Further evidence of the demise of English as world language

[Wilson Gray]

I'd call it "commercial jargon," like "in stock" and "out of print /
stock" or the stem now standard in Russian, _reprintn-_, used by any
number of on-line sellers of books in languages other than English.
But, even if we accept as the proper account of the occurrence of
English _outlet[a]_ in a Basque text as "just a borrowing of a
technical term" and take into consideration your personal experience
as unique and unheard of heretofore, to the extent that, till now, I
was totally unaware of the existence of the phenomenon described, how
does that vitiate my point?

And why is it that, though I've posted many of these in an effort to
be, as you correctly note, "amusing," this one alone, unexpectedly,
has drawn a response?

If I've annoyed anyone by insinuating that he wouldn't recognize
Basque behind the most casual of glances, please accept my most
heartfelt apologies.

And I also apologize for cheating. Someone posted something whose
point was completely beyond my ken only yesterday. As I did when I was
a student, I waited for someone else to ask the question. No one else
did. So, rather than reveal that I was both unable to understand yet
interested in what was obviously clear to everyone else or of no
interest to anyone, else, I dropped back five yards and punted, simply
deleting the post.

-Wilson

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 8:31 AM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Further evidence of the demise of English as world language
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Amusing, but just a borrowing of a technical term not in the host language's
> vocabulary.
>
> Working at Honeywell Bull, in Billerica, Mass. in the 1980s, I often heard
> conversations between engineers in Chinese, thickly larded with words like
> "code" and "subroutine".
>
> m a m
>
> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 11:28 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "Datorren astean OUTLETa [emphasis original] eskainiko dugu
>> www.elkar.com gunean ..."
>>
>>
>> For the polyglottally unhip, the language is Standard(ized) Basque.
>>
>> -Wilson
>>
>
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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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