Lo Smoking

An interesting facet to living in another country is seeing how they use, and sometimes abuse, words from your language. I'm sure this happens in English too, but since I'm a part of the whole process it hasn't occurred to me to find it funny. I have that luxury here. I first came across this phenomenon in Germany. They call cell phones "handys," which sounds deceptively like an English word, but even the British call them "mobiles." I guess they are handy. Germans also use the word hand for hand, but adding a "y" to the end of the word I don't think is typical (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handy). They also used the word "beamer," not to describe a Bavarian auto, but rather it is a name for a video projector http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamer_(LaTeX). The great part is that when you tell them these aren't real words in English a look of genuine confusion passes across their faces. Apparently there is a word for this, pseudo-anglicism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Anglicism). I did once have a French person tell me that she was confused by English speakers use of "deja vu," as in French it has the more literal meaning of actually seeing something for a second time, not the sensation that you have. I won't even go into what another friend told me about the French verb "to kiss." It has given me an entirely different concept of the word "french kiss."

The first on my Italian list is "lo smoking." At first I thought it was just a way to say smoking jacket, as any sport that we commonly refer to with "ball," i.e. basketball, volleyball, they generally lose the ball part. In this way the sports are "basket" and "volley." However, after watching TV (tee vu) last night I realized "lo smoking" actually means a tuxedo.

Another great experience was the use of the word "playback." Last summer they had a tour of Italian pop-stars give a concert in the main square of Trento. It became apparent that the singers were not really singing, but merely lip-syncing the songs. The Europeans that were with me all looked at each other and said in disgust, "playback!" I had to ask what they meant, and they were genuinely confused that we used a completely different word.

Once I had a very long conversation in my Italian class about the word "stage." They use it to mean either a workshop, or an internship, although I think internship is the more common usage. They haven't really borrowed this from English, but from French. I'm sure the English borrowed it from French ages before it was used in French to mean internship, as it also has the same meaning in French as it does in English. After trying to explain in Italian what we use the word in English for, the teacher seized on one part of what I was saying, the part about "stage" meaning a period of time, a phase, and seemed to conclude that it did mean internship after-all. Apparently, the Germans use it for internship too. It must be part of this whole euro-speak concept.

The last part of my diatribe has to do with using English phrases on clothing. It often resembles the headers on the email that ends up in my spam folder, meaning they are words strung together that make no sense at all. Here is a picture of one of my favorites that I found in a flyer for a local shopping mall. In case you can't read it all is says "Runaway Biker For Rebel."