Monday, September 07, 2009

New words: anglotypical and francotypical

In English, if you search for something using the search engine Google, you say "I googled it." This construction is anglotypical.

In French, you'd say "J'ai effectué une recherche Google." This construction is francotypical.

These words aren't completely unknown (a few dozen google results each - "dozen" being an anglotypical word choice, with the francotypical counterpart being "quelques dizaines") but they're useful and ought to be more widely used. I went through translation school and half a dozen years as a professional translator, and have never heard them used.

They, of course, can be modified as appropriate for other languages.

1 comment:

Du said...

Most English nouns can be used as a verb, eg. : bus, taxi, egg, but most French nous can not be used as verbe. English is more flexible, so it is harder in this respective. Verbs in other languages are more regular: Fr (-er, -ir); De (-en): Es(-ar…)