la chauffe

[Mike Cleven]

janilta wrote:
>
> Hello, Mike,
>
> 'La chauffe'... Mmm...
> Yes, maybe it is also a canadianism. I don't know this one.
> But you are right, 'la chauffe' does sound natural in French, even for
> an oven thing... So why not.
> And there is both 'la poele' (frying pan) and 'le poele' (stove).
> I don't know if they are related to 'lapellah'...
> According to my friend in Quebec, the best Canadian French dictionary is
> this one (amazon reference) :
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0844214868/o/qid=948662546/sr=2-1/002
> Shall ask him too about la chauffe...
> Oh, btw, l'ascenseur is 'lift, elevator', and we call in French
> escalator... as it is called in English (even if you can find it written
> as 'escalier mecanique' sometimes).
> In fact I think the big issue, as you put, is whether to expand the
> vocabulary with new borrowings or with new clusters using the existing
> words... Puzzling...

It's been a while since I was in Montreal; so I've confused l'ascenseur
with whatever the quebecois word for escalator is.  What I remember is
that they "invented" a word that was different from the France-French
"moving staircase" or "mechanical stair"; I know it ain't escalateur or
anything so obviously franglais.  Hmmm.  Maybe I'll check out a federal
building this morning; nah, it's Saturday.