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

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

#151

Post by braythwayt » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 5:08 PM UTC

> And those Berliners who just can’t let the party end can carry on at _eine Afterhour_ until well after the sun comes up.

In Toronto’s nightlife, there were definitely establishments referred to in English as “After Hours’.”

In the days when liquor could not be served after 1am in Ontario, such places purported to serve only espresso and soft drinks, but there was nearly always some kind of nudge-nudge-wink-wink way to order some kind of alcoholic drink.

The entire 80s decade is a hazy blur to me for some reason or other, but I seem to recall places like “Le Tube” opening at around 11pm, but not getting going until 1:30am when everyone left the ordinary clubs.

(The building that housed Le Tube is now the home to a leather shop that has a large kink clientele. I believe that the things people wore to LeTube in its heyday were at least as risqué as the fetish items they buy in that location today.)

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Anyhow, absolutely these are loanwords from English into other languages like German, but I dispute that “After Hours” is not used in English.

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

#152

Post by pluma » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 5:09 PM UTC

taejo wrote: post #145

pluma wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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").

The name Gretchen is a fairly ordinary English name, but it looks like it was originally a German diminutive of Greta/Grete? Which are themselves nicknames for Margarete.

I guess "Benjamin" -> "Beni", "Daniel" -> "Dani" and so on are diminutives as well. But Gretchen is definitely rare for Germans that are not way past retirement age (might be more common in some regions but still "exotic").

Actually this holds true for many "German" names. East Germany generally has more "English" (and "French") names, e.g. Kevin, Justin, Steve and Jacqueline. Otherwise there seems to be a general trend towards more Nordic names (some jokingly blame it on IKEA: "naming kids after the furniture they were conceived on").

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

#153

Post by wodenokoto » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 5:21 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #62

GuiA wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For non Japanese practicers who are curious: katakana is not used just for loan words. It is also used for some names, onomatopoeias, to make text stand out (the way we might use all caps/italics), some scientific terminology, etc.

I stand corrected - I only did Japanese in high school, and that's how we were taught. My mistake.

If memory serves me right, it goes something like this:

Katakana was developed to annotate Chinese script with readings and became an alphabet used by males.

A secondary alphabet developed from cursive writing came to be as a script for women to write in. The tale of Genji is written entirely in hiragana, while contemporary male text would be written entirely using Chinese characters (kanji)

Later we get this merging of the 3 alphabets, with katakana relegated to mostly being used in loan words.

In a sense, it did originate to be used to describe foreign words.

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

#154

Post by bshimmin » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 5:22 PM UTC

taejo wrote: post #141

bshimmin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Frenc…

"Border control" does arguably use the ordinary meaning of control: they control the border by checking passports. But check also has an interesting etymology. Its many meanings include a type of payment note (aka "cheque"), to obstruct ("check somebody's progress", "body check"), to verify, to inspect; also checker (divide into small squares) and exchequer (the UK treasury)... all come from the Persian word shah , m…

Thanks for posting this - I love a bit of etymology on a Sunday afternoon!

If "border control" means literally controlling the border, does that make "passport control" some sort of obtuse synecdoche, where they check the passport in order to control the border?

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

#155

Post by funkyy » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #108

funkyy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For me its USB/USB drive, Flash Drive, Pen Drive and then I hardly hear Thumb Drive at all.

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

#156

Post by santaclaus » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 5:24 PM UTC

Funsports sounds like a Krautrock band from the 70s. Maybe with an exclamation point at the end.

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

#157

Post by weinzierl » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

pluma wrote: post #118

The article mentions the "Association for the German Language", which seems to refer to the prescriptivist "Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache". It's important to understand that few Germans are even aware it exists and its conservative views are extremely unpopular and non-standard. Even the Council for German Orthography which regulates German orthography as taught in schools only has two Association representatives…

> Complaining about "Elektronik" not meaning "electronics": moderate actual nazi

Fellow German native speaker here: Elektronik means electronics, doesn't it? At least dict.leo.org and the Oxford German Dictionary (which came with my Mac) seem to say it does.

    Elektronik | elɛkˈtroːnɪk |
    Fem. Elektronik
    1 electronics sing., no art.
    2 (Bestandteile) electronic parts pl. electronics pl.

Your other examples are spot on, so obviously I'm missing something in this case.

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

#158

Post by code_sardaukar » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

pluma wrote: post #118

The article mentions the "Association for the German Language", which seems to refer to the prescriptivist "Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache". It's important to understand that few Germans are even aware it exists and its conservative views are extremely unpopular and non-standard. Even the Council for German Orthography which regulates German orthography as taught in schools only has two Association representatives…

Just to clarify, you think that opposing immigration makes someone a nazi?

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

#159

Post by adamzochowski » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 6:06 PM UTC

pluma wrote: post #101

allendoerfer wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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").

But it isn't "Bob" to "Robert". You skipped middle step, and one final step.

First names were shortened.

Robert to Rob

Richard to Rich

William to Will

Then the shortened version had first letter replaced to make second diminutive form

Rob to Bob

Rich to Dick

Will to Bill

Finally you have third diminutive form, by adding ending

Bob to Bobby

Dick to Dicky

Bill to Billy

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

#160

Post by guard-of-terra » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 6:09 PM UTC

Smirnoff wrote: post #138

guard-of-terra wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On other hand, it's usually written in Latin. And it's not so much about your face than about your dress.

Face Control is about your face and it does differ from Dress Code. Clubs that only enforce Dress Code will prohibit you from entering only if your clothes don't match the requirements. Those clubs with Face Control will prohibit your entrance for whatever reason they want. Usually it's just an extortion (левак) and you have to bribe your way in (дать на лапу). Although sometimes, it's about the gender ratio or your…

:) Левак is leftist

Extortion makes no sense. Clubs are commercial venues. Everything that personnel extortions comes straight from owners' pocket. So they have huge incentive to figure it out, and I personally haven't experienced that kind of thing.