England has exported
the exclamation Fuck! (and fucking)
to Belgium, Denmark, Holland,
Luxembourg - to name a few.
Because of its language wars
(Walloon v. Flemish) Belgium
has borrowed many English words
to use where emotions might be inflamed.
Through films and World War Two
the USA exported Okay to the whole world –
ironically an inverted verlan*
borrowing from Louisiana French
d'accor' (gacco goka gokay).
that follows the linguistic rules.
Note also the now rare form Okey-Dokey.
*Verlan is a modern back-slang (an inversion of l'envers, meaning the other way round) which (like cant and local dialect) is commonly used world-wide in many languages for private communication.
A well-known example in English is yob meaning boy.
No comments:
Post a Comment