fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2359 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2359 ⌋

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Notes:

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DA

Some Japanese loan words I can think of off the top of my head:

Bed, toast, name, ice cream, pen, boyfriend, cake, bye, pants, restaurant, stereo, whisky, computer, bus, taxi...

And that's just where I stopped, because how many examples could you possibly want?

That's how this stuff works. It's not like there's some special group sitting there determining which words do or do not get incorporated, making sure that only "important" foreign words find their way into a language. The masses decide, and often, what the masses decide should be incorporated is pretty fucking mundane.

Well, obviously. The masses *do* seem to latch onto strange things.

But that's the entire idea.

People are always going to latch onto the mundane, because the mundane is actually what's strange. As native speakers, we take thinks for granted that other people never would. A chaise lounge is a pretty mundane thing in France, yet you and I, both English speakers, know and appreciate what it is. We didn't pick up the phrase because it was outlandish; we picked it up because it's been assimilated. There are words in English that we could use to describe the same thing, but we don't. And you don't even question it.

Yet you question an Indian using the word "hospitalized."

A chaise lounge is a fairly *specific* thing, and around here, at least, 99 percent of the people would give you weird looks and have *no* idea what you were talking about.

Also, while it might be mundane in France, it's not something most Americans would own, or know what it was, and wouldn't use the word interchangeably with 'sofa' or 'couch', neither of which is a chaise longue.

I don't question anyone *using* an English word, i wonder why they are using *some* words.

And my question is why you would question them using some words.

Where I live, it's not weird for someone to own a chaise lounge, and it's also not weird for them to use that phrase. Maybe it is where you live. But that doesn't mean that it's somehow OMG SO BIZARRE, CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHY ANYONE WOULD SAY THAT for people in my corner of America.

I guess my basic issue with what you've been saying is that you've taken your particular experience and extrapolated to everyone else all over the globe. The *some* words that you wonder about are not worth questioning to other people. Your objections are colored by your own personal experiences.

Well duh. I don't have any *other* experiences to draw on. And you'll note i'm not casting this in a *bad* light, just trying to understand.

You seem to be doing the same, i see, since you find chaise longue 'everyday' and want to make a big deal about it.

I'm not *objecting* to anything. I'm just trying to understand it. Pity you don't get the difference.

Well you're using Kindergarten or Angst or Rucksack (since you mentioned bag) or Meister or kaputt or verboten even though you have perfectly fine words for that.

You sound like borrowing mundane words is this ~super foreign concept~ and Americans only borrow meaningful words.
I know that's not your intention, I'm just saying.

I will admit Kindergarten and angst are common in everyday usage. The others, though, really are *not*. I know growing up that i might have said kaputt or verboten because my grandmother was German and my mom and dad both spoke it, but the kids at my school gave me weird looks when i used *English* words of more than two syllables.

It struck me as odd because there were little kids, a lot of whom didn't have much school and no real interactions with English 'stuff' (tv and whatnot), and who lived in an area with no English or American people and basically spoke Hindi except...for one random number coming out in English. It wasn't like English with it's many many borrowed words, it was just...a single random utterance in a flood of Hindi. So, yes, it made me wonder *why*.

I'm not *objecting* or *denigrating*, just interested.

[ SECRET POST #2359 ]

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