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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

#51

Post by villedespommes »

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…

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 words :-)

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

#52

Post by ekianjo »

GuiA wrote: post #33
vacri wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese even has an entire alphabet just for loanwords (katakana)

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 was going to say that. Katakana is basically an emphasis marker more than anything else.

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

#53

Post by jrockway »

toufka wrote: post #32
jrockway wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite is "anime"; things went full circle and we got our borrowed word back!

'Karaoke' too. Originally, 'kara'-'okestura' - a compound word short for 'box-orchestra'.

The kara is not 空 as in empty?

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

#54

Post by LyndsySimon »

maxerickson wrote: post #12
kawera wrote: post #10

In Brazil, any kind of sports shoes is a "tenis".

"tennis shoe" has a pretty generic meaning in the US also.

Apparently that's quite regional. I was corrected a few weeks ago because I called a pair of cross-trainers "tennis shoes" - where that person was from "tennis shoes" is much more specific than I understand it.

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

#55

Post by bengalister »

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 the day to day spoken french in Quebec, you can hear also a lot English words too: check, game, lang, weird...

There's a funny youtube video of a French Canadian girl who lives in France and compares the number of anglicisms in the movie "Starbucks" and its French remake (not sure why they did a remake) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Cw9ywW-TU Video is in French but the movie Starbucks had way more anglicisms in it. Nothing scientific here but having lived many years in Montreal I can tell you that the French spoken in Quebec is far from being English free.

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

#56

Post by ekianjo »

bengalister wrote: post #55
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 the day to day spoken french in Quebec, you can hear also a lot English words too: check, game, lang, weird... There's a funny youtube video of a French Canadian girl who lives in France and compares the number of anglicisms in the movie "Starbucks" and its French remake (not sure why they did a remake) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Cw9ywW-TU Video is in French but the movie Starbucks had way more anglicisms i…

Its not maybe used English free but I can tell you they have official french words for everything, while in French french there are many times no french equivalent words.

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

#58

Post by _nalply »

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.

It's «Beamer». Example: https://shop.mediamarkt.ch/de/tv-audio/beamer/idknxq3w6ncm

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

#59

Post by _nalply »

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…

They would have died on the spot if they went to Acadia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiac

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

#60

Post by marssaxman »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #54
maxerickson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"tennis shoe" has a pretty generic meaning in the US also.

Apparently that's quite regional. I was corrected a few weeks ago because I called a pair of cross-trainers "tennis shoes" - where that person was from "tennis shoes" is much more specific than I understand it.

What region might that person have been from?

I grew up calling them all "tennis shoes", though I don't think I ever met anyone who played tennis. "Sneakers" was a secondary term.

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