English Language - what "Does your head in" ??

[661-Pete]

Time for another rant - but I was wondering whether this ought to be in the Rant thread instead.

The Portmanteau.

By which I mean, the running together of two or more words to form a single word. That ugliest of devices (sorry, Lewis Carroll!) which has sullied our language with the most execrable neologisms over the past hundred years or so. OK we have got used to ghastly words like smog, motel and brunch which have been commonplace for generations now. But more keep getting added to the list. Half of all political buzz-words of the present epoch are portmanteaus. Need we put up with them?

I need hardly add that the ugliest of the ugly political examples, the one which has sprung up only in the past 12 months, and now defiles half of all newspaper headlines, that word (which I shan't utter here) which is also the subject of one of the longest-running threads in the Tea Shop - need we endure it? I'm guessing that even its political adherents (of which I am not one, of course) must be getting a bit fed up with incessant usage of the word......

Get rid of all the portmanteaus ("portmanteaux"? "portmantae"? "portmanti"?) now!

[Audax67]

If you're going to pinch a word from French then pinch all of it: portmanteau - portmanteaux.

I have no great objection to them as long as they aren't asinine. Smog and brunch (sounds like a new attraction in downtown Pittsburg) are eminently practical, and motel has been around long enough - ~70 years - to have become moderately respectable as a word, even though the establishments themselves might not be.

Nothing to sprout Breczema over.

[Bmblbzzz]

I suppose the word portmanteau is itself a portmanteau, fittingly. I can see A67's point but I don't agree that it's necessary to use French grammar just because it's originally a French word. To do so for every word imported from dozens if not hundreds of languages would make quite a mess of English grammar (and of every other language which followed the same rule).

[661-Pete]

Nothing to sprout Breczema over.

Precisely. It's become an irritation and I want to scratch......

[Mick F]

I suppose the word portmanteau is itself a portmanteau, fittingly. I can see A67's point but I don't agree that it's necessary to use French grammar just because it's originally a French word. To do so for every word imported from dozens if not hundreds of languages would make quite a mess of English grammar (and of every other language which followed the same rule).

Yes, like panino?

Plural of panino, is panini ............. not paninis ................. but I suppose we shouldn't use Italian singulars/plurals when we have perfectly good English ones.

[Bmblbzzz]

If we'd adopted the word panino, it's plural in English would almost certainly be paninos. I don't know why we've adopted the plural as a singular but it does seem to be a common phenomenon for loan words in various languages.

[Cyril Haearn]

The word brunch is used in Germany too unfortunately, so I have devised two *German* alternatives which I use at every opportunity, people always understand

Breakfast = Fruehstueck (early thing, early meal)

Brunch=Spaetstueck (late thing) or Zweitstueck (second thing)

Fastfood means fastfood in German too, but *fast* alone does not mean *speedy* but *nearly*. Guten Appetit!

Why do you love the German language?

[Bmblbzzz]

You'd rather fast than eat Fastfressen, I take it?

[Audax67]

I suppose the word portmanteau is itself a portmanteau, fittingly. I can see A67's point but I don't agree that it's necessary to use French grammar just because it's originally a French word.

Not necessary perhaps, but certainly more elegant. However, the X is silent, which could lead to confusion among the hoi polloi.

To do so for every word imported from dozens if not hundreds of languages would make quite a mess of English grammar (and of every other language which followed the same rule).

For other languages I would largely agree - e.g. we don't even spell leitmotif correctly so why bother forming a correct plural? Any old S will do.

WRT making a mess of English grammar: I thought that had already been accomplished by schools' laissez-faire approach to teaching the subject, amplified by the Internet.

[Mick F]

Talking of X ..........

There's a town just outside Plymouth called St Budeaux.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Budeaux

Why does it have the plural X?
Should it not be St Budeau?

[Bmblbzzz]

There's nothing in that Wikipedia page to suggest it's a plural.

[Mick F]

Yes, I know, and I can't find anything anywhere why it has a plural X.
It's named after Saint Budoc, and the present name ......... The modern name, St Budeaux, is itself a Frenchified "elegant" form.

[Bmblbzzz]

But the final x isn't plural. The name has gone through various forms which included an "x" sound – "Bucheside became Bodekishide, Budeokshed, and even Bottockishide and Butshead," – and the present spelling was, apparently, chosen in imitation of French in order to look sophisticated! Presumably when the Budeaux spelling was first adopted, people were pronouncing it "Buddocks" and the pronunciation has changed since then to reflect the newer spelling. Although Wikipedia neglects to tell us how it's pronounced; I'm going by this: https://www.howtopronounce.com/st-budeaux/

In other words, it looks like a French plural but isn't, any more than (in fact, less than) news is an English plural.

[Mick F]

Yep.
That sounds right. Thanks.

Strange really, loads of folk call it Saint Buddox

[Audax67]

Yep.
That sounds right. Thanks.

Strange really, loads of folk call it Saint Buddox

It could almost have been St. Buthead.

In Belfast we had neighbours who spelt their dog's name Fideaux**.

** lie