English calques and pseudo-anglicisms (Summary)

[Heinrich Pfandl]

        Dear Seelangers,
I apologize for this late summary. The struggle against our government
takes a lot of time.

I have got about 15 answers, mainly about Russian, some about Slovenian,
but not a single one about Czech.

For Russian phraseological anglicisms, let me refer you  to
Belyanin/Butenko's "Zhivaja rech'" (Moskva, 1994) as for the jokes  and
puns (facom ob tejbl, Po inglishu spikaesh'?, Do you pivo everyday, Which
watch? Six klok. Such much? To whom how, and many others).  I have known
about this very useful dictionary, of course (and have even written a
little review article about), but I was first of all (AND I AM STILL)
interested in anglicizms which are not intended as such, like the examples
cited in my question:

Ostavajtes' s nami (< Stay with us)
Eto Vasha/tvoja problema  (<That's your problem)

Eto ne moj biznes! (< It is not my business), heard by Valentino Russell in
1987 "in the dormitory on
Korabl'stroitel'noi".

As for my example "Net problem", "Bez problem", Jules Levin wrote:

"I'm afraid "no problem" is also a pseudo-anglicism.  It did not exist in the
American English of my midwestern youth.  I began to hear it,
stereotypically, from immigrant salesmen in the 70's I believe.   It is
still used, pronounced with a fake foreign accent, to gently mock
immigrants' use of English." (end of quotation)

The same concerns the expression "So what?", which seems to be influenced
by Yiddish. Could anybody give me more detailed information about its
origin?


John Dunn reminded me of his article in Russistik/Rusistika (1998, 1-2,
pp.27-36: "O funkcijax 'anglijskogo' v sovremennom russkom jazyke"), where
he cites a lot of examples of English-calqued sentences in Russian, like
"Milki-Way - moloko i nezhnost'" , "Kachestvo, kotoromu Vy mozhete
doverjat'" and so on. I think that most of them are simply translations
from the English original, but the result does not contradict the structure
of the Russian language. To his example "Vasha Kiska kupila by Viskas"
could be completed by the popular variant "Vasha kiska kupila by Viski"
(cf. also the analogical German "Katzen würden Whiskas kaufen" and its
popular variation "Katzen würden Whisky saufen").  He mainly cites
pseudo-anglicisms, such as "Gorbachev-fond", "Dog-show" etc., whereas "The
Benny Hill Show" was tranlated into Russian as "Shou Benni Xilla".  The
best-known pseudo-anglicism is not mentioned in his article: "heppi-end"
(instead of happy ending in English).

Alina Israeli pointed out that some Russian abbreviations are now
pronounced in English: "pi-ar" < public relations, "bi-bi-si" < BBC.  We
also discussed the very unclear "o-kej" <o.k.  I also heard "ti-shert"
(T-shirt), but that may have been a singular example.

Ralph Cleminso cites the semantic calque of "publichnyj" < public in
"publichnaja zhenshchina", which was used in the sense of 'female public
figure',  not 'prostitute', as might be associated because of "publichnyj
dom".


As for  SLOVENIAN, there is very little information. Marc Greenberg cites
the qualifier "full" and even "full cool", which was used in German about
10 years ago. Greenberg's examples: ful dober  'really good', ful kul
'really cool'. I also remember my own "gremo v lajf".
Eva Sicherl, who has written a monography about anglicizms in Slovenian,
provided me with the examples
To je tvoj/vas problem.
Ni problema.
Ostanite se naprej z nami (TV) < Stay with us
To ni noben problem (zame/zate/zanj itd.) < It is no problem for me/you

I agree with Eva, that the main difficulty seems to be methodological: how
can we differentiate between calques and authentic forms? Is there a
possibility to express the  meaning of the last example in other words,
and, if not, is it still an anglicism?


Thanks  once again to all participants. Further examples are still welcome.


Heinrich Pfandl




                                * * *

Heinrich Pfandl
Institut fuer Slawistik der Universitaet Graz
Merangasse 70
A-8010 GRAZ, Austria.
Tel.: +43/316/380-2525 oder 2520.
Fax: +43/316/380-9773.
mailto:pfandl at kfunigraz.ac.at

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