Friday foolishness: foreign words

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:46 PM -0700 9/15/00, Salikoko Mufwene wrote:
>At 10:46 AM 9/15/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>>Some of these sound slightly suspect, but I can add a real one.  Driving
>>through France (in the 50s), we kept seeing signs pointing out a "voie
>>unique."  After a while we began to wonder why they kept alerting us to
>>"unique views" in places which struck us as scenically unremarkable at
>>best.  Sometimes, in fact, all there seemed to be to look at was a road
>>construction site.
>>
>
>Why would "voie unique" bring up the idea of "unique views?"
>
>Sali.
>
Well, if you had absolutely no idea what a "voie" was but you figured
it was something unique that could be found on (or near) the road you
were driving along, 'view' might be a reasonable (though obviously
completely wrong) guess.  And they even look sorta similar.

larry