Re: Ungrammaticalization?

Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...> wrote:

> Well, this doesn't really count, but i have a habit of mixing together
> different languages when i talk to my brother, since we both know
> English, Hebrew, and Spanish.
More or less the same here. My brother and I know Spanish and English,
and every once in a while, especially when I'm trying to convey a lot
of information quickly, there's an English word or phrase that covers
exactly the ideas I want to express, and it just pops out. Very
frequent appearances: 'freak', 'duh' (really pronounced /dV:/, used
as a general complement), 'blob', and our home-made horrible frankenstein,
the verb _customizar_. In the last few months I've also made up
_hachetemelizar_ ('HTMLize')!


> Me and my brother use the fake Spanish verb _davenar_ for "to pray".
'Davenar'??! What's that supposed to come from?
[It reminded me of something else, which I didn't know. I just
remembered: the planet Davenant, in the stories of Ursula K. LeGuin.]


> When we're on the subway or something and don't want people to know what
> we're saying we talk in Hebrew.
I'd love to be able to do that. But I'm not totally fluent in spoken
English (caused by lack of practice), and my brother is still less fluent
than I. Oh well.


--Pablo Flores