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The foreign words that seem like English, but aren't
- _ix 10y agoI can't help but laugh at these—is there something the matter with me? "ofisuredii" is particularly humorous.
- astrange 10y agoThere's no reason to spell it that way unless you're being obnoxiously Orientalist.
- rincebrain 10y agoIn this case, they were quoting the article, but what about the spelling was Orientalist? The only thing I could see would be the use of the pseudo-anglicism instead of the English phrase, but that just seems to be specifying the specific word that amused them, not exaggerating the English phrase we would associate with it for effect.
- rm445 10y agoCareful. Loanwords into Japanese are transliterated into a fixed syllabary, that can then be transliterated back in a standard way. i.e. that's an authentic transcription of a (borrowed) Japanese word, not a rude impression of a Japanese person mangling English.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- alricb 10y ago> 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).
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoIt's a past participle anyhow, stating it is “a verb, not an adjective” is strange given these are often both.
- Myrmornis 10y agoIt's the BBC website, so expect it to be embarrassingly dumb(ed down).
- codyb 10y agoThere are no double entredre's in France because they never say anything that could mean two things or because, "double entendre" (double hear), literally doesn't make sense?
- alricb 10y agoMore the latter, although a French person hearing "double entendre" might understand that it means "double sens"; it's just not an expression that is used.
- eeks 10y agoOf course there are "double entendres" in French. They can take the form of "sous-entendus" where the same sentence can be interpreted differently depending on the level of knowledge of the listeners for a particular context. Play-on-words are also widespread, including the "contrepèterie" art form unique to French. Various form of "argot" (slang) also use identical words bearing different meanings. All of these are a big part of our second and third degree humour that elude so many foreigners. This journalist from the BBC does not seem to be much aware of French culture at all.
- pygy_ 10y agoI had to read that sentence twice, it wasn't very clear. I think the journalist meant that "double entendre" doesn't mean anything in French, not that French speaking people don't use double entendre.
- fenomas 10y agoThat passage simply meant that the term "double entendre" isn't used in French.
- eeks 10y agoI went and read that passage again, and I'm sorry but the phrasing is ambiguous. "There is no double entendres in France" literally means that "double entendres" are nowhere to be found in France, which in itself makes no sense. The sentence "there is no double entendres in French" would actually make sense but bears the meaning with which I credited it initially. If the journalist meant "The expression double entendres is borrowed from French but not used in France where it has no meanings" he/she did a poor job phrasing it.
- asdfologist 10y agoMy favorite is salaryman.
- kcorbitt 10y agoln Spain, everyone refers to Facebook as el face, (with the English pronunciation of the word "face") which sounded pretty funny until I got used to it.
- kawera 10y agoIn Brazil too, just "face" and "whats" for Whatsapp, both with the english pronunciation.
- Oletros 10y agoI have never heard calling Facebook as Face, I live in Barcelona
- whack 10y agoI don't know if Barcelona is really very representative of Spain. From my last visit, I got the impression that Barcelona is to Spain like Montreal is to Canada. That cool "other" city where people speak a different language and have a culture different enough that they kind of want to secede.
- jnbiche 10y ago> I live in Barcelona Do you speak Spanish or Catalan with your friends and family when discussing things like Facebook?
- Oletros 10y agoSpanish and Catalan and I have not heard it in any of those languages
- ekianjo 10y agoThey forgot parking in french which is the word for car park. And japanese has so many of such words that are imported from English with a totally different meaning you d need a book to cover them.
- raldi 10y agoLike "Italian sauce", the (often quite tasty and authentic) tomato-based dressing they put on their spaghetti.
- ekianjo 10y agoThey also have "french dressing" a generic white sauce for salads that we dont even use in France.
- ScottBurson 10y ago> They forgot parking in french which is the word for car park. In the US that would be a "parking lot" -- so the French term is pretty close.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
- ivarious 10y agoAnd then there's the whole business of Wasei-Eigo, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasei-eigo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasei-eigo.
- ekianjo 10y agoWhich is still going on strongly and introducing new words every year.
- userbinator 10y agoThe associated list page is worth reading too, if only to see how much of the meaning you can guess just by looking at the first 3 columns of that table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gairaigo_and_wasei-eigo_terms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gairaigo_and_wasei-eig...
- jrockway 10y agoMy favorite is "anime"; things went full circle and we got our borrowed word back!
- kawera 10y agoIn Brazil, any kind of sports shoes is a "tenis".
- maxerickson 10y ago"tennis shoe" has a pretty generic meaning in the US also.
- LyndsySimon 10y agoApparently 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.
- marssaxman 10y agoWhat 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.
- LyndsySimon 10y agoI want to say they were from Philadelphia, but I'm not 100% sure.
- maxerickson 10y agoYep. http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_73.html http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_73....
- rmc 10y agoIn Ireland they are called "runners"
- elros 10y agoIn France, they're "baskets".
- pandaman 10y agoI 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".
- raquo 10y agoYep, like passport control or customs control (at the airport).
- bshimmin 10y agoIt'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.
- taejo 10y ago"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, meaning king, through chess-related metaphors. (Also the word chess itself)
- bshimmin 10y agoThanks 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?
- ScottBurson 10y agoLet's not forget that entrée, in French, means "appetizer". ETA: I see this is mentioned in the article. Posted too hastily :-)
- Camillo 10y agoThis confused me when I moved to America, because I thought it meant an appetizer. Then, when I visited France, it confused me again, because by that point I thought it meant a main course.
- dorfsmay 10y agoSame here, actually asked the waiter for the menu with the main dish. And same with "matinee", morning in french, but a daytime performance in english, which is typically taking place in the afternoon.
- rjsw 10y agoThere are also American restaurant menus that state that a dish comes "with with sauce".
- lmm 10y agoIn British English too.
- bgilroy26 10y ago'Portable bassinette' is American for carrycot
- kwhitefoot 10y agoTypical American; never use one syllable where two will do.
- ekianjo 10y agoNote 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.
- koenigdavidmj 10y ago'Courriel' for email was an Académie invention, not Québécois. It isn't as clear-cut as you describe.
- alricb 10y agoCourriel is definitely from Quebec; it was only adopted officially in France in 2003, while it had been in use in Canada since the late 90s.
- villedespommes 10y agomy two cents. I took a couple of French classes in Canada and I can vouch that those guys don't mess around; they are like French vocab nazis :-P so it's always "la fin de la semaine" and "courriel electronique". In contrast, one of my friends is "French" French. She got no issues saying "le weekend" or "e-mail." When the French lost to the british in 177x-ish, people of Quebec were left to fend for themselves. They fought tooth and nail to preserve their culture and language and I think to this day there's still this inertia going on in the way modern French Canadians think. Moreover, there has been a study/survey showing that isolated culturally homogeneous communities tend to heavy-handedly police (the US style) the use of their native languages. I wish I could find a link to that study :-( As a native russian speaker living in the US i can actually confirm that the study seems to ring true; i dislike (very much so) when russian speakers start mixing in english words.
- seszett 10y ago> it's always "la fin de la semaine" and "courriel electronique". In contrast, one of my friends is "French" French. She got no issues saying "le weekend" or "e-mail." But on the other hand, your Québec friend will tell you that you can "plugger" your "laptop", he has "checké" that there is a "plug" that is "loose" on the nearby "powerstrip". I lived there for a bit more than a year, and I'm pretty sure they use at least as many anglicisms in daily life as we do in France. However, we both pay more attention to the anglicisms used by the others when we're in their country because we're not used to them. They avoid them a lot more than we do in written language though.
- thisonetime 10y agoRussians 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%8B&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwipiITPot7PAhVBez4KHaEUDt0Q_AUICCgB&biw=1202&bih=644 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 also interesting.
- memracom 10y agoMy 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.
- dotancohen 10y agoDon't forget businesswoman: "Businessmenka"
- vbezhenar 10y agoIt 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).
- dotancohen 10y agoThanks, I did not know that. My Russian is not very good, and this is a word that I've heard in a serious setting. I've never had opportunity or need to use it, though.
- type0 10y agoThat sounds as something ppl would only use in the early 90s
- 10y ago
- Eric_WVGG 10y agoJapanese 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 word blue, which they pronounce "boo-roo."” https://www.wired.com/1995/03/blue-laser/ https://www.wired.com/1995/03/blue-laser/
- themodelplumber 10y agoI've heard aozora for blue sky many times, so it's true but not used as a substitute in every case. One of my favorite confusing words is charenji, or "challenge", which essentially means "to try [doing something difficult]". So a Japanese tourist couple shows up at an American bungee jump and they tell the guys, "we want to challenge!" which sounds like a mistaken version of "we want _A_ challenge" in English. So the junior bungee jump guy looks over at his boss, and says, "hey...these two say they want a challenge..." not realizing they just want to try a normal bungee jump.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Grue3 10y ago水色 is blue. I have never seen ブルー being used.
- glandium 10y ago水色 is one kind of color blue. ブルー is used for another kind of color blue, or for a broader spectrum of blue (it's also used for melancholia).
- beevai142 10y agoMany words in languages do not have an exact counterpart in a given different language. The blue-green issue in particular is not unique to the English---Japanese language pair, cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction...
- skykooler 10y agoReminds 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".
- Lxr 10y ago"Handphone" is common in SE Asia, from the literal translation of the Chinese word.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago> from the literal translation of the Chinese word Well, they both refer to hands, I guess. The Chinese word is 手机 shouji "hand machine". "Phone" is 电话 dianhua "electric speech". Those two words aren't related.
- Lxr 10y agoInteresting, thanks for the clarification!
- yaowenjiaozi 10y ago"Handphone" is from 手提电话, meaning hand-held telephone.
- contingencies 10y agoAlso 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.
- eatonphil 10y agoIn Korea it's called 핸드폰 (pronounced like: hen duh pone). Not sure where it borrowed that from directly though.
- toyg 10y agoSee also: "al fresco", which in England means "dining outdoors" and in Italy "being in prison". I wonder if it's because eating English food under the English weather can be considered punishment on the level of incarceration...?
- taejo 10y agoal fresco literally means "in the fresh/cool"; interestingly, English also has "in the cooler" for "in prison"
- galago 10y agoIf 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.
- _nalply 10y agoIt's «Beamer». Example: https://shop.mediamarkt.ch/de/tv-audio/beamer/idknxq3w6ncm https://shop.mediamarkt.ch/de/tv-audio/beamer/idknxq3w6ncm
- pluma 10y agoA "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.
- blt 10y agoHah, cool. I never really tried to figure it out but I always imagined it had something to do with the presenter "beaming" [1] after their successful, beautifully typeset presentation. [1] https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/beaming https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/beaming
- lokedhs 10y agoIn Swedish, a portable cassette play is (or was, who uses these anymore?) called a "freestyle". I have no idea what the etymology of that one is. Then there is the old word for baguette (the French type of bread) that was called "pain riche". This is from the first restaurant in Sweden to serve it which was called "Riche". I think everybody have heard stories about Swedes in the 80's trying to order that in France and the confused look from the French. These days people use the proper French word to describe it.
- GordonS 10y agoI think 'freestyle' was a brand name, so it may have come from that?
- smegel 10y agoKorean has some doozies: https://youtu.be/hQuJwjAnWHA https://youtu.be/hQuJwjAnWHA "Skinship" - try and guess what that means.
- glandium 10y agoA 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 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_intimacy#Skinship
- smegel 10y agoInteresting, 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".
- ommunist 10y agoI have a large dictionary of word origins on my bookshelf. It seems every basic 'English' word was borrowed somewhere some time ago. Its natural.
- funkyy 10y agoSpruce is a Polish word, and it means "From Prussia" which would be written as "z Prus". Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruce#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruce#Etymology
- ommunist 10y agoDo you know that "bridge game" word in English is of Slavic origin, where it came from Tartars. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Russian_origin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Rus...
- radarsat1 10y agoOh 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 ;)
- pluma 10y agoThe 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 in its total of 18 German council members. In practice Germans generally regard the Duden (the equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary) as the ultimate authority on German orthography and vocabulary. And the Duden generally takes a descriptivist approach, adapting to language change rather than trying to halt it. Additionally, there seems to be a strong correlation between Germans with strong opinions about loan words and Germans with strong opinions about immigrants (or more recently the loss of "occidental identity" via "Überfremdung"). There are of course people who feel strongly about language who aren't also nazis in the more literal sense but the kind of complaints people have about language use often gives you a relatively safe indicator of their political views: Complaining about wrong apostrophe use: moderate grammar nazi Complaining about excessive use of English loan words in office culture: red-blooded grammar nazi Complaining about "Elektronik" not meaning "electronics": moderate actual nazi Complaining about "Handy" or "Portemonnaie": red-blooded actual nazi
- weinzierl 10y ago> 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.
- pluma 10y agoYeah, Elektronik is a direct loan from English electronics. The language nazis are complaining we already have the word Elektrik for that because in German that apparently includes what is colloquially called Elektronik. It's mostly an argument based on word origins (i.e. they say Elektronik would have to be similar to Mechatronik in that it would specifically refer to electronic motors and such rather than typical consumer electronics). Of course Elektronik does have a distinct meaning separate from Elektrik and the entire argument is based on a simplistic understanding of how human language works. But like many of the more outlandish arguments this boils down to "foreign words are corrupting our Germanic language and ultimately destroying our culture" -- which of course is insane. The entire "Germanize the German language" idea was pretty popular in the Nazi era, btw, giving rise to many failed word creations as well as a few that stuck around (I think "Bürgersteig" successfully replaced the French loan word "Trottoir").
- brownbat 10y agoThese are called wasabi eigo in Japanese, and there are enough to fill a dictionary, they change all the time. My favorite are ones like "left over"... a baseball term for a hit that goes over the left-fielder's head, rather than uneaten food saved for later. English admits a ton of these as well. I'd be horrified if someone recommended a board to keep English pure from foreign influences though. It seems both futile and xenophobic. Languages are like old shoes. They are going to get beat up with use, but are wasted if you just lock them away to prevent it. And maybe as you wear them around, they'll get more character and more comfortable.
- johnzim 10y agoIt would be impossible - the language already contains huge numbers of loan words. All our eating meat words are French for instance (Beef, Mutton, Pork) whereas the animal words are "English" (Cow, Sheep, Pig) because the Norman invasion replaced all the old English aristocracy - the commoners raised the animals, the nobles ate them. That was just one conquest and we've had several - the Romans, Celts, Danes etc. To say nothing of important words taken from German, Italian let alone Latin and Greek. That's the reason it's such a mare to learn - it's accepted that we have more words than any other language. There is no such thing as pure English - and a good thing too!
- rflrob 10y agoLikely autocorrect "fixed" wasei eigo for you. Wasabi eigo would likely be pretty spicy language... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasei-eigo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasei-eigo
- brownbat 10y agoSo it did, good catch.
- weinzierl 10y agoMy favourite German one is body bag for rucksack. I mean we have this wonderful German word rucksack, it is so nice it even has been imported into English, then instead of just using it we import the wrong word from English. Unsurprisingly the phenomenon also exits in English, for example Zeitgeist means something slightly different in German than in English and I wouldn't use in German in the same way I see it used in English.
- thesimon 10y agoGoing to the public viewing with a bodybag sounds quite fun in German, not so much in English :)
- Crisco 10y agoThe Dominican Republic (and I think other Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands) has a lot of words they use that come from English but have been modified over the years, or were brand names that are now used to describe something Generic. SUV is "Jipeta" or "Yipeta" sounding like "Jeep-eta", Diaper is "Pampa" sounding a bit like "Pampers", Trash-can is "Zafacón" coming from the English "Safety-can", and my personal favorite is the word "boche" which is a bit like a scolding or reprimand but comes from "Bull shit."
- vidarh 10y agoNorwegian has e.g. "light" instead of "diet" for diet products ("Diet Cokie" is "Coke Light" in Norway). We also have e.g."vorspiel" and "nachspiel" for "pre party" (private party before going out, where you can get drunk cheaply...) and "after party" respectively.
- rflrob 10y agoTo be fair, American English occasionally uses "lite" to mean "diet", so that likely is a direct borrowing.
- robocat 10y agoAs an English speaker from New Zealand, the American usage of light is confusing to me as well. Two of my favourite misunderstandings between NZ and US English are the meaning of the words fanny and pissed.
- brownbat 10y agoRussian for train station is vokzal, like vauxhall. I can't sort out the real from the folk etymologies though.
- spraak 10y agoHopefully someone interested will read this comment, since it might be buried at the bottom: there is a fun project called Anglish that works to make the English language free from any non-Germanic loan words, using old(er) English and even made up words inspired by German, Dutch etc when no others exist. It's not, as far as I can see, a militant effort, but more fun and an inspiring linguistic challenge. Check it out: http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/Main_leaf http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/Main_leaf
- Symbiote 10y agoPerhaps more interesting for a 5-minute distraction is "Uncleftish Beholding", a description of a well-known scientific theory written with no Romance-language words. https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language.artificial/ZL4e3fD7eW0/_7p8bKwLJWkJ https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language...
- kwhitefoot 10y agoThanks for reminding me of that. I've read it before but I enjoy it anew every time I see it.
- Al-Khwarizmi 10y agoIn 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 jump (from Spanish "puente", bridge) hacer balconing -> to jump from a balcony, typically to a swimming pool (from Spanish "balcón", balcony). And of course, some "true" anglicisms like catering, casting, camping, etc.
- seszett 10y agoAll 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.
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- dpfu 10y agoWikipedia has a nice list [0]. In German pseudo-anglicisms are an often used method of word formation, e.g: Beamer (projector), No-Go (faux pas), Handy (mobile phone), Oldtimer (classic car), Streetworker, Barkeeper and (brand new) Shitstorm, etc. There are also pseudo-gallicisms in use (like "Blamage" for disgrace, or "Friseur" for coiffeur). Fun stuff. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-anglicism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-anglicism
- braythwayt 10y ago> 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.) --- Anyhow, absolutely these are loanwords from English into other languages like German, but I dispute that “After Hours” is not used in English.
- logicallee 10y agoit was quoted as an afterhour - singular! so your anecdote kind of reinforces the story, of being almost, but not quite English. :)
- santaclaus 10y agoFunsports sounds like a Krautrock band from the 70s. Maybe with an exclamation point at the end.
- f137 10y agoWell, "face control" in Russian has nothing to do with beauty of the people entering a club. The aim of "face control" is to make sure that no people that might possibly cause some trouble, or unable to pay, get into a nightclub or the like. Not sure if explanations of the words from other languages are similarly misleading.
- sunstone 10y agoClearly it's time to levelup our borrowed words.
- type0 10y agoSome of the great pseudoanglicisms in swedish: backslick chilla pocket
- type0 10y agoIn Estonian Bluetooth is called Sinihammas [1] which literally means "blue tooth", being non indoeuropean language is difficult when you want to loan words, it's often much easier to invent your own word that would follow the existing grammar than wreck your head around all the grammatical problems encountered when you use English words in Estonian sentences. http://www.arvutikaitse.ee/arvutikaitse-algtoed/sinihammas/ http://www.arvutikaitse.ee/arvutikaitse-algtoed/sinihammas/
- gumby 10y agoI love these confused loan words (sometimes they are English-English as well, as Australian and American English can collide in my household). My wife got an advertising postcard (for hair gel) from her sister with a picture of a woman whose hair was whipped into a swirl. The card said "Sei kein Blender" (don't be a "blender"). I was sure this was Dinglish for "don't look like you got your hair caught in a blender -- use our hair gel". But my wife informed me that it was the opposite: "Don't look like everyone else (i.e. blend in): use our hair gel to give yourself an absurd hairstyle" There are also fun formations from ex pats, like the Franglais "callinsicker" I've heard French friends use in SF when we're speaking French; it literally means "to call in sick" (i.e. skyve off work).