And English gets the gold!

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Aug 9 13:53:45 UTC 2012


On Aug 9, 2012, at 8:47 AM, Damien Hall wrote:

>
> That is, a postcard in Breton and English only (_Breizh_ = 'Brittany'), sold in France to the French.  Again, 'fun attitude' is a stock code-switch that can be found all over the 'French' internet, though it's one of those interesting ones that doesn't actually really exist in the source language ('He has a fun attitude' meaning 'He's always game for a laugh' or something, which is what I think it does mean, strikes me as clumsy).  Again, French has had form for this, for decades: cf _parking_ (noun) 'parking lot', _brushing_ (noun) 'blow-dry', etc.
>
I also like "shampooing" ('shampoo'), and at least in the past there were also formations like "un tennisman", for e.g. Federer.  I remember in the old days (early '60s?) a book which I probably still have somewhere called _Parlez-vous franglais?_ by someone named Etiemble, bemoaning this trend--an instance of "le spitting dans le vent".

LH

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