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Portmanterful! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5560 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 8 13 May 2010 at 7:38am | IP Logged | ||
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For those who don't already know, a "portmanteau" is when you create a new word by blending two or more existing words or morphemes and their meanings together. We have lots of interesting examples all around us, especially in today's media...blog, Denglish, chocoholic, Brangelina, and even a new hilarious one I learned only recently from Wikipedia - bridezilla ("a marriage of the words 'bride' and 'Godzilla' to describe a demanding bride-to-be"). Actually, doesn't the word "Wikipedia" even fall into this category, come to think of it now? Some of these even end up as permanent additions in our standard dictionaries, such as "smog" (smoke + fog), squiggle (squirm + wiggle) and chortle (chuckle + snort), and probably the most commonly used, "good bye" (God be [with] ye).
Here's a little list of some of the more well-known blends. Can you think of any other funny or interesting mixes not on the list? Оr even better, maybe you know some portmanteaux in another language (e.g. спасибо comes to mind here, where спасать + Бог means something like "God save you!") or even a blend of two or more different languages? Edited by Teango on 13 May 2010 at 8:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Haksaeng Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6202 days ago 166 posts - 250 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 2 of 8 13 May 2010 at 8:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I love the Korean word for "hum." It translates into English as "nose song."
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| Yukamina Senior Member Canada Joined 6268 days ago 281 posts - 332 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 3 of 8 13 May 2010 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Japanese word for "hum" is also "nose song" (鼻歌/はなうた/hanauta). I don't think it counts as a portmanteau, though.
Japanese has a lot of them for loan words, like パトカー/patokaa for パトロールカー/patorooru kaa(patrol car). Here's a silly youtube video about this phenomenon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDNtzMUy4vs 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5560 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 4 of 8 13 May 2010 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | ||
"First Kitchen" (lol)...Japan's just the best! ^u^ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7160 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 8 13 May 2010 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||
I actually dislike certain portmanteaus (e.g. "bridezilla", "Tomkat", "frankenfood", "ginormous") because they sound like cheesy jokes or the creations of people trying to be too cute. The first time I hear these portmanteaus I usually do find them to be clever or somewhat witty. However these (especially when they originate from journalists/rag-writers/gossips) seem prone to overuse and it doesn't take long for me to cringe when hearing them. A few portmanteaus that I can recall from other languages are: French: des "from (the) (pl.)" < de les courriel "e-mail" < courrier électronique German: zum "to the [masc./neut. sing.]" < zu dem Teuro < teuer "expensive" + Euro (Teuro arose as a smart-assed way to refer to the Euro after Germans noticed that real prices unexpectedly rose for some goods upon the switch from marks to Euros in 2002. The conversion of Marks to Euros apparently led to many instances of "rounding up" to even figures in Euros (i.e. use whole Euros rather than prices with Euro cents e.g. round up to 2 Euros rather than use say 1.93 Euros as calculated by using the prevailing exchange rate for Marks to Euros) Hungarian: gyufa "match" < gyújtó "lighting" + fa "wood" arc "face" < orr "nose" + száj "mouth" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sik0fewl Newbie Canada Joined 5498 days ago 31 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 6 of 8 14 May 2010 at 5:47am | IP Logged | ||
I think these two would actually count as contractions, not portmanteaus. Portmanteaus are when you blend two words together to create a new concept. "Des", for example is just a short way to say "de les"--it's not a separate concept. In fact, I'm not convinced any of these are actually portmanteaus, but I'm not a portmanteau expert, so I won't discount them completely: blog, goodbye, courriel Here's my reasoning: bride + godzilla : two different things that do not go together in a sentence and yet bridezilla has an entirely separate meaning associated with it web + log : it's a web log... fairly straightfoward. Shortening it to "blog" is just a contraction. We could say "web log", it would be valid English, and people would understand, assuming they knew they etymology of the word. At least that's my take on it... I'm sure not everyone will agree, and there's definitely a big gray area. Edited by sik0fewl on 14 May 2010 at 5:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| XGargoyle Bilingual Triglot Groupie Spain Joined 5960 days ago 42 posts - 93 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, EnglishB2 Studies: GermanA2, Japanese, Russian | Message 7 of 8 14 May 2010 at 9:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Two words that I've always found them amusing are "armco", an acronym turned into a meaningful word ("the car crashed into the armco barrier"), and "tarmac", a shortened version from "tarmacadam" which happens to be a portmanteau for "tar-penetration macadam", and as funny as it may sound, "macadam" is actually a method, not a material, named after John Loudon McAdam, who invented the process of macadamization.
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| sik0fewl Newbie Canada Joined 5498 days ago 31 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 8 of 8 10 June 2010 at 4:18am | IP Logged | ||
Haha, as soon as I read this I had to look up the etymology of "macadamia nut", and sure enough, it was named after a man named Macadam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Macadam). Never even occurred to me before... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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