On 12/6/05, Winsor Crosby <wincros@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Why is it that our English speaking cousins butcher foreign words? In
> the US we just use chiles instead of making up a new word. I think
> the most absurd is the the substitution of Leghorn for Livorno. Is it
> code to confuse the natives? Or is there an English academy to keep
> the language pure like the French and Spanish do? Do you also do
> tamalleys? :-)
Further musings on this, English is completely random with regards to
if foreign borrowings should take the original spelling (or some
transliterated form) or an agnlicised form. Back when I was doing my
russian studies degree I thought about how this applies to the way
names are translated. For instance, why is Piotr translated to Peter
for Peter the Great but Ivan isn't translated to John for Ivan the
Terrible?
Further fun is had with plurals. For instance, take perogies (to keep
the slavic theme alive). That's from the Urkrainian pirogi (think
that's the correct trasliteration, might be perogi). The thing is,
that's already plural! The singular is pirog so we should have 1 perog
2 perogs not 1 perogie 2 perogies.
It goes the other way too, in Russian you have dzhinsi (probably more
recongizable as jeansi) for jeans and chipsi for chips, taking the
plural forms from English and then adding the Russian plural.
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