oops

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:18 PM -0400 5/10/06, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>Greetings again from Santorini. From various beach restaurants here:
>>...
>>SCALLOPINE MEXICAN WOMAN
>>FILET BEEF MEXICAN WOMAN
>>HAMBURGER MEXICAN WOMAN--One restaurant had all three of these.
>>"Mexican Woman"??
>>
>This is a lovely eggcorn--a (mis)translation of "alla mexicana" or "à
>la mexicaine" or some such cognate, I'd wager.  The feminine ending
>is of course originally for an adjective modifying the feminine noun
>"style", but it's been reanalyzed as if the "Mexicana" were a
>feminine noun.
>
Of course the reference to "style" is mistaken; that's a masculine
noun.  The understood nominal modified by "mexicaine", "française",
etc. must be something like "mode", "manière", or "façon".  My bad.
(This doesn't affect the general diagnosis of Barry's menu items
above.)

LH

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