Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Map
- Themes
- 1 History: how things came to be this way
- 2 Prescriptivism and other useless pastimes
- 3 Language change: observing and accepting it
- 4 What is happening to words?
- 5 Languages and dialects in contact and conflict
- 6 Respecting English grammar
- 7 Respecting ordinary language
- 8 Sounds and fury
- 9 Respecting local speech
- 10 Grammar: the wonder of it all
- 11 More about words
- 12 Origins
- 13 Accent rules
- 14 Respecting names
- Postscript
- Index
4 - What is happening to words?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Map
- Themes
- 1 History: how things came to be this way
- 2 Prescriptivism and other useless pastimes
- 3 Language change: observing and accepting it
- 4 What is happening to words?
- 5 Languages and dialects in contact and conflict
- 6 Respecting English grammar
- 7 Respecting ordinary language
- 8 Sounds and fury
- 9 Respecting local speech
- 10 Grammar: the wonder of it all
- 11 More about words
- 12 Origins
- 13 Accent rules
- 14 Respecting names
- Postscript
- Index
Summary
This section is mainly concerned with the various ways in which words can travel, and how they may change their form and meaning over time – in some cases during the course of an individual's life-time, in other cases over periods as long as several thousand years.
Latte?
If you go into the coffee bar in Jarrolds book department in Norwich and ask for a latte, you will get a cup of coffee. If you go to a coffee bar in Milan and ask for a latte you will probably get a glass of milk; you will certainly not get a cup of coffee. The Italian word latte means milk. Latte as used by English speakers is an abbreviation of Italian caffè latte, which means ‘coffee (with) milk’. We can only abbreviate it to latte because we do not know, most of us, what latte means.
This is a common type of occurrence when words are borrowed from one language to another. French speakers have borrowed our word foot, for instance, but it does not mean ‘foot’ to them: they have their own word for that, pied. For French-speaking people, le foot means ‘football’. The French language borrowed our word football – we invented the game, after all – and then abbreviated it. We could not have done that because, obviously, to us foot already meant something else.
Funny things happen when words are borrowed from one language to another. The French word living means ‘living room’; and lifting means ‘face lift’. In German, a Smoking is a dinner jacket. In Swedish, a fitness is a gym.
The strangest thing of all is when languages borrow words which do not actually exist. The German word for a mobile phone is Handy. It's a non-English English word. So is Pullunder, which is the German word for a sleeveless pullover.
We do similar things. The French term for a cul-de-sac is not cul de sac but voie sans issue or impasse.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dialect MattersRespecting Vernacular Language, pp. 54 - 72Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016