Wednesday 22 April 2015

Mangled pronunciations

Very often, one language will borrow a word from another until it becomes part of the everyday language. After many (mis)pronunciations in the new language, it becomes unrecognisable from the original.

A good example would be: croissant (a flaky, buttery French pastry that is popular around the world). In Japanese, a croissant is known as クロワッサン (pronounced "kurowassan"). The only way we can tell it is a borrowed word is in the writing. The use of Katakana tells me that this is not a native Japanese word. (Katakana is used when writing foreign words in Japanese text.)

When I was studying second year Japanese, I had a Frenchman in my class. When the teacher was talking about "kurowassan" in the lesson, none of us understood what she was talking about. After several more descriptions, a few of us went, "Oh! Croissant!" The teacher replied, "Hai, kurowassan desu." ("Yes, it is croissant.") Our French classmate almost fell off the chair! He felt as though the Japanese had completely violated and destroyed his language! He left the class that day rather disgusted at this new discovery.

My Filipino friend +Lloyd Estrada studied Spanish in Costa Rica. One day, he wore a t-shirt with the word "tunais" printed on it, to class. His Spanish teacher was not too happy when she saw this. "This is because, over the years, the English expression "too nice" evolved into "tuanis" in their country!" Today, "tunais" in Costa Rica may mean excellent, great, or nice. Well, borrow a word here and there and very soon, we may all be speaking only one language around the world!

Here's to speaking "Globish" or bad English!

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