Re: phonology of borrowed words

Roberto Suarez Soto <ask4it@...> writes:
> On Nov/20/2002, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
> > > "Lost bread"?
> > Yes. It's called this way because it uses too old bread (hard but not yet
> > rotten ;))) ) as basic ingredient. It's a way to save what would otherwise be
> > lost :) . The simplest recipe:
> [snip]
>
>         Here in Spain (or at least in my house ;-)) we just call it
> "torrijas" (hmmm ... /toRIhAs/?).
Probably just /torixas/ (/R/ is the uvular trill).
Over here we have "torrejas", but they're something else, a superset
of "lost bread" -- you can put anything into them, like vegetables, rice
or pasta that you haven't eaten, chopped and molded into a hamburger-like
fat disc. And it needn't be old food.

> it comes from O:-) I suppose it's simply from the verb "torrar"
> (/toRAr/), which is a very very strange/archaic way to say "to heat (a
> lot)".
> PS: as a side idiomatic note, my friends and me use the term "atorrante"
> (/AtoRAnte/, "that brings heat", approximately) to denote specially
> boring and slow films :-)
Curiously, "torrar" is/was slang for "sleep" (v.i.) in Argentina.
Though for coffee beans, it means the same as "tostar". And here
"atorrante" (n.), for some strange reason, is a person not considered
to be a model -- especially a young man who doesn't work, doesn't
study and only likes parties. Maybe because of the association between
sleeping, laziness, no work and no study.


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/nyh/index.html
  "The future is all around us, waiting, in moments
   of transition, to be born in moments of revelation.
   No one knows the shape of that future or where it
   will take us. We know only that it is always born
   in pain."  -- G'Kar quoting G'Quon, in "Babylon 5"

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