ADS-L Digest - 9 Jul 2002 to 10 Jul 2002 (#2002-166)

[Mark A Mandel]

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Prof. Peter Lucko wrote:

#"Ice cream" in English and "Eiscreme" in German are both hybrid
#compounds, the first part being Germanic and at home in both
#languages, with more or less the same pronunciation but different
#spellings reflecting different stages at which they were fixed: "ice"
#before the vowel shift, "Eis" in its first stage of diphthongisation.
#The second part was loaned from French, which in the German word
#clearly shows in the spelling, while the English spelling conceals the
#French origin.

Many American products that are "creams" in some parallel way, either as
imitation dairy products or by having a creamy consistency, are marketed
as "creme" (with no circumflex, unlike the French "cre^me"), pronounced
the same as "cream". I've never thought of this usage as a return to the
French spelling, though I suppose it could have originated as such.

-- Mark A. Mandel