John in Brattleboro, Vermont, is pondering words and phrases that change their meaning when they move from one language to another. For example, in Germany the English phrase public viewing doesn’t have to do with a wake, but a live sporting event. Similarly, in English, a la mode usually describes something topped with ice cream, a specialization of the French phrase that means “according the fashion.” And the Japanese imperative gambatte, from gambaru, meaning “doing one’s best and persevering to the bitter end,” is sometimes replaced by a word that sounds more like English, fighto! This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Loanwords with Altered Meanings”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is John Tribuna calling from Brattleboro, Vermont.
How are you today?
Doing well, John.
How are you?
Very good.
What’s going on?
I have a question about borrowed words.
I know all languages do it. English, of course, loves to borrow from other languages. But my question is, what have you looked into in terms of words specifically that have completely changed their meaning, or phrases, that is, as well, that go from one language to another.
A very common one would be, for example, in Germany, if they’re talking about a public viewing, using the English phrase public viewing, they’re not talking about viewing a body at an open casket. They’re talking about going to a live sports event.
Oh, interesting.
So they’ve just borrowed their English phrase wholesale, right?
Yeah, they’ve borrowed it and completely changed the context of it.
Where did you run across that?
A friend of mine is living in Germany now, and she and I were talking the other day, and she had just sort of mentioned this phrase, and I said, wait a minute, you’re going to a wake? She said, oh, no, no, I’m going to a sport game.
Yeah, public viewing definitely sounds like a wake.
Exactly, exactly.
Well, I think it’s one of the classic examples in the English language is talking about getting a dessert a la mode. I mentioned this phrase to a friend of mine from Quebec, and he just looked at me like I had three heads. And he said, well, what do you mean? You want a fashionable dessert? I’m like, no, no, I want a scoop of ice cream on top.
You want some mode on that slice of pie, right?
Yeah, you’re right. In English, a la mode typically means with ice cream. There are other uses, but if it’s related to food, it’s about ice cream.
Right, right.
One phrase that I encountered in Japan that I thought was really interesting is the Japanese have this term, this concept. It’s very core to their culture called the gambaru spirits. And in the phrase, if you hear it all the time at sports events, you hear them say gambate, gambate, which means don’t give up, do your best, basically never surrender. You can’t really translate it directly into English. But somewhere along the lines, they decided that the English word fight or fight-to means the same thing. So you’ll hear them at sports events yelling fight-to, fight-to, where they could just be using the Japanese phrase, but use the English instead.
But the fight-to isn’t completely an alteration of the English, meaning we still say that at sporting events, say at a high school basketball game, might fight.
True, and I think that’s the origin.
Yeah.
But they brought it into their language with the meaning of gambate or gambaru. So, I mean, you can see in a lot of these, you can see where there was a historical or contextual reason for them making this connection.
Right.
So, for example, in post-World War II movies that were flooding into Japan, the men who were very often in the movies were very thin compared to Americans today. And the phrase smart-dressed man came to be smato in Japanese, meaning a thin man.
Oh, interesting.
So they took just the one meaning of smart, as in a smart dresser, and then further narrowed it down instead of meaning snappy dresser or nice dresser. That just meant that you’re slim and nice to look at.
Exactly.
Cool.
John, thank you for sharing your linguistic experiences. This is really interesting. Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
All right.
Really appreciate your time.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Again, if you want to find out more about the stuff that John was mentioning, just look for pseudo-anglicisms or look for loanwords, and you’ll find lists and lists of these because they can be really fun. They’re a little alienating almost in some way because you’re like, wait a second, that has a meaning. You can’t do that. But of course, that’s how language changes.
