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.