... another sign of the decline of English

[Wilson Gray]

Yes, I was being ironic. I am something of a linguistic bibliophile.
So, I deal with lots of foreign booksellers, among whom the use of
such English terms as

bestsellers  in stock  out of stock  credit or debit card  login
logout  by airrmail  (ON) SALE!  used books  NEW RECEIVES!

is no longer surprising. It's also the case that international
booksellers sometimes have English versions of their sites. Of course,
in such cases, phraseology of English origin is to be expected. The
version of the site in English may be the work of a professional
translator whose native language is probably English. In some of these
cases, it's fairly obvious that the English site was put together by
some local nerd using a pocket dictionary who didn't even use
cross-referencing in order to pick the right English form. However,
since, if I attempted to post a question to customer services in
Gascon or Asturian, it would be, from their point of view, the same
kind of gibberish, I give them all "A" for effort.

Though I post questions in English, I throw in words and phrases from
the local minority language, instead of using French, Spanish, or
whatever, so as not to appear to be bogarting them by using English
and to show them that I'm down with their attempt to keep their
government from wiping out their language in the name of "national
unity."

A Berber friend of mine once told me that the Berber nationalists
prefer to be addressed in French or English and not Arabic.

OTOH, I once knew a Catalan who felt that the attempt, one of whose
leaders is an old buddy of mine from M.I.T., to make Catalan, and not
Spanish, the official language of Catalonia is sheer assholery.

"Different strokes," as they say.

-Wilson



On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 9:48 AM, Mark Mandel<thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: ... another sign of the decline of English
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I assumed so. But I'm wondering about the decline of Spanish, with this
> Romance version of SWAYDonym for (p)seud=C3=B3nimo.
>
> Mark
>
> On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 8:57 AM, <RonButters at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Decline? This looks more like further evidence of "world domination." Or
>> Â is Wilson being ironic?
>>
>> In a message dated 7/11/09 8:09:56 PM, hwgray at GMAIL.COM writes:
>>
>> > From the site of a bookseller in Spain:
>> > "Elige tu suedonimo o _nickname_"
>>
>
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>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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