Sturm and drang: Calquecorn?
Mark Liberman and Geoff Pullum coined the term "eggcorn" here to refer to expressions that get reinterperated to another, homonymic expression like eggcorn for acorns, or "play it by year" for "play it by ear". A calque, on the other hand, is a word-by-word translation of an expression from one language into one's own - my favorite is "Passover" for Hebrew peysax 'pass (over)' or "flea market" from the French "marche aux puces".
Recently, I came across "sturm and drang" in a newspaper article instead of the standard "sturm und drang" which means, literally, 'storm and stress'. The expression, borrowed into English like "deja vu" or "schadenfreude", has now apparently been partially calqued for some speakers, replacing the German 'und' with its English equivalent 'and'.
"sturm and drang" has 10,000+ ghits compared to "s und d" with 44,000 - pretty robust.
Could this partial calque happen with other borrowings?
"Esprit de body"? "That's la vie?"
My intuition says no.
Instead of a partial calque, perhaps it is better to see it as an eggcorn because of the phonetic similarity of "and" & "und"?
Or maybe it's a little of both where the phonetic similarity facilitates the partial calque. A calquecorn, then?
When I start hearing or reading "deja viewed" or "ad nauseous" then I'll think I'm on to something productive and maybe even interesting.
UPDATE: "ad nauseous" and "deja viewed" clock in at about 150 ghits, below, I think, threshhold of significance requirements. "deja view" however, is all over the place and though I'm not sure why a lot of the hits seemed to refer to TV shows, movies, business names and the like.
Recently, I came across "sturm and drang" in a newspaper article instead of the standard "sturm und drang" which means, literally, 'storm and stress'. The expression, borrowed into English like "deja vu" or "schadenfreude", has now apparently been partially calqued for some speakers, replacing the German 'und' with its English equivalent 'and'.
"sturm and drang" has 10,000+ ghits compared to "s und d" with 44,000 - pretty robust.
Could this partial calque happen with other borrowings?
"Esprit de body"? "That's la vie?"
My intuition says no.
Instead of a partial calque, perhaps it is better to see it as an eggcorn because of the phonetic similarity of "and" & "und"?
Or maybe it's a little of both where the phonetic similarity facilitates the partial calque. A calquecorn, then?
When I start hearing or reading "deja viewed" or "ad nauseous" then I'll think I'm on to something productive and maybe even interesting.
UPDATE: "ad nauseous" and "deja viewed" clock in at about 150 ghits, below, I think, threshhold of significance requirements. "deja view" however, is all over the place and though I'm not sure why a lot of the hits seemed to refer to TV shows, movies, business names and the like.
3 Comments:
It isn't anon, it is me, Liz, from http://lizditz.typepad.com
I suppose walaH! for viola is really an eggcorn. I've seen it a lot on blogs. I should probably have noted them..
And I think I've also seen,
"Say, la vie" for C'est la vie.
"Say, la vie" definitely is, but "walah" is a little something different because "walah" is not a different English word in its own right. What seems to be happening with "walah" is loanword Phonology where the sound pattern of English overrides the sound of the word.
I blogged about "deja vous" at:
Already you!.
Something a little different: the well-known French exclamation "Viola!", instead of "Voila!"
See: Another misused word in Cyberspace.
- The Precision Blogger
http://precision-blogging.blogspot.com
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