Eggcorns (Wikipedia / YouTube video by RobWords) are language mistakes that sometimes take over and change the spelling and perhaps even the meaning of a word. This is rare in German because there’s fewer homophones but in this episode of Wort der Woche, DW explains how “munttot” became “mundtot”. Available as audio or transcript.
I couldn’t think of any in Swedish, but the Swedish wiki page on it had some examples. My favourite is “älgskog” (elk forest) instead of “älskog” (coitus).
There’s also a few I had no idea were malapropisms. To “lägga rabarber på” (put rhubarb on sth.) means to occupy or steal something. Apparently it was originally “lägga embargo på” (put embargo on sth.), but it’s gotten so widespread that people just say that they’ll put rhubarb on something.
Eggcorns are essentially the same things as bone apple teas, no?
Depends on
- how widespread they become (“bone apple tea” is not seriously used by many but can still count)
- if they still retain some original meaning, unlike mondegreens
For example, almost everyone calls polo shirts “polokošile” (half-shirts) in Czech when the correct term is “pólo košile”. But since it’s a less formal shirt, people don’t see “half-shirt” as incorrect.
The German Wikipedia page needs some improvement, though.
Only contains deliberate wordplays and somewhat cringy dad jokes as examples…A (natively German-speaking) family member of mine told me that in their childhood, they were surprised that “Folgetonhorn” didn’t start with “Voll-”.
Two here:
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=59418
here’s two German eggcorns – or, rather, one folk etymology that made it big time, and one original gem:
– Hängematte: Hanging mat. The word describes the thing so well that only a few linguistically interested people in the Germanosphere have the slightest idea of its origin: hammaka in Arawak via Spanish, French etc. into German, Dutch and some others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammock
– Vogeliere: Aviary. An eggcorn by some acquaintance via the french loan word volière (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volière) on the word “Vogel” – large bird cage.There is also Armbrust (crossbow) which comes from arcubalista but literally means arm + chest
All languages have eggcorns.
Yeah but I never knew one until today.
German has many other, more meaningful linguistic peculiarities.
There’s mostly nerds on Lemmy and many don’t care how “meaningful” fun facts are. But if you know of some interesting phenomena, surely you can post about them!
