The perils of 'international English'

[rdearman]

So what's a write-off? Are you talking about your tax papers?

It somes from accounting.

A write-off is an accounting action that reduces the value of an asset while simultaneously debiting a liabilities account. It is primarily used in its most literal sense by businesses seeking to account for unpaid loan obligations, unpaid receivables, or losses on stored inventory. Generally, it can also be referred to broadly as something that helps to lower an annual tax bill.

Businesses regularly use accounting write-offs to account for losses on assets related to various circumstances. As such, on the balance sheet, write-offs usually involve a debit to an expense account and a credit to the associated asset account.

[verdastelo]

When English is the sole medium of international communication, you willingly or unwillingly tend to look at affairs as an English speaker would, starting right from the pronunciation of foreign names.

A few days ago, Mikhail Gorbachev passed away and most Indian language media transliterated his name from English. As a result, गोर्बाचोव [gorbachov] became गोर्बाचेव [gor-bah-CHEIV]. If the journalists had known Russian, Italian, or German, they wouldn’t have made this mistake. The incident with Gorbachev is more of a rule than an exception. Because English is practically the sole foreign language taught in India, people tend to read Li Keqiang as ली केकियांग [li KAY-kiang] and sometimes Xi Jingping becomes Jinping the Eleventh or Eleven Jinping.

EDIT: Incorrect. This spectacle of illiteracy hasn't left India's internal affairs untouched. A perfectly Indian term योग [yoga], which ends in a short "a" or a schwa, has been replaced with योगा [yogā] (long ā) because that’s how the English speakers pronounce it.

[anitarrc]

Germans tend to sprinkle their marketing waffle with pseudo- English. It drives me nuts when I have to translate it into English or Spanish.
Somebody mentioned handy, another one is customer journey.

Here is a Spanish gem: I'll let you guess and will edit tonight.

What is a silbin?

[anitarrc]

Germans tend to sprinkle their marketing waffle with pseudo- English. It drives me nuts when I have to translate it into English or Spanish.
Somebody mentioned handy, another one is customer journey.

Here is a Spanish gem: I'll let you guess and will edit tonight.

What is a silbin?

Here is the solution:

In Central America and according to rae also in the República Dominicana, a silbin is a car's headlamp.

Why?

it is a typical adaptation from oral "gringo", meaning originally Sealed Beam, the infamous round watertight headlamp one used to have in Minis, MGs Land Rovers and many US cars.
Only when I changed a sealed beam from an old LandRover at work, I figured it out at last.

[luke]

Heard this one on the local radio yesterday ...

hobi for pasatiempo

[StringerBell]

Just this morning, my husband was reading some Italian news in the other room and he calls out: "I can't believe they used this word - it makes no sense!" In an Italian article talking about how the barrels on Russian tanks last for 210 rounds, they used the word "i barili" (barrels), which they clearly got from English even though the article isn't a translation of an English article.

However, the word for a gun barrel is "canna". Barili are wine barrels, not gun barrels. So apparently, someone decided to Italianize an English word (even though there was already a perfectly good Italian word) and in the process ended up writing: "the wine barrels of the Russian tanks have a service life of 210 rounds"

i barili.jpeg

About 5 minutes later, I hear him laughing again, so when I ask him what's so funny, he shows me this:

[Cainntear]

This afternoon I was listening to a podcast (in Dutch) about what they called the shadow pandemic of 'long Covid'. Of interest to me because I am one of its victims. Somewhere in the middle of it, when the presenter and the doctor were travelling in a car and talking, the discussion turned to the name. The doctor said that lots of people had dismissed the idea that they might be sufferers because there was nothing wrong with their lungs...

Ouch... that's a bad one.

My general concern with English-originated neologisms is that most of our fellow speakers don't have a clue about etymology and derivation by affixes, and we end up with meaningless portmanteaus that are quite plainly wrong in languages where these things are still understood.

Even "internet", which was coined as a reasonably classically correct way, has lost all its meaning: it was the connection between networks -- the network inter network as it were -- but is now just the network.

[PeterMollenburg]

Heard this one on the local radio yesterday ...

hobi for pasatiempo

Edit: Reading this thread makes me angry! It's not my fault, it's the thread!

[tungemål]

Heard this one on the local radio yesterday ...

hobi for pasatiempo

Spanishdict lists three words for hobby: el pasatiempo, la afición, el hobby.
The question is, is it pronounced as 'obi' or jobi?

[tractor]

Spanishdict lists three words for hobby: el pasatiempo, la afición, el hobby.
The question is, is it pronounced as 'obi' or jobi?

Jobi