Words genuinely believed to be English.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sun May 21, 2006 5:33 pm

Re matador and toreador. Both are in online Spanish dictionaries. Matador is any kind of killer as well as being a trump card. Toreador is rarer than torero but exists.

I wonder if Bizet had anything to do with the word "Toreador" being so popular (la LA la la)

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Sun May 21, 2006 6:56 pm

Interesting, though, that when I google "torero", nearly all the hits that come up are in Spanish, but do the same with "matador" and all the hits are in English (I gave up looking for a Spanish hit after 10 pages).

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sun May 21, 2006 8:08 pm

At the bottom of your English language Yahoo is a link to "Yahoo en Español". Look at "matador de toros" with "en español" ticked and you'll see some though not that many hits.

It's certainly not what I hear on the news. As you say "torero" is the most common expression.

Toreador seems to be old:

http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/FichaObra.html?Ref=3645

wilderson · Post by **wilderson** » Mon May 22, 2006 5:18 pm

I recently heard on PBS that Buckaroo is the anglicacized version of Vaquero.

Amy_H · Post by **Amy_H** » Wed May 24, 2006 3:55 pm

Hi everyone

The Germans have a number of words that are generally believed to be "real English" or to have the same meaning in English:

- "Oldtimer" is a classic car (and never a person).
- "Smoking" is a tuxedo
- "Corn flakes" means any kind of cereal (not just corn flakes)
- "mobbing" means severe harrassment (usually in the office)
- "checken" (German verb, theoretically from the English word "check") means to understand
- "Body" means body suit
- "Bodybag" means fanny pack (possibly also backpack)

- "Showmaster" means host or master of ceremonies
- "Longseller" means a book which is on the best-seller list for a long time

Amy

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Wed May 24, 2006 5:13 pm

Wikipedia comes to the rescue again, just couldn't think what to search for before then it came to me "pseudo-english" and up this came:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Anglicism

strider · Post by **strider** » Mon May 29, 2006 2:28 pm

...but surely all these examples are evidence of languages evolving by taking words and adapting them as the situation requires? Eventually, they would no longer be seen as 'foreign' or 'English' words.

There are thousands of words in English that have been 'borrowed' from other languages. Who now would think of 'bungalow' as a Hindi word? Or 'robot' as a Czech word?

The fact that so-called English words are being used in many other languages is not surprising - given that 'foreign' words are being incorporated into English all the time.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Tue May 30, 2006 4:39 am

Yes but the point is that these words represent a special type of false friend. The users of them in their respective languages genuinely believe (or started by believing) that they are English. They are not quite the same as the unremarkable borrowings you describe. Bungalow was and is Hindi. You could throw robot into a Czech sentence and be understood.

The other query was whether English has ever done the same: coined a word or a usage of a word in another language whose speakers would not understand the word as it used in English: the reverse of

"I've left my handy in the old-timer" a sentence which the German speaker would genuinely believe to be impeccable English but which a listener would in fact only understand if they knew German.

Amy_H · Post by **Amy_H** » Tue May 30, 2006 5:14 pm

JuanTwoThree wrote: "I've left my handy in the old-timer" a sentence which the German speaker would genuinely believe to be impeccable English but which a listener would in fact only understand if they knew German.

And if we got an even more unfortunate combination, a German just might say "I've left my handy in the bodybag in the old-timer".

Amy

tigertiger · Post by **tigertiger** » Wed May 31, 2006 2:21 am

JuanTwoThree wrote:Yes but the point is that these words represent a special type of false friend. ...
"I've left my handy in the old-timer" a sentence which the German speaker would genuinely believe to be impeccable English but which a listener would in fact only understand if they knew German.

Are they? I am not 100% sure.

There are many Americanisms that leave me perplexed,
and I am sure that there are many colloquial British expressions that leave the Americans perplexed.
In fact there are many colloquial British expressions that leave me perplexed and I am British.

In terms of etymology, many of the English words we use today are used differently than 200 years ago.

Also I just read somewhere that BrE and AmE use words from over 350 living languages. And in AmE there is an active struggle between the languages.

And who is to say that terms like body bag won't get absorbed into the common/shared international English, perhaps as a result of all the travellers of all nations mixing together in Asia and adding to the corpus in thier own way.

Amy_H · Post by **Amy_H** » Wed May 31, 2006 7:56 am

Hi Tigertiger

What did you mean exactly when you said "in AmE there is an active struggle between the languages."?

I for one believe that a sort of "international English" will eventually evolve. I've seen firsthand how easily native English speakers in Germany adopt and use the word the word "Handy" (with its German meaning) when speaking English.

But the point remains (as JuanTwoThree mentioned), there are some English words that Germans (for example) use regularly with a very clear, active understanding that they are using an English word and not a German word. The vast majority of Germans simply don't realize that the German meaning is different and therefore they also use these words without a second thought when speaking English.

Before I came to Germany, I met a lot of Germans on job assignments in the States. One day one of these Germans invited me to spend the day with them. They'd planned an outing and wanted to visit a couple of different places. Among other things, they'd planned a stop to see the old-timers. Now, I admit, I did think it a bit odd that visiting old-timers was included in the day's plans, but I thought, hey, what the heck. And I still remember my surprise when we pulled into the parking lot and saw a whole bunch of vintage cars! I remember thinking "What a lucky coincidence! A classic car show at the old folks home.".

Maybe this phenomenon is less pronounced among English speakers because there are so many foreign words that have come into English. We don't think of them specifically as foreign words (as the Germans do with the word "old-timer", etc.). They're just "words".

Amy

revel · Post by **revel** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 2:08 pm

Hey all!

Wasn't it George W Bush who complained that the French don't have a word for "entrepeneur"?

peace,
revel.

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 7:03 pm

Just remembered two more:
A remote control is a "commandor" in Turkey and a "pilot" in Poland. Both of these are once again generally believed to be the English words for the device.

Amy_H · Post by **Amy_H** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 1:34 pm

revel wrote:Hey all!

Wasn't it George W Bush who complained that the French don't have a word for "entrepeneur"?

peace,
revel.

CNN had a short news report the other day where Dubya used the word entrepreneur. Need I describe how the word came out?

Amy

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Words genuinely believed to be English.

Entrepeneur

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