The English Language Raid

Well, I don't have any examples, but the Italian sentence you cite is horrible! Is this really happening? Pidgin English sounded like Shakespeare compared to that!

Interesting topic, Boss. There was an outcry among linguistically conservative French-speakers (a significantly large group) against this trend in the late 1960's. A book entitled Parlez-vous Franglais? published in 1968 decried the "polution" of French with English loan words. It is to be noted that the French have been language obsessed for some time--the Academie Française dates from the mid-seventeenth century. Despite the furor then, and continuing carping by French-speaking purists, English creeps in--le weekend, faire du skiing, chercher du parking have replaced le fin de la semaine, faire du ski and chercher stationment. Given that French has so enriched the English language (i've read reputable sources that place the contribution at about 40% of our vocabulary), it seems a shame that the process cannot be reversed without upsetting a vocal minority. I appreciate your comment about blending the word into the language, as it serves to preserve rhythms and makes it easier for the speakers of a language to assimilate the neologisms.

D'Artagnan, I made the sentence up, but I have seen worse than that. They call Italian exports "Il Made in Italy".

Italian press:
From this week's Max magazine:

Body painting e scatti in bianco e nero per le ragazze ritratte da Giovanni Alfiero, una new entry nella sezione Fotografi. Scoprite tutte le gallery e i backstage.

From this week's Economia e Management magazine:

La tecnologia permette di realizzare il concetto di formazione a distanza, anytime e anywhere. Benvenuto eLearning, uno dei figli prediletti dell'Internet, anche perché è uno dei pochi che si sono dimostrati subito redditizi.

On this magazine, you can see a section called: Global Business, and read the article: "I trendper il 2003"

Now, if you to the web site of Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading newspaper, the main news is:

Lombardia, traffico in tilt per la neve.

Or you can see this ad:

Internet, radio e tv in un solo player. Free!

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Setanta,
French nationalists usually exagerate. But the French language (once the world's linguistic powerhouse) is indeed quite penetrated by English.

I think the purists stands tend to be self-defeating. If a foreign language blends and mixes with your own, and you presserve rhythm and grammar (perhaps spelling, too), your language will only get richer.

That's exactly what happened to English centuries ago. Now it has to wish and to desire; little, small and minute, worth and value. It allows for many shades.

English is also quite penetrated by French (up to 40%).

In Portuguese it's similar to Spanish. The vocabulary is implemented and adapted. Portuguese conjugation is given to English words.

Attach becomes atachar (sp?) when they ahve a perfectly good word already (annexar, sp?).

Fazer o download, instead of baixar.

In Japanese the language is eroding somewhat. Due to the fact that the Japanese alphabets are typed in ROmaji (Japanese words using our alphabet) the written language is hurting bad. Common words are substituted for Engrish words (kiss = kissu, apple juice etc). In Japan it's not just new jargon that's being implemented, it's also basic vocabulary.

Craven,
In Spanish: anexar (to attach), bajar (download), ratón (mouse), correo electrónico (e-mail), copiar y pegar (copy & paste), .
But also: deletear, formatear, chatear, cliquear, jaquear, emilio (e-mail, jargon).

German English
Well, here in Germany there is a lot of anglisisms, like the biggest ISp is called T-Online froom which I have a Business-rate. I used to have a Flatrate. With my computer I also do Online-Banking.

On TV we have talkshows, and comedy all day long, sometimes we have reality-soaps too.

But my favorite is a word that's not even english! here everybody are using their Handy when they use their cell-phone! Funny thing, nobody really knows how it came to this word, and why so many people believes that it's an english word... Gotta ask Walter about that, he knows stuff like that!

Portuguese:

anexar (sp?) (to attach) or attachar, baixar (download) or fazer download, mouse (mouse) no Port equiv., correio electrónico (e-mail) it's much more common to use "e-mail", copiar e colar (copy & paste), deletar (delete), formatar (format), chat (chat) it's common to say entrar no chat, cliquar (click)...

I think Sao Paulo is a bit more "Anglocized" that where you hail from.

Well, actually I don't know, why/how 'handy' got this meaning in German. ["Hän die kei Schnur" is just a joke.]

However, this is not the only word: 'keks', 'schal', 'slip, 'slipper' - just to name some - mean in the original English sense something different than we use it in German.

Just found an article about this, saying, that the 'German' tracias back to the term used by Motorala since 1940 (and to be found in dictionaries since at least 1963) "Handie-Talkie".

http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~naeser/handie.htm

Well, the origins of English are Germanic (with some French/Scandenavian) - hardly amazing that some of it goes downstream.

Here's a little one that Valter will appreciate. My grandmother (Oma) visited a lot in the 70's, she wasn't particularly phased by a lot of what she encountered here. But, she did find one thing worrying, stores that sell you presents, etc (Giftshops) - she asked my mother, "What are all these shops selling POISON for!!!!".

A German 'Giftbude', btw, is something of another, very different nature , Mr. Stillwater! [= pub, selling not so good spirits]

Just found this very interesed and fitting to this topic editorial of The Japan Times

What's in a loanword?

Interesting link, Walter, as usual.

Seems that the Japanese admiration for (almost) everything American is getting on their language. The kitchen and yellow examples are quite telling.

I know the French Nationalists go crazy about anglicisms. It's part of the nostalgia for lost grandieur.
It doesn't work, either.
Fascist Italy tried to stop anglicisms by law. "La difesa dell'italico idioma", in Mussolini's words. They went to such lenghts as direct translations: palla alta, for highball, the drink (jaibol, in Spanish) or neologisms as pallarete (netball), for tennis, the game (tenis, in Spanish).
Except for a couple of beautiful sporting words, Italians dropped the mandatory defense of the italico idioma, and embraced as many anglicisms as it could.

Last night I thought about a small problem brought by the castillianization of imported words: since we pronuonce differently, Latin Americans and Spaniards now write some anglicisms differently:

Bumerang, in Latin America; búmeran, in Spain.

Complot, in Latin America; compló, in Spain.

pants, in Latin America; pans, in Spain (for jogging pants, in both cases).

The thing that really bothers me are all the people in the Southwestern US who want English declared the National language as though some how the speaking of Spanish will diminish them. When I bring up the issue of English being the international language already they insist that is not an appropriate comment. Just another way of discriminating against non English speakers I think. The truth is most of the Mexicans in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas can speak English. But often English speakers in these states pretend not to understand because of the accent thus it is often easier to communicate important ideas in Spanish so there is no misunderstanding.

Has anyone here ever heard of Spanglish?

Joanne, you touch a touchy subject.

Spanglish is one of the tough realities of life. It has three varieties, Rican, Chicano and Miamita. All horrid to my ears. All expressing a culture on the rise. Some of them developing good poetry and fiction.

While Spanglish is very clearly different from English, there is a sense among some members of the so-called Latin communities in the US that their language is, indeed, Spanish.
Most -specially Cubans and Mexicans- can very well tell the differences, though.

Here is an except of Don Quixote's translation to Chicano Spanglish:

El pobre felo se la pasaba awakeado en las noches en un efforte de desentrañar el meanin y make sense de pasajes como these ones, aunque Aristotle himself, even if él had been resurrecteado pa'l propósito, no los understeaba tampoco.

The first time I heard it was last summer in the Washington, D.C. area and I was shocked I think the speaker was from Central America. I grew up in San Diego, CA, and I had never heard Spanish spoken in that manner. Love the excerpt from Don Quixote.

Years ago I took a flight from NYC to Mexico City.
I didn't understand the stewardess when she spoke in "English". Her accent was heavy and included many words in Spanish.
I understood even less when she spoke in "Spanish".
She spoke Rican all the time. And somehow got away with it.

This article shows, how soem French think (thought?) about it (in French, "of course"):

"Ce français qui a si peur de l'anglais"

Here's the telling portion of Walter's earlier-linked article, to my mind:

"More important, it would make no difference if it couldn't. As linguists well know, there is no stopping the evolution of a language. Words find favor as they answer to needs, and no amount of legislation or urging will alter that fact, Mr. Koizumi's wishes and the institute's lists notwithstanding."

I would go further, and add that when a language begins to lose currency, it dies. When Latin came to be spoken only by poorly educated monks and priests in Western Europe, Latin died in Western Europe. Although i don't qualify for this description, i know that the thorough Latin scholar can spot a "medieval latinism" in a heartbeat--it hasn't the logic of Latin, and breaks the rhythm of the spoken language.

Let's celebrate loanwords--transfusions which make our languages healthy and vibrant . . .