Friday foolishness: foreign words

[Peter A. McGraw]

You know, though, the "Einbahnstrasse" anecdote is at least plausible,
since you might see the sign on the side of a building where a street name
would normally appear.  (Granted, the actual street-name sign would
normally be right above or below the "Einbahnstrasse" sign.)

In contrast, the "Ausgang" anecdote is completely bogus, since the word for
a freeway exit is "Ausfahrt," not "Ausgang."  (Naturally this opens up a
slew of new possibilities for anecdotes, but I won't go there.)

Peter Mc.

--On Fri, Sep 15, 2000 2:05 PM -0400 "Dennis R. Preston"
<preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU> wrote:

> Suspect indeed. My favorite (or one of them) is about the old Polish
> villagers who go to Berlin for the first time. They speak no German. They
> park their Warszawa and carefully write down the name of the street so
> that they can at least show it to German-speakers and get back to it.
> After a day's fun in the big city, the show the sign to numerous
> passers-by, but all of them shake their heads and walk away. Their paper
> noted that they were parked on "Einbahnstrasse."



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                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu