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English is weird
Akima:
German-speakers adopting English words, and pronouncing them (to my ears, at least) in a very "English" way. I was intrigued that German didn't have "native" words for whiteboard or whiteboard-marker, but apparently the German translation of blackboard is "Tafel", which doesn't have a colour-word incorporated in it, so I suppose the obvious route of swapping the colour didn't apply.
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=7glfnNtv1x0Plainly the Germans are confident enough to feel no special need to invent new "native" words for new things. Compare and contrast l'Académie Français and l'aéroglisseur vs. l’hovercraft.
Cornelius:
L'Académie Française just doesn't want to admit defeat, in acknowledging French isn't the lingua franca anymore. Unless you want to get technical about the term.
You know, way back when I first started learning English in school, the black in blackboard was surprising. For one, in Dutch, it's just the bord, also without colour, and second, most blackboards are actually green, except some of the very oldest I've seen.
cybersmurf:
German even gets weirder - the colloquial term for mobile phone is "Handy" - and that's pronounced English, like in "that comes in handy". I honestly have no idea where the term comes from, and there are a few urban legends - but none I know incorporates English.
oddtail:
--- Quote from: cybersmurf on 04 Sep 2019, 12:14 ---German even gets weirder - the colloquial term for mobile phone is "Handy" - and that's pronounced English, like in "that comes in handy". I honestly have no idea where the term comes from, and there are a few urban legends - but none I know incorporates English.
--- End quote ---
That reminds me of a weird thing in French, extra-remarkable since the language doesn't really borrow from English usually.
Apparently shampoo in French is, for reasons that escape me, "shampooing". The random -ing comes right out of nowhere, makes no sense, and means nothing in French. My best guess is that it sounded vaguely English to French people or something?
(kinda like I've met Americans who think a word sounds more Polish, and is apparently hilarious, if you add a random "-ski" to an English word?)
cybersmurf:
--- Quote from: oddtail on 04 Sep 2019, 12:23 ---(kinda like I've met Americans who think a word sounds more Polish, and is apparently hilarious, if you add a random "-ski" to an English word?)
--- End quote ---
To make things worse, my brain just made this french-polish-fake "le shampooski"
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