Le Baron wrote:rdearman wrote:French:
Le Jogging (Not the act of jogging, but the trousers you wear when you go Footing!) Footing = Jogging.
Pressing .... = Dry Cleaning.
Dutch. A drink in a tall glass (called a slim Jim glass in UK) = 'longdrink'. Also one of my biggest bugbears, the use of 'total-loss' used as a noun to mean a right-off: 'Het is een total-loss'. Or even as one word: totalloss.
Horrid.
Horrid alright, I completely agree. However I find myself almost laughing at the Dutch and thinking it's some kind of ridiculous attempt at being trendy/hip/internationally aware = cool. Yes it does annoy me, but... In French it really annoys me. French adopting English words just sounds plain stupid (imo). Dutch seems to pull it off (sort of - mind you 'een total-loss'. Wtf? ) given shared Germanic roots, while despite the fact English and French share a hell of a lot of vocabulary, the pronunciation is, well, rather different and, like any language the French do have the ability to use their own new or existing words.
I noticed the use of the word 'cluster' a lot in French regarding reports on Covid around contact-tracing. That downright s**t me off. I mean, really? This is one reason I am not a fan of the world globalising in general, as it lends to the dominant language influencing others in unimpressive ways. Cluster, while an anglicism has likely been in use for some time, but not in this context. Well, I'm a bit of purist I guess and living in this globalised world is going to be a disappointment in some aspects. This is where protectionism is of value and I feel the European countries ought to look to Québec for guidance (if they were that way inclined). I've learned that 'sightseeing' in Norwegian is 'sightseeing', said in a completely English way. I feel the Norwegians can be even more keen to adopt English words sometimes than the Dutch.... rant ranty McRant...