Black Friday and language

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tungemål
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Black Friday and language

Postby tungemål » Fri Nov 25, 2022 9:40 am

It's Black Friday! What will you buy today, another language learning book even though you've got 5 already that you haven't started?

Black Friday is another great tradition that we have been fortuate to inherit from the US (sarcasm). Actually, it started as recently as 2016 in Norway. I'm guessing all countries in Europe have Black Friday by now.

Black friday in Norwegian is "black friday". The Norwegian Language Academy has this year encouraged the chains to find a Norwegian word for it - "svart fredag"? But that would be hard to change.

What is it called where you live? Does one use a translated "calque" anywhere? Zwaart frijdag, viernes negro, czarny Piątek, Schwarz Freitag?
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Re: Black Friday and language

Postby Kullman » Fri Nov 25, 2022 12:00 pm

We also use "Black Friday" in Spain... "Viernes negro" sounds like the name of a terrorist attack day, or an horror movie title so... not really good marketing for Spain...
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Re: Black Friday and language

Postby anitarrc » Fri Nov 25, 2022 12:03 pm

What about scam? Seems quite correct

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... -shopping/
My bank also sent a warning newsletter :)
Frankly, there are other things to worry about right now
https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seve ... vember-25/
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Re: Black Friday and language

Postby iguanamon » Fri Nov 25, 2022 12:48 pm

I prefer not to think about it. For years "Black Friday" was referred to in the US as "the day after Thanksgiving". It always marked the start of the Christmas shopping season. sure, but it didn't have this moniker. Thanksgiving (at the third Thursday in November) is a uniquely American holiday (Canada's Thanksgiving is in October). Most Americans have the next day, Friday, off of work and school as well. The holiday comes within a month of Christmas- so, it is a marker for the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.

I started hearing the term about 10-15 years ago. Since there typically isn't much domestic news going on, 24 hour cable TV news had to report something. That "something" going on (when not much else was happening) was reporting on Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. It serves as a bellwether for evaluating economic activity.

The actual term "Black Friday" comes from accounting terminology where "black" refers to the color of ink used to record profits in a ledger and "red ink" refers to losses. The Friday after Thanksgiving was called "Black Friday" because this is (allegedly) the day that most retailers finally move to profitability in the year. Twenty to thirty years ago, I never heard the term. Retailers began to make a big deal out of the day using ever more increasingly ridiculous "loss-leader" sales, on a day in the US when most people have the day off and nothing much to do, to get people into their stores buying stuff.

Given that the rest of the (western, nominally Christian) world doesn't have a major holiday on a Thursday within about a month before Christmas, and given the success of the capitalist marketing of the day in the US, other countries saw it as too good of a thing to pass up. So, countries like (apparently) Norway, England, and Brazil have embraced the idea and the name too. Capitalists do capitalism, even if they can't get their countries to give their people the day off from work.

So, that's where and how the whole "Black Friday" phenomenon came about. What do I call the day? "Buy nothing day"!
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Re: Black Friday and language

Postby Kullman » Fri Nov 25, 2022 2:03 pm

Well, here in Spain we got two holidays in two weeks, one on tuesday, and one on thursday.

The first one is the constitution day, and the next one is the "inmaculada concepción" day.
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Re: Black Friday and language

Postby CaroleR » Fri Nov 25, 2022 3:25 pm

It's "Vendredi fou" in French-speaking parts of Canada and Black Friday everywhere else. It seems to have taken over the world. Now we have Cyber Monday to go with Black Friday. Yesterday I heard Black Week. I'm in the buy nothing camp.
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Re: Black Friday and language

Postby tungemål » Fri Nov 25, 2022 4:02 pm

CaroleR wrote:It's "Vendredi fou" in French-speaking parts of Canada


Does that mean "crazy friday"? That's a good name.

One suggestion for a Norwegian term was "Blakk fredag", which would translate to "broke friday".
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Re: Black Friday and language

Postby LupCenușiu » Fri Nov 25, 2022 4:29 pm

It's "Black Friday" in Romania too. I don't have time to write a long post, but in essence I wholeheartedly agree with "ignoring this one" camp. Very few use "Vinerea Neagră", and usually as a joke, mostly because that term could be better connected with what is known as "Good Friday" for Christians.
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Re: Black Friday and language

Postby Spaceman » Fri Nov 25, 2022 5:03 pm

Amazon has some decent deals today on Kindles. From a language learning perspective I think that's about the only thing worth buying (not just on black Friday, in general). Not as good a deal as they have some years though, I think because they have fairly new models of all the varieties.
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Re: Black Friday and language

Postby Sae » Fri Nov 25, 2022 5:26 pm

Amazon is responsible for bringing Black Friday here, it used to just be the "January Sales" here. I'm about to have to pay out on my motorcycle and that's going to deter me from any Black Friday deals, unless I can convince the mechanic to do a crazy Black Friday deal, but he'll prolly tell me to eff off and and as it's Saturday tomorrow, which is when I'm picking it up, he might get me on that technicality anyway.

I've always found myself curious by Olly Richards' story learning stuff, though my target languages aren't covered by it, the tempting thought has been to try their Turkish one as it is related to one of my target languages and see what I could use either get it to a level it might allow me to have some familiarity with any features it shares with Tuvan or to see how they're structured for creating my own study material and perhaps learning Turkish at some point in the future. Though somebody did recommend me a Tuvan grammar book that's in Turkish and I can't find any in English. However, even with the Black Friday deal, $97 still feels steep, especially for something that's not my target language.

But I may have a gander to see if there's any good deals for anything in Mongolian or Vietnamese.
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