BBC excerpt

[Douglas G. Wilson]

Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 7:58 PM, Chris F Waigl <chris at lascribe.net> wrote:
>
>> I've heard about La Niña [the mailing list software will likely not
>> preserve the tilde for some of you) for years. The Wikipedia entry
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Ni%C3%B1a) was created in 2002.
>>
>
> OED's got it back to 1981.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>
>
Sure. I do not find anything very remarkable about the existence of the
term "la niña", nor about the sloppy omission of its diacritical mark.

Is "child girl" a good English translation of "niña"? Is "child girl" a
usual expression in any sense in English? Maybe in some dialect? Is it a
typo ... supposed to read "child (girl)" or "child/girl" or so, maybe?
Is the BBC writer unfamiliar with English?

This expression is what looks remarkable to me.

-- Doug Wilson

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org