In our Facebook group, Laurie Stiers shared the fake German name her father used for bacon: oinkenstrippen. That prompted a discussion of other faux foreignisms, such as pronouncing Target as tar-ZHAY or Kroger as kroh-ZHAY. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Fake Foreignisms”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. On our Facebook group, Laurie Stiers wrote,
My dad has been gone for a few decades now, but his silly way with words comes to mind often.
The other day at breakfast, I remembered his habit of making up fake words in other languages.
Bacon was referred to with a nice, robust Southern German accent as oinkensstrippen.
Like oink and stripping for bacon.
I love that.
And her family also used the term hurt you.
What was that?
Hurt you?
I know.
It sort of rhymes with virtue.
But hurt you is if you have a bruise or a cut or something.
Something hurts you.
Oh, so I have a hurt you.
Yeah.
Ow.
Sort of like an owie.
But I was thinking about the fact that when I was growing up, our family would say,
Tarjay.
I’m going to Tarjay.
This fake Frenchiness to it, right?
Yes, yes.
Or go grocery shopping at Crojet.
Oh, we said K. Roger in my family.
Oh, you did?
I’m kind of on the model of Kmart, not really a fake foreignism.
Okay, oh, K. Roger, that’s good.
But speaking of fake foreignisms, the fake German there reminds me of something I encountered when I first started in radio.
So this would be 1988.
I joined the staff of KCOU, the student radio station at the University of Missouri-Columbia in Columbia, Missouri.
And on one of the engineering panels was this little sign in fake German.
And I found a version of it here.
I don’t know if this is exactly right.
But it’s something like,
Das Computer Machine ist nicht für
Gefingerpoken und Mittengraben.
Ist easy schnappen, der Springenwerk,
Blohinfusen und Poppenkorken
Mit Spitzensparken.
Ist nicht für Gewurken
Bei das Dummkaufen.
And I don’t even know if that’s
Real German. I think it’s not.
I don’t think it is.
There’s enough words like Dummkaufen that we can all get.
It means like, leave it alone, dummy!
And I needed that.
I was like a freshman student.
Like I needed to know, don’t press the big red button.
And isn’t that wall of lights called the blinking lights?
Yeah, das Blinken lights.
Das Blinken lights.
A lot of places will have it.
When I worked in IT, we would often add the, you know,
Print a label or paste the label at the top of the cabinet that says das Blinken lights.
And you would tell somebody, I need you to look at Rack 12 in das Blinken lights.
Well, I’m betting that your family may have had some terms like that.
We’d love to hear about them.
Call us 877-929-9673 or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.
