of them or just to make the words sound nice? I think Russian makes heavy use of diminutives, doesn't it? I worked somewhere where two women were called Natalia and Natasha and I am still confused what their actual name were, because Natasha seems to be the diminutive form of Natalia and sometimes Natasha called Natalia "Natasha". I do not think that there are any German names which are th…

I can't think of any German diminutive names but there are cases where the "short form" is distinctly different from the long form as in English "Bob" vs "Robert" or "Dick" vs "Richard".

E.g. "Jupp" is short for "Joseph" and "Kalle" is short for "Karl" (or variants like "Karl-Heinz").

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

#102

Post by vbezhenar » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 2:24 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #71

memracom wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal favourite is sportsmenki which means female athletes. The corresponding word for male athletes is sportsmeny and the singular for a male athlete is sportsmen.

Don't forget businesswoman: "Businessmenka"

It could be used as a joke, but don't use that word seriously, it could offend. It's either businesswoman (with Russian pronunciation "бизнес-вумэн") or something like "предпренимательница" (enterpreneur-woman).

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

#103

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 2:26 PM UTC

bshimmin wrote: post #94

funkyy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

“a USB” is common

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

#104

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 2:29 PM UTC

alricb wrote: post #3

> risqué meaning ‘risked’ (a verb, not an adjective) No. "risqué" is also an adjective denoting that something involves risks (like "risky" in English) or that a statement is licentious, shocking (like "risqué" in English).

It's a past participle anyhow, stating it is “a verb, not an adjective” is strange given these are often both.

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

#105

Post by pluma » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 2:29 PM UTC

byoung2 wrote: post #36

ekianjo wrote: post #21

Note that the academie francaise is way flexible to accept english words in the official vocabulary. In Quebec they literally have a french word to replace all common english expressions and prevent borrowing.

In Quebec they literally have a french word to replace all common english expressions and prevent borrowing. I met some ladies from Quebec while in France, and they were horrified at how tainted the French spoken by the natives had become. They said at one point they just started speaking exclusively in English because they couldn't stand hearing French butchered by the natives. It's apparently a common phenomenon th…

If you have a chance, compare Pennsylvania Dutch to Modern High German. With a few exceptions it's mostly a preserved older German dialect. The same is true for the German spoken by German-Russians who returned to Germany during and after WW2.

It's not just language. I assume that it's because while the native population marches on naturally, the emigrants are trying to preserve the culture and language they brought with them, with no influence from their original home country. Being surrounded by a foreign language/culture probably also leads to emphasising the distinctions (e.g. to avoid loan words out of fear of watering down your identity).

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

#106

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 2:30 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#107

Post by empath75 » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 2:34 PM UTC

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…

Saying it's pronounced 'boo-roo' is sort of misleading. Japanese r's are almost like Spanish r's where it's almost an l sound or even a d sound. If you say it fast, it's not too far off of 'blue'.

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

#108

Post by brownbat » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 2:35 PM UTC

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.

This may be a regional thing. I have not heard the phrase pen drive in ages.

Everyone I know says flash drive or USB stick or thumb drive, roughly in that order of popularity.

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

#109

Post by radarsat1 » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 2:36 PM UTC

Oh I love these. My favourite french one is "footing." No, "je vais faire du footing" doesn't mean, "I'm footing the bill," it means, "I'm going for a jog."

There's a ton of examples in France for some reason. Brushing as in the article, but also "pressing" for the dry cleaner.

In Chile they say all the time, "catchai'?", meaning "did you catch what I said?" Equivalent of "y'know?" It took me a while to realize that they conjugate it too.. To say, "I didn't understand," they'll say, "No catcho." Beautiful ;)

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

#110

Post by pluma » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 2:38 PM UTC

galago wrote: post #45

If you use LaTeX for typesetting, the document class for slideshow presentations is called Beemer. My understanding is that this is a German psuedo-anglicism related to projectors.

A "Beamer" is a digital projector, especially as distinct from overhead projectors (which are called "Overhead-Projektor" in German).

A "Projektor" is almost always analogue, except for cinemas (where the audience typically can't see the projector directly). It wouldn't be totally unexpected to refer to a "Beamer" as a "Projektor" but it might seem a bit weird or old-fashioned.