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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

#181

Post by seszett »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #144

In Spanish we have plenty of these false anglicisms, and we seem to be obsessed with the "-ing" English ending: un smoking (lately adapted the ortography to "esmoquin") -> a tuxedo un parking -> a garage, car park hacer footing -> to do jogging hacer zapping -> to channel hop (when viewing TV) tuning -> customizing/accesorizing cars un lifting -> a facelift Also some hybrid anglicisms: hacer puenting -> to bungee jum…

All of these are exactly the same in French though (apart from puenting). Now I wonder if they actually came from English in parallel or if some came by cross the Spanish/French border instead.

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

#182

Post by [deleted] »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #144

In Spanish we have plenty of these false anglicisms, and we seem to be obsessed with the "-ing" English ending: un smoking (lately adapted the ortography to "esmoquin") -> a tuxedo un parking -> a garage, car park hacer footing -> to do jogging hacer zapping -> to channel hop (when viewing TV) tuning -> customizing/accesorizing cars un lifting -> a facelift Also some hybrid anglicisms: hacer puenting -> to bungee jum…

[deleted]

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

#183

Post by [deleted] »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #144

In Spanish we have plenty of these false anglicisms, and we seem to be obsessed with the "-ing" English ending: un smoking (lately adapted the ortography to "esmoquin") -> a tuxedo un parking -> a garage, car park hacer footing -> to do jogging hacer zapping -> to channel hop (when viewing TV) tuning -> customizing/accesorizing cars un lifting -> a facelift Also some hybrid anglicisms: hacer puenting -> to bungee jum…

[deleted]

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

#184

Post by glandium »

smegel wrote: post #70

Korean has some doozies: https://youtu.be/hQuJwjAnWHA "Skinship" - try and guess what that means.

A lot of the ones mentioned in this video are also used in Japan. Check out the thread about wasei-eigo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12716517 . It would be interesting to know if they came from one to the other, or from somewhere else.

Note that skinship has been borrowed back with a different nuance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_intimacy#Skinship

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

#186

Post by smegel »

glandium wrote: post #184
smegel wrote: post #70

Korean has some doozies: https://youtu.be/hQuJwjAnWHA "Skinship" - try and guess what that means.

A lot of the ones mentioned in this video are also used in Japan. Check out the thread about wasei-eigo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12716517 . It would be interesting to know if they came from one to the other, or from somewhere else. Note that skinship has been borrowed back with a different nuance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_intimacy#Skinship

Interesting, the Japanese and English nuances are similar. The Korean one is almost exclusively (from what I can gather) used as a comment on dating that is more physical than emotional, e.g. the English equivalent would be "they are just physical".

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

#188

Post by type0 »

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.

It was pretty common name when USB was new and general population had no clue what it was.

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

#189

Post by vorg »

wodenokoto wrote: post #153
vacri wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I read somewhere: "Katakana is Kanji written tiny; Hiragana is Kanji written quickly."

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

#190

Post by type0 »

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"

That sounds as something ppl would only use in the early 90s
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