Beamer and Handy are the only two fake english words that come to my mind right now, but I'm sure there are many more.
try Footing..
it's been used in Italy for many years, until even the most hardened ignorant finally acknowledged that you cannot translate Jogging with another randomly picked word in the same foreign language...just because you do the jogging with your feet. (also, that would have made it feeting..but there you go.)
but wait..there is more:
a Box is Italian for Garage.. don't ask me why
Autogrill is a motorway service station..though this has an explanation. The most part of them are owned by the brand Autogrill, which has now become the term under which they're known.. some people believe it's an english word though.
Autostop means hitch-hiking.. how? I don't know
a Camping is actually a campsite
golf means golf in italian..but also.. jumper (the piece of clothing).
a Flipper is a Pinball machine
a Dinner Jacket or Tuxedo, for some reason, has become a Smoking.
sellotape has become Scotch (I think that too is a brand name)
a Slip is in fact a pair of Knickers
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In the english language the name was just reused although the actual gameplay is quite a lot different ie you actual have (legal) unfluence after you plunge the ball.
It obviously evolved from pinball though other languages wanted to be more exact when they describe this new (or evolved) game so they focused on the most important difference which are the "flippers".
Beamer and Handy are the only two fake english words that come to my mind right now
Handy isn't a fake word--it means "convenient". We don't use it to refer to a mobile phone, though. (We generally call them mobiles or even just phones, now they're so ubiquitous).
a Dinner Jacket or Tuxedo, for some reason, has become a Smoking.
This is probably the result of a confusion between a dinner jacket and a smoking jacket, which to an eye unfamiliar with weird British behaviour might appear to be worn worn at similar times, and often have a similar cut. They serve a different function, though (a smoking jacket is much more casual) and where DJs are usually black (occasionally white) smoking jackets tend to be more colourful, and made from a different material.
This is probably the result of a confusion between a dinner jacket and a smoking jacket, which to an eye unfamiliar with weird British behaviour might appear to be worn worn at similar times, and often have a similar cut. They serve a different function, though (a smoking jacket is much more casual) and where DJs are usually black (occasionally white) smoking jackets tend to be more colourful, and made from a different material.
I figured as much..still, you'd think that the fashion conscious italians would have picked up on the difference
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Handy isn't a fake word--it means "convenient". We don't use it to refer to a mobile phone, though. (We generally call them mobiles or even just phones, now they're so ubiquitous).
The morphem, that is the sound, "handy" does exist in the english language. But the concept it stands for is a completely different one, making it two different words.
And the natural assumption of native German speakers who are used to have English words integrated into their language, is to assume that Handy is one of these words. Especially when they knew that this morphem does exist in the english language when cell phones started to become common. Which was actually the case for me. Ohmygodi'msoold...
try Footing..
it's been used in Italy for many years, until even the most hardened ignorant finally acknowledged that you cannot translate Jogging with another randomly picked word in the same foreign language...just because you do the jogging with your feet. (also, that would have made it feeting..but there you go.)
but wait..there is more:
a Box is Italian for Garage.. don't ask me why
Autogrill is a motorway service station..though this has an explanation. The most part of them are owned by the brand Autogrill, which has now become the term under which they're known.. some people believe it's an english word though.
Autostop means hitch-hiking.. how? I don't know
a Camping is actually a campsite
golf means golf in italian..but also.. jumper (the piece of clothing).
a Flipper is a Pinball machine
a Dinner Jacket or Tuxedo, for some reason, has become a Smoking.
sellotape has become Scotch (I think that too is a brand name)
a Slip is in fact a pair of Knickers
Slip is actually valid, or at least pretty close. I've never heard anyone use this sense of the word in actual speech, though.
Presumably, autostop is from 'stopping' an 'automobile', to get a ride. Correct me if I'm wrong, but 'auto' does mean 'car' in Italian, French, Spanish and German, after all. It's just that in English we decided to use a shortened version of 'carriage' rather than of 'automobile'. The French also use 'stop', though not quite the same way as in English, so I guess they'd be the ones who came up with 'autostop'.
In fact, the French use a lot of those same examples (e.g. 'footing', 'camping', 'autostop'), and I've definitely heard 'autoestop' and 'autoestopista' in Spanish. It's kinda funky how multiple languages all use the same 'English'-looking word, when English itself doesn't!
Another weird example I came across today, on a Spanish news site, was 'el elepé'. Meaning an album, or LP...
Last edited by Goosefeather : 07-08-2012 at 06:56 PM.
The Russians do this like crazy, you can read most loanwords phonetically. When I read advertisements or such things, I've learned to read words I don't understand out loud for that reason :-)
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I figured as much..still, you'd think that the fashion conscious italians would have picked up on the difference
They probably thought smoking jackets were much more interesting than dinner jackets and thus adopted them as their standard formal evening wear.
Heck, I would, if I were able to dictate mens' fashion.
Quote:
The Russians do this like crazy, you can read most loanwords phonetically. When I read advertisements or such things, I've learned to read words I don't understand out loud for that reason :-)
My favourite one is the word for "pencil", after the brand name emblazoned on the side of what I can only assume must have been the first pencil in Russia.
don't the japanese do that too, some sort of local rendition of english words?
nekutai (necktie)
ofisu (office)
hotto rain (hotline)
and so on..
Yes, which someone I once met on a birthday party called "the worst thing that ever happened to the Japanese language".
Japanese script really only works for Japanese words since it's not based on letters but on syllables and the language has a rather small pool of sounds. While I think all Japanese can read and write latin leters (Romaji) perfectly well today, at one point someone decided that a variant of the japanese script (Katakana) should be used for foreign words and the other variant (Hiragana) for Japanese ones. It works well when you simply import technology and scientific concepts from outside into your country, but turned out to have a terrible side effect when Japanese and particularly Americans actually start to interact with each other.
When you have a foreign word, you transcribe it to katakana in a way that is as close as you can get to the original word and after that nobody really cares what the original pronounciation was. Here in Europe, we have lots of languges very close to another with a long history of migrant groups all over the place, so we're used to the fact that other languages are pronounced differently and the correct pronounciation is indicated by different rules of spelling. Spoting a French or Spanish word isn't hard, because we know how some are pronounced and how they are spelled.
But until rather recently, the only thing you'd hear in Japan is dialaects of Japanese. And when you see a foreign word, it's written in Katakana. And as a Japanese, you know how katakana are pronounced as there is only one way to pronounce them. Now while english has a simple grammar, let me tell you that it has a really weird way of pronouncing sounds. You probably got that from the French, who do it as well.
When you learn a language that is full of sounds you never have tried to pronounced or may not even have heard pronounced before, your pronounciation will of course be terrible. And maybe it's because in Europe and America we're accustomed to strong accents of foreigners, but some Japanese people have told me that most Japanese are quite embarrased for their bad english and so they avoid speaking it at all. And when you have to deal with a foreign word, you don't try to figure out how it is pronounced, you transcribe it to Katakana and pretend it's pronounced like a a Japanese word. Which of course doesn't do anything to improve the situation.
To make things worse, since Japanese only has syllables, you often end up with a large number of unneccessary "u" and "o"s. In theory, they are not pronounced. But if you don't know the latin spelling of the word or someone told you how it is pronounced, you don't know that and it gets pronounced anyway.
Also there are some transcription rules that are "not very good" at best and "just wrong" at worst. Since there is a letter "n" that can stand by itself, also using it for "m" may be acceptable. But why "v" is transcribed as "b" even though Japanese has exactly the sound as "w" is beyond me. (The english "w" is weird.)
And last, Japanese words are usually quite short (though you can string a lot of them together), so if a word has more than three syllables, it usually gets cut down. In a way that is not really predictable.
When teaching Japanese, it's common to learn Japanese script as soon as possible and get away from transcribing to latin. To teach any language to Japanese, the very first thing should be banning any form of transcription.
But why "v" is transcribed as "b" even though Japanese has exactly the sound as "w" is beyond me. (The english "w" is weird.)
Well, it is partially English being weird, aye, but using b probably provides a closer approximation; while Japanese does have a w, it doesn't really get pronounced outside of 'wa' (hence the gradual disappearance of most of the w-line from the kana tables). For extra fun, most other words with an (English) w get transcribed using an initial u + vowel instead.
Yeah, I heard a lot of hate for katakana from my fellow students.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yora
Now while english has a simple grammar, let me tell you that it has a really weird way of pronouncing sounds.
The problem isn't that we have 'a' weird way of pronouncing sounds, it's that we've got twenty or so and we can't keep them straight.
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But why "v" is transcribed as "b" even though Japanese has exactly the sound as "w" is beyond me. (The english "w" is weird.)
meh.. try the vowels..
the word Apple starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word Apple as it is pronounced in the alphabet
the word ignite starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word ignite as it is pronounced in the alphabet
the word egg starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word egg.. as it is pronounced in the alphabet
and it's not like they don't have those sounds..because..well..they're right there in the alphabet.
I'm sure there are a few such cases with the consonants as well..
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For extra fun, most other words with an (English) w get transcribed using an initial u + vowel instead.
Yeah, I heard a lot of hate for katakana from my fellow students.
How else are you supposed to pronounce "w".
I love katakana, it always tells me if I should look it up or if I should decode it into a probably english word. But I'm not Japanese, I'm not affected by the cultural side effects.
meh.. try the vowels..
the word Apple starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word Apple as it is pronounced in the alphabet
the word ignite starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word ignite as it is pronounced in the alphabet
the word egg starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word egg.. as it is pronounced in the alphabet
and it's not like they don't have those sounds..because..well..they're right there in the alphabet.
I'm sure there are a few such cases with the consonants as well..
Well, that's because we have something like 16 vowels, different accents notwithstanding, but only 5 (or 6, including 'y') symbols to represent them. And then there's the schwa, which is a massive pain to try to explain to someone who's just starting to learn English...
French is almost as bad - say you hear a verb ending in the sound 'eɪ'. Without context, you cannot know whether it's, for example, 'regarder', 'regardez', 'regardé', 'regardée', 'regardés', 'regardées', 'regardais', 'regardaient', 'regardait' or 'regardai'.
Italian and Catalan are somewhat better, though not quite at the level of Spanish, which has a perfect 5:5 ratio. Though the Spanish do mess up when it comes to consonants, however, with 'b/v', and the whole 'to cecear or not to cecear' issue...
Consonantwise, I maintain we should reintroduce Þ into English, just because it's so damn funky.
Heh, granted, it is more a matter of degree than anything, but it does tend to lead to them suffering from the same over-pronunciation problem.
I don't mind katakana myself; it is useful, and leads to some interesting diversions to find out where certain words come from (saboru's an amusing one, given its common usage). To be fair, a lot of the complaints I heard were probably about the physical structure of the script rather than its usage (reading the katakana of someone with poor handwriting can be... heavily context-dependent, shall we say?)
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meh.. try the vowels..
the word Apple starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word Apple as it is pronounced in the alphabet
the word ignite starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word ignite as it is pronounced in the alphabet
the word egg starts with a letter that doesn't sound at all like the first letter of the word egg.. as it is pronounced in the alphabet
and it's not like they don't have those sounds..because..well..they're right there in the alphabet.
I'm sure there are a few such cases with the consonants as well..
This is similar to the problem of transcription in Japanese that Yora talked about. We're using an alphabet that was originally developed for a different language. Sure, we've tweaked it somewhat over the centuries, but it's still the Latin alphabet for the most part. Modern English just has more individual morphemes in it than there are letters, so some have to pull double (or triple, or more) duty.
Add in the problem of things like the Great Vowel Shift where English's pronunciations of vowels diverged from much of the rest of the world that used the same alphabet and our tendency to lift any useful piece of vocabulary that isn't nailed down and you've got a recipe for confusing orthography.
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"great vowel shift" sounds like something that involves great barges floating across the channel, at about the time of the Battle of Hastings, full of scribes surreptitiously invading cloisters and monasteries, with big red markers and changing all the vowels in bibles and other such manuscripts..
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In German we have the opposite problem. We have too many letters for the same sounds.
> V is either pronounced W or F.
> I is always followed by a consonant, J is always followed by a vowel. Otherwise they are identical.
> C can be either a K or a Z and has no own pronounciation. In current spelling, it is used only as part of "ch" and "sch", which effectively have become distinct letters like the "sz" letter "ß" used to be, or as part of "ck", which is actually "kk".
> "IE" is identical with "IH". All other vowels are drawn out always with *H.
> X is pronounced KS.
> Y doesn't even exist in German words and is only used in english or greek words.
> Q only exists as "qu" and is identical to KU. But like J, it is usually followed by a vowel, while KU is followed by a consonant. And there are maybe 5 or 6 words in the entire language in which it appears at all.
> Z is pronounced TS.
> PH is F
The only exception would be "CH", which has three different pronounciations "cr", "kh", and a softer form of the english "ch".
While Ä sounds a lot like E, there's a very slight difference, but which might not even be present in most dialects.
You could have a perfect German pronounciation with only the letters A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, W, Ä, Ö, Ü plus the combinations SCH, CH1, and CH2. That's 25 instead of 39.
"Man könnte dih deutsche Sprache auch follkommen problemlos mit einem ferkürtstem Alfabet von lediglich fünfundtswantsig Buchstaben schreiben anstelle fon neunundreissig, ohne dabei irgendwelche Einschränkungen bei der Lesbarkeit der Aussprache zu erleiden. In der Tat befinden sich in dihsem Tekst-Beispihl nur sehr wenige Stellen, an denen irgendeine Form von Änderung durchgeführt werden müsste."
All changes marked bold.
What is it with the word "squirrel"? I've even seen english people and americans having a good laugh with German visitors and guests by asking them to say that word.
And of course, it's very funny. There's no way to say it correctly.
Like Massachusetts.
Or the Japanese "Ryokou" (travel). It always comes out as "Rr-yokou" or "Ri-yokou". "Ryo" as a single syllable is impossible.
Any words that people with other native languages can't pronounce?
In Germany, we have great fun with making people say anything with "ü". French and Turks have no problem, almost everyone else does.
the dutch have the sch sound (which actually is the same as the dutch g sound) which most of my italian friends insist can only be accomplished with the help of a handy spitoon.
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Any words that people with other native languages can't pronounce?
In Germany, we have great fun with making people say anything with "ü". French and Turks have no problem, almost everyone else does.
I can handle ü and ö fairly well. I get tripped up on other languages' versions of r. French, German, and trilled rr in Spanish. Can't get them right.
Then again, English has [p], [b], [f], [v], [θ], [ð], [s], [z], [ ʃ], and [ʒ] which seems to be a set that isn't covered completely by other languages (at least, of the native speakers of other languages I've encountered, many have difficulties with one or more of these - most often [θ] and [ð]; your anecdotal evidence may vary).
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The Japanese ry- diphthongs are a classic. They're not outright impossible for an English speaker, but I hear the results of people trying to pronounce them without practice frequently at my karate classes. The teacher occasionally holds little sessions after class in an attempt to correct the students' pronunciation; success is rare.
Another one I've heard mentioned a fair bit (for native English speakers, at least) is the initial ng (such as in the Vietnamese Nguyễn). Awkward if you're not used to putting the sound at the beginning of a word; add the rest of the name and things get interesting.
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