Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

Pyxis

:T :T

Go for it!

Best of..........

GDB2222

DW: Tara Palmer Tomkinson died. She had a brain tumour.

Me: I thought it was benign?

DW: She had no surgery because of the drugs.

Me: But surely, even a benign tumour might need surgery?

DW: No, she had no surgery. To restore her septum.

Me: Oh! She had nose surgery!

zagubov

GDB2222 wrote: »

DW: Tara Palmer Tomkinson died. She had a brain tumour.

Me: I thought it was benign?

DW: She had no surgery because of the drugs.

Me: But surely, even a benign tumour might need surgery?

DW: No, she had no surgery. To restore her septum.

Me: Oh! She had nose surgery!

They've just been talking on QI about ekenames becoming nekenames/ nicknames, and narajas becomeing oranges,so this confusion deserves the full grade of four candles.:D

Pyxis

And napron became apron.

Makes more sense, because napron was derived from nappe, (cloth), from which we also got napkin and nappy.

And adder was originally nadder.

And umpire was noumpere.

And newt was ewt. The opposite happened there.


(However, uncle wasn't ever nuncle. It started off as uncle, from avunculus, (which is retained in the word 'avuncular'), but in some local speech derivations was spoken as 'nuncle', a bit like the cockney 'chimley' instead of 'chimney').

PasturesNew

The one that was always "odd" to say was a notel (an hotel).

Which is probably why I've never stayed in one - to avoid it.

chris_m

Pyxis wrote: »

And umpire was noumpere.

That makes sense.

Similarly "love", in tennis, supposedly came from the French l'oeuf, because zero is egg-shaped.
I think "deuce" also came from the French, but the Old French deus rather than the modern French deux.
In fact, the word tennis itself came for the French tenez, to receive.

Pyxis

PasturesNew wrote: »

The one that was always "odd" to say was a notel (an hotel).

Which is probably why I've never stayed in one - to avoid it.

Just say 'a hotel', like wot I do!

Mind you, if you're staying in a hotel, you wouldn't need to actually ever say 'an hotel', would you?

You might say 'this hotel', but that's all. If you really wanted to avoid the word 'hotel', you could say 'this establishment'.

zagubov

I could no more say an hotel than an horror movie!

Pyxis

zagubov wrote: »

I could no more say an hotel than an horror movie!

I know!

I think 'an hotel' really has had its day, although there are some die-hards who still use it.

It's that grey area, that can last two or three generations, when a foreign word starts to become anglicised, and can either be treated as the original foreign word or as the later 'hybrid' anglicised word, until it finally becomes fully assimilated.

I'm trying to think of another French example, but as usual my brain won't work!

(Edit...All I can think of is that the use of the accents in French words is disappearing in their usage in English.
I've also seen 'fiancè' (sic) used to refer to the girl, which is a shame, I think).





Take panini. This took less than a generation to go from being a plural Italian word to a single anglicised word. Italians find it very amusing that we say 'a panini' and 'two paninis', as strictly speaking it should be 'a panino' and 'two panini'.
No-one ever says the latter in Britain, though. I wouldn't, unless I was in a pukka Italian deli (in Britain), speaking to an actual Italian, then I probably would, but only because I'm learning Italian.

Similarly, lasagna is, technically, one sheet of pasta. Lasagne is the plural, so means sheets of pasta, and has come to mean the whole dish. Here, though, we say lasagna or lasagne.

zagubov

Much like there's one scampo, but as that wouldn't really be enough you never see it. "Scampo and chip" sounds like the most underwhelming meal ever.

I've heard people in the US talk about "an herb".