Non-English English words

[Hutschi]

Hi,

in the German language, we have a lot of words sounding English, but if you consider the meaning, they are not English, they are a kind of pseudo-Anglicism.

Examples:

Handy = Mobile Phone.
Posting = post (in forums, as noun) (I just heared, that "posting" exists in the English language in this sense)

Is this phenomenon also common in other languages?

Do the words exist in English with this meaning at least in some areas?

Best regards
Bernd

 

[Hesterbeat]

It does happen in Spanish.

We call carparks "parkings", we call jogging "footing", we call a stud or a ring "un piercing", and so on.

 

[Brioche]

Germans also say Dressman instead of male model, and beamer for a video-projector.

Interestingly enough, Beamer in English is slang name for the German-made BMW automobile.


The French also have a few false anglicisms.

A dinner jacket or tuxedo is called a smoking in France. English does have "smoking jacket", but not just smoking.
The French also say pull for pullover
string = g-string, thong [underwear]
parking = car park, parking lot,
recordman = record holder
pressing = dry cleaners

 

[GEmatt]

The French also say pull for pullover
string = g-string, thong [underwear]
parking = car park, parking lot,
recordman = record holder
pressing = dry cleaners

Or shampooing, for 'shampoo', to add to your list, Brioche! That one had me irritated for ages, no idea why.



PS: Hutschi, you might find this of interest, on loan words in English. As an anecdote, the most striking loan word I've ever seen was a shop sign in England, which proclaimed itself a "Délicatesserie". We used to say it couldn't make up its mind whether it was French or German

 

[DearPrudence]

It does happen in Spanish.

We call carparks "parkings", we call jogging "footing", we call a stud or a ring "un piercing", and so on.

Amazing, it's like in French.
We do have a tendency to use words ending in -ing.
Some are the proper English words (marketing, ...) but others are not even English.
Here is a list some foreros have madeif you want.

And we say a lot things like "tennisman", "rugbyman", ...

 

[papillon]

The French also have a few false anglicisms.
...
parking = car park, parking lot...

What's wrong with parking? Means the same in English (at least AE).

 

[caballoschica]

The garífuna has quite a few anglicisms: yomani=young man haginamah=hog in armor=armadillo.

There are many cognates (cognados ) and false cognates (parientes are not parents) in Spanish with English.

I suppose it depends what English words 'fit in' the language in question best and then how the word can be adapted.

 

[Hesterbeat]

What's wrong with parking? Means the same in English (at least AE).

There's nothing wrong with "parking", only the "lot" is excluded from Spanish, so it is a pseudo-loan:

The parking lot was full.
El parking estaba lleno.

 

[Pedro y La Torre]

What's wrong with parking? Means the same in English (at least AE).

Yes but you don't say I parked the car in the parking now do you?

 

[invisibleu]

Yes but you don't say I parked the car in the parking now do you?

Maybe in America they use "parking" as short for "parking lot"? I'm not sure about that. "Parking in a parking" would sound pretty weird in Britain and Ireland anyway.

Another "-ing" one they use in Spanish is hacer zapping... which is what we'd called channel surfing in English. Can't imagine any English speaker ever saying "I spent the night chilling out on the sofa doing zapping".

 

[invisibleu]

There's nothing wrong with "parking", only the "lot" is excluded from Spanish, so it is a pseudo-loan:

The parking lot was full.
El parking estaba lleno.

On this side of the Atlantic they are called "car parks".

 

[Hesterbeat]

On this side of the Atlantic they are called "car parks".

I know (I don't own a car, but I'm from this side of the Atlantic... ) but papillon was talking about AmE, that's all!

A pseudo-loan I especially hate:

Dreadlocks are called "rastas" in Spanish. I know "rasta" is not an English word, but neither is it any kind of hairdo!

 

[papillon]

There's nothing wrong with "parking", only the "lot" is excluded from Spanish, so it is a pseudo-loan:
The parking lot was full.
El parking estaba lleno.

I was merely pointing out that in this case I wouldn't categorize it as a false anglicism, even if the word "lot" or "garage" is omitted. Certainly not in the same category as "pressing" for dry cleaners.

 

[jazyk]

Dreadlocks are called "rastas" in Spanish. I know "rasta" is not an English word, but neither is it any kind of hairdo!

In Portuguese too. The word comes from rastafarian.

I can think of two pseudo-anglicisms in Brazil:

Você viu a menina daquele outdoor?
Did you see the girl on that billboard?

Fui ao shopping ontem.
I went to the (shopping) mall/shopping center yesterday.

 

[albondiga]

Another Spanish one of which I've heard is that in some parts of Latin America "camping" is used as a noun to mean either (1) "a campsite" or (2) "fuel for a camping stove"...

 

[invisibleu]

Another Spanish one of which I've heard is that in some parts of Latin America "camping" is used as a noun to mean either (1) "a campsite" or (2) "fuel for a camping stove"...

It's the same in Spain, at least with regard to number (1), I think in France also.

 

[jinti]

Japanese has some interesting borrowings from English. They're written in a special syllabary, so if you see them in print, they stand out and you know they're loan words, but a lot of them will still leave you scratching your head as to what exactly got loaned.

Just a sampling:

waapuro is a word processor
depaato is a department store
manshyon is not a mansion, but a condo or an apartment in the sort of building that has a name instead of just an address
hoomu is not a home but a platform (the kind where you'd wait for a train or a subway)
kuuraa is an air conditioner (cooler)
aisu is ice cream, which of course, you buy in a suupaa (supermarket)

 

[danielfranco]

What about the japanese for "Pro-wrestling" (as in the American WWF)?
"Poruresu", they seemed to say.

 

[mplsray]

Amazing, it's like in French.
We do have a tendency to use words ending in -ing.
Some are the proper English words (marketing, ...) but others are not even English.
Here is a list some foreros have madeif you want.

One of the -ing words on the list, un lifting ("a face-lift") is interesting because it kept an element which was dropped in English.

The operation was originally referred to as a face-lifting, and that is the main variant listed in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, the variant face-lift being introduced by the word also, which in an M-W dictionary means that it is notably rarer than the main variant. That entry was probably written in 1961.

As a name for the operation, face-lifting is so rare nowadays that it is not even listed in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed. The French dropped face but have retained -ing.

The word gazebo is mock-Latin, probably formed from the word gaze using videbo ("I shall see") as a model.

The word nom de plume, which is now used in French, was probably coined in English from French words.

 

[maxiogee]

Another Spanish one of which I've heard is that in some parts of Latin America "camping" is used as a noun to mean either (1) "a campsite" or (2) "fuel for a camping stove"...

Isn't 'Camping' the brand name of one manurfacturer of gas stoves?

 

[albondiga]

Isn't 'Camping' the brand name of one manurfacturer of gas stoves?

I believe that is the etymological background for the second Spanish use of the word... technically it's of the Xerox, etc. variety (brand name generic noun), but I think it also fits into the theme of this thread since this definition of the word "camping" in Spanish is quite different from the definition of the word "camping" in English, regardless of what route it took to its Spanish meaning (the whole "brand name generic noun" thing never happened in English for this word)...

 

[Frank06]

Hi,

Isn't 'walkman' a pseudo-English word (with Japanese - Sony - roots)?

In Dutch we use
- de smoking
(for dinner jacket / tuxedo; I forgot where the 'smoking' actually comes from)
- de living
(from living room)
- please
(but when giving something to someone; maybe this is a bit off topic, since it is a lit. translation of Dutch alstublieft, which is used when asking and when giving something).

There must be more of them in Dutch...

Groetjes,

Frank

 

[mplsray]

In Dutch we use
- de smoking
(for dinner jacket / tuxedo; I forgot where the 'smoking' actually comes from)

Smoking is used in this sense in French as well. The first tuxedo, which was a striking new design in dinner jackets, was designed in the US, modeled on the English smoking jacket. I presume it was the resemblance between the two items that lead to smoking being used for a tuxedo in French.

 

[albondiga]

Hi,

- de smoking
(for dinner jacket / tuxedo; I forgot where the 'smoking' actually comes from)

It comes from "smoking jacket" and I think that many European languages have borrowed this exact word ("smoking") with this exact meaning...

 

[jazyk]

Smoking is used in this sense in French as well.

In Portuguese too.

 

[paradespejardudas]

Hi,

Isn't 'walkman' a pseudo-English word (with Japanese - Sony - roots)?

In Dutch we use
- de smoking
(for dinner jacket / tuxedo; I forgot where the 'smoking' actually comes from)
- de living
(from living room)
- please
(but when giving something to someone; maybe this is a bit off topic, since it is a lit. translation of Dutch alstublieft, which is used when asking and when giving something).

There must be more of them in Dutch...


Groetjes,

Frank

Here in Argentina we also use smoking for tuxedo and living for living room

 

[paradespejardudas]

Another Spanish one of which I've heard is that in some parts of Latin America "camping" is used as a noun to mean either (1) "a campsite" or (2) "fuel for a camping stove"...

We do use camping to mean campsite here in Argentina

 

[mplsray]

In the French-English forum recently a poster mentioned the French equivalent of a walkie-talkie: un talkie-walkie.

 

[Athaulf]

in the German language, we have a lot of words sounding English, but if you consider the meaning, they are not English, they are a kind of pseudo-Anglicism.
[...]
Is this phenomenon also common in other languages?

In the modern Croatian youthful slang, bad is used as a noun meaning approximately "inconvenience," and full is used as an adverb meaning "very" or "extremely." Fucker has a meaning almost opposite from its English one: it denotes a man who is cool, prominent, and extraordinarily accomplished (either sexually or otherwise).

Furthermore, Croatians use darker as a noun meaning "goth" (someone interested in goth music and fashion), and shit as a slang term for hashish (referring precisely to that particular drug). I've never heard either of these words used with these meanings in English, but I might be wrong about that.

Many other English words have meanings in Croatian similar, but not quite identical to their original ones. For example, quiz refers exclusively to a TV-quiz, and video is used as a noun meaning "VCR."

We also use smoking for tuxedo. It probably came from French.

 

[mplsray]

Many other English words have meanings in Croatian similar, but not quite identical to their original ones. For example, quiz refers exclusively to a TV-quiz, and video is used as a noun meaning "VCR."

Video doesn't mean "VCR" in American English, but it does in British English, a fact I first learned while watching an episode of the British comedy The Young Ones. It took me a while to understand why one of the characters sounded so surprised when he asked, "Do we have a video?" It was a reference to a VCR, which was a very expensive device at the time the episode was made.

 

[invictaspirit]

Video doesn't mean "VCR" in American English, but it does in British English, a fact I first learned while watching an episode of the British comedy The Young Ones. It took me a while to understand why one of the characters sounded so surprised when he asked, "Do we have a video?" It was a reference to a VCR, which was a very expensive device at the time the episode was made.

Yep...we always used to say 'video' as a noun, short-hand for 'video recorder'. It got confusing because the tapes were also called videos.

Now we often say 'DVD' to describe the player as well as the disk.

The false-anglicism which I liked the most is now out of date. My French teacher in the 1970s was an old French lady. She used to teach us that 'pop music' or 'rock' was 'musique yeah-yeah' in French. I think the French stopped saying that in the late 60s.

 

[Hutschi]

Hi,

i thank very much for all this information. It is very interesting, and especially, that a lot of the pseudo-anglicism spread throughout the world.

By the way: in the GDR - the polititians said "yeah-yeah' -Musik" (for the Beat music in a pejorative kind to devaluate it (in the 1960th). Was the name 'musique yeah-yeah' in French positive or negative?

 

[invictaspirit]

Hi,

i thank very much for all this information. It is very interesting, and especially, that a lot of the pseudo-anglicism spread throughout the world.

By the way: in the GDR - the polititians said "yeah-yeah' -Musik" (for the Beat music in a pejorative kind to devaluate it (in the 1960th). Was the name 'musique yeah-yeah' in French positive or negative?

We'd need a French forero to confirm, but I think it was positive...a 'radio' term. It was an amusing reference to The Beatles, Rolling Stones and so on. I believe the 1960s Gaullists thought pop music was a. a bit decadent and un-French, b. too anglo-saxon (etc etc). But this was not the general view among the French people and especially youth.

And you just reminded me of another. 'Beatmusik'. Although the English-speaking world had beatniks in the late 50s, 'beat music' was not a term that was ever used here (to my knowledge) to describe general pop/rock, but a pseudo-English German word.

And that also reminds me of 'poppers'. A German youth-cult phenomenon in the early 80s.

 

[Hesterbeat]

The false-anglicism which I liked the most is now out of date. My French teacher in the 1970s was an old French lady. She used to teach us that 'pop music' or 'rock' was 'musique yeah-yeah' in French. I think the French stopped saying that in the late 60s.

So was in Spanish, only it was written: "Yeyé" or "Ye-yé"...

 

[invictaspirit]

I keep remembering more and more. You have 'water' in Spanish, usually pronounced 'bah-tairr' (in Eng. phonetics) to mean toilet. Short-hand for 'water-closet'.

Although written 'WC', the term vee-chee (Eng. phon.)is an Italian 'word' for toilet.

 

[paradespejardudas]

I keep remembering more and more. You have 'water' in Spanish, usually pronounced 'bah-tairr' (in Eng. phonetics) to mean toilet. Short-hand for 'water-closet'.

Not here in Argentina

 

[Athaulf]

Video doesn't mean "VCR" in American English, but it does in British English, a fact I first learned while watching an episode of the British comedy The Young Ones. It took me a while to understand why one of the characters sounded so surprised when he asked, "Do we have a video?" It was a reference to a VCR, which was a very expensive device at the time the episode was made.

Yes! you're right -- I forgot about this because I've barely heard any British English in the last few years.

I've remembered another interesting word: in Croatian, spot is used as the word for a musical video. This one is so well-entrenched that it's almost entered the standard literary language (and for a foreign word in Croatian, this is quite an accomplishment). Does anyone know of some group of English speakers that use the word spot with this meaning, instead of video?

 

[invictaspirit]

Yes! you're right -- I forgot about this because I've barely heard any British English in the last few years.

I've remembered another interesting word: in Croatian, spot is used as the word for a musical video. This one is so well-entrenched that it's almost entered the standard literary language (and for a foreign word in Croatian, this is quite an accomplishment). Does anyone know of some group of English speakers that use the word spot with this meaning, instead of video?

Italians call commercial breaks on TV and radio 'spot'. I'm not sure whether they borrowed this from AE? It's not the usual AE terminology, but it may be used there? We don't use 'spot' to describe commercial breaks in the UK (typical terms other than commerical break here are: the break, break, ad-break, the adverts).

To answer your question more directly, no. I've never heard 'spot' used to describe music video in BE or AE.

 

[Saimon]

"To answer your question more directly, no. I've never heard 'spot' used to describe music video in BE or AE."

Neither have I, although I have heard "spot" used for TV or radio ads.

 

[Thomsen]

"To answer your question more directly, no. I've never heard 'spot' used to describe music video in BE or AE."

Neither have I, although I have heard "spot" used for TV or radio ads.

Yeah thats how its used here as well. It refers to one specific commercial/ad.

 

[Athaulf]

"To answer your question more directly, no. I've never heard 'spot' used to describe music video in BE or AE. " [as is the case in Croatian - A.]

Neither have I, although I have heard "spot" used for TV or radio ads.

Come to think of it, we also have some quite bizarre quasi-English terminology for blue jeans.

In Croatia, the standard word for jeans is trapper. On the other hand, in Serbia and Bosnia, the word for jeans pants is farmerke, derived from the English farmer. I've also heard Texas used as another synonym for jeans across the former Yugoslavia, although it's nowhere as frequent as the former two words.

Does any of this derive from some actual English terminology for jeans?

 

[Grop]

In French we have a few goofy phrases that come from English:

- WC for toilets (it is supposed to mean Water Closet). BTW it is pronounced vécé like it was VC. Really an odd phrase.
- Un talkie-walkie is a walkie talkie
- Un snow is a snowboard (we also say snowboard)
- Un chamallow is a marshmallow
- Un smatch is a smash (in volley ball and basket ball)
- Basket is basket ball (the activity, not the ball itself)

 

[pyan]

Furthermore, Croatians use... ...shit as a slang term for hashish (referring precisely to that particular drug). I've never heard [this] word... in English, but I might be wrong about that.

I can confirm that "shit" was one of many words used for cannabis in UK English in the 1970s, as far as I can remember, so it is not a real Non-English English word.
"As far as I can remember" is not to do with my cannabis intake, which is none so far.

 

[Outsider]

- Basket is basket ball (the activity, not the ball itself)

In Portuguese it's the same.

 

[Saimon]

I can confirm that "shit" was one of many words used for cannabis in UK English in the 1970s, as far as I can remember, so it is not a real Non-English English word.
"As far as I can remember" is not to do with my cannabis intake, which is none so far.

Interesting. I've read that in 1950s AE, shit referred to heroin.

 

[Grop]

In French we still use "shit" to say "hashish", or rather a product made with cannabis. We say "herbe" when meaning raw cannabis, and it suggests higher quality than shit.

 

[Saimon]

Come to think of it, we also have some quite bizarre quasi-English terminology for blue jeans.

In Croatia, the standard word for jeans is trapper. On the other hand, in Serbia and Bosnia, the word for jeans pants is farmerke, derived from the English farmer. I've also heard Texas used as another synonym for jeans across the former Yugoslavia, although it's nowhere as frequent as the former two words.

Does any of this derive from some actual English terminology for jeans?

I had to check on this one with a former coworker at Levi Strauss. The LS historian has never heard of anything like the above. "Jeans" comes from Gênes, the French for Genoa, where denim pants were made. (Denim is a contraction of serge de Nîmes.) "Dungarees" is an old synonym of jeans, but those are the only two AE terms we could come up with. Does anybody out there work at the Gap?

 

[Athaulf]

I can confirm that "shit" was one of many words used for cannabis in UK English in the 1970s, as far as I can remember, so it is not a real Non-English English word.
"As far as I can remember" is not to do with my cannabis intake, which is none so far.

In Croatian, however, it refers very specifically to hashish, never to any other form of cannabis or any other drug. This makes me think that it might have appeared domestically as a true Non-English English word, especially since shit in it original meaning is used frequently as a loan-swearword in Croatia, whose meaning everyone knows.

 

[Sepia]

Stock-car racing is a good example. In America we are talking hi-speed races with converted street cars. In many countries - among them Germany and Denmark - it is a banger race or demolition derby ... I think that is what the Amricans would call it.

----

It also works the other way around:

travestie (French/German/...) and travesty (English) surely does not mean the same thing.

 

[DearPrudence]

Usually, we may drop the end of sport names.
le basket = basketball
le foot = football/soccer
le volley = volleyball

And we wear baskets at our feet
des baskets = trainers/sneakers
des tennis = tennis shoes