|
 |
Renaturalization of loan words | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes  12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 24 12 August 2005 at 10:35am | IP Logged | ||
Absolutely! I also see quite many patronyms who get naturalized with the course of the years. A friend of mine (unfortunately dead now) spent the war in Paris as a jew. His name was 'Levy' but his father changed it to 'Louy' for reasons that I do not need explain here. This is an extreme case but I've seen quite a few of these names who become 'naturalized' so that the person does not have to deal with what people would associate with his heritage everytime somebody even reads his name. I see quite a few birth certificates in my professional life and sometimes you would see the name of the father with a distinct national origin, then the name of the son with a naturalized spelling. This I have seen several time in the case of Finns of Swedish decent who were probably 'encouraged' to finlandize their surnames in the 1920'2. An Australian friend (alive!) told me of a restaurant in Sydney that used to be called 'Les Halles', after the Paris neighborhood. Locals always pronounced it [les halls], thinking the owner must be a Leslie Halls. Finally the owner changed the name of the restaurant into 'Les Hall's' as I recall. If somebody could get me a picture of the restaurant I think it would make for a terrific linguistic conversation starter and I'd be very glad to include it on this website! Edited by administrator on 12 August 2005 at 10:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Giordano Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7174 days ago 213 posts - 218 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Cantonese, Greek | Message 10 of 24 12 August 2005 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I find the naturalisation of names quite interesting. My last name, Black, is an English naturalization of the Ukrainian Áëåõ, or "Bljekh".
Supposedly, many pre-WWII immigrants to the US (my Ukrainian grandfather entered N America through New York) had their names altered to sound more English by the immigration officials. Also, many Germanic and Scandanavian names were altered slightly (Jaansen became Jansen or Johnson, for example). I am curious to know, besides North America and Finland, has this name-naturalization occured elsewhere? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jradetzky Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom geocities.com/jradet Joined 7207 days ago 521 posts - 485 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, GermanB1 | Message 11 of 24 12 August 2005 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | ||
|
These words are very common in Mexico and nobody questions their English origin:
bistec: beef steak rosbif: roast beef jaibol: high ball (alcoholic drink) jonrón: home run (in baseball) chutar: to shoot out (a ball in football) troca: truck (large American vehicle) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| KingM Triglot Senior Member michaelwallaceauthor Joined 7191 days ago 275 posts - 300 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Russian | Message 12 of 24 19 August 2005 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Two additional words in Mexico that I find amusing in context:
sexy: "que piernas sexis" look: "has cambiado de look" In Ecuador, oatmeal is called quaker (after the famous American brand), and pancakes or hotcakes are called hotcakes. In both cases, the speaker uses Spanish pronounciation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| epingchris Triglot Senior Member Taiwan shih-chuan.blog.ntu. Joined 7028 days ago 273 posts - 284 votes 5 sounds Studies: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese, German, Turkish | Message 13 of 24 05 September 2005 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||
|
How about Japanese? They make up non-existent "English phrases", such as salary man, hard schedule......they coin loan words together and shorten them, and even combine them with local words (masukomi for mass communication, and kuchikomi for passing the news around, person by person; kuchi is the Japanese for mouth, therefore, mouth communication) are those similar to the case discussed here?
I think in Mandarin we seldom worry about this. We don't need any renaturalization, we already have the least amount of loaned words in Chinese! Even common loaned words have cognates, and it's not completely obsolete per se. -yi1 mei4 er2 vs dian4 (zi3) you2 (jian4) (E-mail) -ba1 shi4 vs gung1 che1 (bus) -fen3 si1 vs mi2 (fans) For the name renaturalization, I have a funny story. One of my English teacher, who is Taiwanese-Canadian, originally used his Chinese name "Kuo Lun Yuen", but no one was able to pronounce it correctly, so in frustration, he changed it to "Kly Yuen", using the initials of the three syllables, which no one had trouble in pronouncing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7318 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 24 05 September 2005 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | ||
|
yi mei er...I laughed so hard the first time I heard that.
Fans as "fan-si" is of Hong Kong origin. I am finding that a lot of Cantonese (particularly Hong Kong style) has leaked into the Chinese language in general. My favourite example is "gao3 ding4" (done). Then there is Chu1 zu1 che1 vs. Ji4 cheng2 che2 vs. Di4 shi4 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| epingchris Triglot Senior Member Taiwan shih-chuan.blog.ntu. Joined 7028 days ago 273 posts - 284 votes 5 sounds Studies: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese, German, Turkish | Message 15 of 24 07 September 2005 at 6:33am | IP Logged | ||
|
Well, you wouldn't actually "hear" yi mei er in speech; Taiwanese people (or other Mandarin-speaking people, I wouldn't know) has a strange habit of directly pronouncing English word instead of "written loaned word". In speech you hear them saying "E-mail, pizza, T-shirt" while they are written in Chinese as "¨Ì´A¨à, ©ÜÂÄ, T«ò". My classmates once even had funny reactions while I pronounced T-shirt as it would be pronounced in Mandarin......
Sometimes Taiwanese people, especially those who studied abroad before, has a tendency of directly using English words in speech: that's our idea of "loaned words". Like: "wo3 men de PARADIGM bu4 yi2 yang4." We have different paradigms "ni3 kan4 xin4 zhe4 me ROUGH a?" Do you always read letters so roughly? Sometimes it's far too intolerable: "EVEN zai4 FOREIGN COUNTRY?"even in foreign country? "wo3 yi3 wei2 shi4 bing1 hong2 TEA......"I thought it was iced black tea...... As for usage that slipped into Mandarin from dialects, what I know is that the usage of "ke3" to indicate a question is from Cantonese...... Taiwan youngsters on on-line games use a word from Hong Kong nowadays: "pu1 jie1", I don't if you've heard of this? As I'm not so good in explaining it myself......I don't use it. It seems that it can sometimes have a bad meaning...... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7318 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 24 07 September 2005 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I know what it means but I discourage its use anywhere.
1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
