Pseudo-Anglicism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pseudo-Anglicisms are words in languages other than English which were borrowed from English but are used in a way native English speakers would not readily recognize or understand. Pseudo-Anglicisms often take the form of portmanteaux, combining elements of multiple English words to create a new word that appears to be English but is unrecognisable to a native speaker. It is also common for a genuine English word to be used to mean something completely different from its original meaning.
Pseudo-Anglicisms are related to false friends or false cognates. Many speakers of a language which employs pseudo-Anglicisms believe that the relevant words are genuine Anglicisms and can be used in English.
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[edit] Pseudo-Anglicisms in European languages
The following examples are taken from German:
- Twen — anyone who is in his/her twenties, or the age itself
- Talkmaster — talk show host
- Dressman — (male) model
- Pullunder — sweater vest
- Oldtimer — vintage car
- Handy — mobile phone
- top-fit — perfectly physically fit
- Beamer — video projector
- Sexdate — Hookup (casual sex)
- Horrortrip — bad trip (psychedelic crisis)
A "Smoking" in many European languages is not a smoking jacket in the Edwardian sense, but means a "dinner-jacket" or "tuxedo".
In German, a "Handy" is not something that is useful or accessible, but a mobile phone.
In Swedish, the word walkman is usually replaced with "freestyle" (despite the fact that the word does not fit particularly well with Swedish phonotactics; actually, freestyle was the name chosen for marketing purposes in Sweden), also, trafficking refers primarily to trafficking in human beings or sex trafficking, and not to smuggling in general.
In French, the noun catch refers to professional wrestling. It is also used occasionally in Italian, even if it is a bit old-fashioned.
In French, un parking refers to a parking lot (car park).
Also in French, camping-car means "recreational vehicle". The term is also used in Japanese.
In Russian and German, the word killer means "hitman" or "hired assassin". The German verb killen means "kill" in the sense of "to bump off", "to rub out".
Danish has the word babylift (IPA: [b̥ɑ:b̥ylifd̥]) which means "carrycot". Also, drink (IPA: [d̥ʁeŋg̊]) only means an alcoholic drink containing spirits (it is mainly used about cocktails). A bøf sandwich (IPA: [b̥ø:fsɑnʋitɕ]) is not a beef sandwich, but a beef patty on a bun.
In Italian, French and Spanish footing means "jogging", and sig is used in cartoons to denote a sigh.
In Hungarian farmer means "denim" as well as "(blue) jeans" made of denim.
When many English words are incorporated into many languages, language enthusiasts and purists often look down on this phenomenon, terming it (depending on the importing language) Denglisch, Franglais or similar neologisms.
[edit] Pseudo-Anglicisms in Japanese
Pseudo-Anglicisms in Japanese are called wasei-eigo (和製英語, literally, "Made-in-Japan English"). A more general term for made-in-Japan foreign words is wasei-gairaigo (和製外来語, literally, "Made-in-Japan Loanwords"), which usually applies to words made from European languages.
One example is the word desk (デスク: desuku). It seems like perfectly good English, but in Japan, it can be a title for a person. Tanaka-desk would be a reporter or editor in charge of a department at a newspaper (for example, the city desk). Wasei-eigo words can form compounds with Japanese words, for example, okushon (億ション) combines oku, meaning hundred million, with "mansion" to form a new word meaning "luxury apartment". This is actually a pun, since the word "man" means "ten thousand" in Japanese: "oku-shon" is ten thousand times more than "man-shon". Sometimes, two English words with their normal meanings will be combined to form a new compound word. One famous instance is famicom (ファミコン: famikon or ja:ファミリーコンピュータ: family computer), a portmanteau of "family" and "computer", meaning a video game system (especially, but not necessarily, the Famicom, known to the rest of the world as the Nintendo Entertainment System).
One example should be noted from the Japanese (or "Engrish"), that of karaoke, the abbreviated form of kara empty + ōkesutora, orchestra. It stands for the singing of popular tunes by various members of an audience to the accompaniment of prerecorded tapes. Rather than being a kind of pseudo-anglicism this combined Japanese-English/Greek form of "empty orchestra" may be seen to be a particularly fine example of metaphor. Japanese does, however, use other examples of this such as "hōmu", a (train) platform from the latter syllable of the English "platform" (プラットホーム). Also, although the expressions are now out of date, "my home" and "my car" (meaning "one's own home" and "one's own car") enjoyed popularity for many years and are still used sometimes. English speakers are baffled when they hear questions like "Do you have my home?"
For an extensive list of terms, see the List of gairaigo and wasei-eigo terms. Sometimes these words are imported back into English, often as trademarks, like "walkman" from Japanese English.
[edit] Words adapted from languages other than English
Adopted and adapted words from many original languages probably find a home in all host languages. Terms that cover these in German or French might be called "pseudo-Germanisms" and "pseudo-Gallicisms".
[edit] Pseudo-Germanisms
Examples of German words in English which have adapted:
- Blitz — ("The Blitz") the sustained attack by the German Luftwaffe from 1940 to 1941 which began after the Battle of Britain. It was adapted from "Blitzkrieg" (literally "lightning war", meaning sudden, quick war), the sudden and overwhelming attack on many smaller European countries and their defeat by the Wehrmacht. "Blitz" (German for "bolt of lightning") has never been used in actual German in its aerial-war aspect and became an entirely new usage in English during World War II. The word has also been adopted by American football to describe a defensive play when linebackers and/or defensive backs move close to the line of scrimmage in an attempt to overwhelm the quarterback. Also Blitz chess is a game of chess where each side is given very little time to make all of their moves.
- (to) strafe — in its sense of "to machine-gun troop assemblies and columns from the air", became a new adaptation during World War I, of the German word strafen — to punish. In recent years "strafe" has referred specifically to the horizontal yawing motion of an airplane raking an area with machine-gun fire, and is now also used to mean "to move sideways while looking forward", so that many first-person shooter computer games have "strafe" keys.
An example in Russian is "парикмахер" (parikmakher), a barber or hairdresser. This derives from the German Perück(en)macher (equivalent to (peri)wig maker or peruke maker in English), derived in turn from the Italian parrucca, via the French perruque. Thus a wig-maker of centuries ago has been changed to a hairdresser in a modern language.
[edit] Pseudo-Gallicisms
Several such French expressions have found a home in English. The first continued in its adopted language in its original obsolete form centuries after it had changed its morpheme in national French:
- double entendre — still used in English long after it had changed to "double entente" or "double sens" in France, and ironically has itself two meanings, one of which is of a sexually dubious nature. This might be classed a kind of "pseudo-Gallicism".
- bon viveur — the second word is not used in French as such, while in English it often takes the place of a fashionable man, a sophisticate, a man used to elegant ways, a man-about-town, in fact a bon vivant. In French a viveur is a rake or debauchee; bon does not come into it.
The French bon vivant is the usage for an epicure, a person who enjoys good food. Bonne vivante is not used.
- Rendez-vous — merely means "meeting" or "appointment" in French, but in English has taken on other overtones. Connotations such as secretiveness have crept into the English version, which is sometimes used as a verb. It has also come to mean a particular place where people of a certain type, such as tourists or people who originate from a certain locality, may meet. In recent years, both the verb and the noun have taken on the additional meaning of a location where two spacecraft are brought together for a limited period, usually for docking or retrieval.[citation needed]
[edit] Pseudo-Spanish
Pseudo-Spanish is different from simply bad Spanish in that it has some quite resilient and standardised examples in at least the English of the USA. Examples include "no problemo" and "exactamundo". New words may be generated by using the Spanish articles "el" and "la" while adding "o" or "a" to the ends of standard English words ("Put it on el desko"). In addition, some people may pronounce valid Spanish words with a deliberately non-Spanish accent (e.g. the phrase 'hasta la vista' pronounced [hæstə lə vɪstə] so that the words rhyme with "passed a" and "kissed a" rather than [ɑstə lɑ vistə] which is closer to the Spanish [ˈasta la ˈβista]). In addition, English grammatical structures may be used; for example, placing subject pronouns such as "yo" before verbs, where Spanish does not generally require them (see pro drop language).
[edit] References
Japanese English: Language And The Culture Contact, by James Stanlaw, Hong Kong University Press, 2004.
"Wasei eigo: English ‘loanwords' coined in Japan," by Laura Miller, in The Life of Language: Papers in Linguistics in Honor of William Bright, edited by Jane Hill, P.J. Mistry and Lyle Campbell, Mouton/De Gruyter: The Hague, pp. 123–139, 1997.
- Geoff Parkes and Alan Cornell (1992), 'NTC's Dictionary of German False Cognates', National Textbook Company, NTC Publishing Group.
