Friday foolishness: foreign words

[Dennis R. Preston]

Good. I've been there much too often.

dInIs

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


Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736