Pseudo-anglicism

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A pseudo-anglicism is a word in another language that is formed from English elements and may appear to be English, but that does not exist as an English word with the same meaning. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Contents

For example, English speakers traveling in France may be struck by the "number of anglicisms—or rather words that look English—which are used in a different sense than they have in English, or which do not exist in English (such as rallye-paper, shake-hand, baby-foot, or baby-parc)". [6]

This is different from a false friend, which is a word with a cognate that has a different main meaning. Sometimes pseudo-anglicisms become false friends. [7]

Definition and terminology

Pseudo-anglicisms are also called secondary anglicisms, [8] false anglicisms, [9] or pseudo-English. [10]

Pseudo-anglicisms are a kind of lexical borrowing where the source or donor language is English, but where the borrowing is reworked in the receptor or recipient language. [11] [12]

The precise definition varies. Duckworth defines pseudo-anglicisms in German as "neologisms derived from English language material." [11] [13] Furiassi includes words that may exist in English with a "conspicuously different meaning". [14]

Typology and mechanism

Pseudo-anglicisms can be created in various ways, such as by archaism, i.e., words that once had that meaning in English but are since abandoned; semantic slide, where an English word is used incorrectly to mean something else; conversion of existing words from one part of speech to another; or recombinations by reshuffling English units. [15]

Onysko speaks of two types: pseudo-anglicisms and hybrid anglicisms. The common factor is that each type represents a neologism in the receptor language resulting from a combination of borrowed lexical items from English. Using German as the receptor language, an example of the first type is Wellfit-Bar, a combination of two English lexical units to form a new term in German, which does not exist in English, and which carries the meaning, "a bar that caters to the needs of health-starved people." An example of the second type, is a hybrid based on a German compound word, Weitsprung (long jump), plus the English 'coach', to create the new German word Weitsprung-Coach. [11]

According to Filipović, pseudoanglicisms can be formed through composition, derivation, or ellipsis. Composition in Serbo-Croatian involves creating a new compound from an English word to which is added the word man, as in the example, "GOAL" + man, giving golman. In derivation, a suffix -er or -ist is added to an anglicism, to create a new word in Serbo-Croatian, such as teniser, or vaterpolist. An ellipsis drops something, and starts from a compound and drops a component, or from a derivative and drops -ing, as in boks from "boxing", or "hepiend" from "happy ending". [16]

Another process of word formation that can result in a pseudo-anglicism is a blend word, consisting of portions of two words, like brunch or smog. Rey-Debove & Gagnon attest tansad in French in 1919, from English tan[dem] + sad[dle]. [17]

Scope

Pseudo-anglicisms can be found in many languages that have contact with English around the world, and are attested in nearly all European languages. [18]

The equivalent of pseudo-Anglicisms derived from languages other than English also exist. For example, the English-language phrase "double entendre", while often believed to be French and pronounced in a French fashion, is not actually used in French. For other examples, see dog Latin, list of pseudo-French words adapted to English, and list of pseudo-German words adapted to English.

Examples

Many languages

Some pseudo-anglicisms are found in many languages and have been characterized as "world-wide pseudo-English", [19] often borrowed via other languages such as French or Italian: [20]

Japanese

Korean

Romance

French

French includes many pseudo-anglicisms, including novel compounds (baby-foot), specifically compounds in -man (tennisman), truncations (foot), places in -ing (dancing meaning dancing-place, not the act of dancing), and a large variety of meaning shifts. [38]

Italian

Germanic

Danish

Dutch

German

German pseudo anglicisms often have multiple valid and common ways of writing them, generally either hyphenated (Home-Office) or in one word (Homeoffice). [60] Infrequently, CamelCase may also be used.[ citation needed ]

  • Beamer – a video projector [61]
  • Bodybag – a messenger bag
  • Charity-Lady (pl.: Charity-Ladys): upper-class woman who uses her fortune and her social influence to do charity work
  • Dressman – a male model (Onysko calls this the 'canonical example' of a pseudo-anglicism. [11] )
  • Flipper – a pinball machine [62]
  • Funsport – a sport played for amusement, such as skateboarding or frisbee [40] [63]
  • Handy – a mobile phone [64]
  • Homeoffice – working from home, used as a noun [60]
  • Jobticket – a free pass for public transport provided by an employer for employees [65]
  • Oldtimer – an antique car [40]
  • Public Viewing – a public viewing event (party) of a football match or similar
  • Shooting – a photoshoot [62]
  • trampen (verb) – hitchhiking [66]
  • mobbing – bullying

Norwegian

Swedish

  • after work – a meeting for drinks after the workday is finished [69]
  • backslick – A wet, combed-back hair style[ citation needed ]
  • pocket – A paper-back book [70]

Slavic

Polish

Russian

Austronesian

Tagalog

Malaysian Malay

Indonesian

Other languages

Chinese

  • cosercosplayer, modelled after the verb "cos" (to cosplay)

Maltese

See also

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. Ayres-Bennett 2014, p. 325,335.
  2. Ilse Sørensen, English im deutschen Wortschatz, 1997, p. 18, as quoted in Onysko, 2007, p. 53: "words that look English, but which deviate from genuine English words either formally or semantically"
  3. Sicherl 1999, p. 14.
  4. Duckworth 1977.
  5. Onysko 2007, p. 52The term pseudo-anglicism" describes the phenomenon that occurs when the RL['receptor language'; p.14] uses lexical elements of the SL['source language'; p.14] to create a neologism in the RL that is unknown in the SL. For the German language, Duckworth simply defines pseudo anglicisms as German neologisms derived from English language material.
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    The influence of a 'donor language' upon a 'recipient language' can be seen also, and above all, in the so-called pseudo-loanwords, as the literature names them. Den intensiven Einfluß einer donor language auf eine recipient language zeigen auch und ganz besonders die in der Literatur so genannten Scheinentlehnungen an.
  13. Duckworth 1977, [page needed] : Neubildungen der deutschen Sprache mit Englischem Sprachmaterial.; as quoted in: Carstensen (2015, p. 77)
  14. Furiassi 2010, p. 34, quoted in Lujan-Garcia (2017, p. 281)
    "[A] word or idiom that is recognizably English in its form (spelling, pronunciation, morphology, or at least one of the three), but is accepted as an item in the vocabulary of the receptor language even though it does not exist or is used with a conspicuously different meaning in English."
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Sources

Further reading