Fandom's always coining new words

[lokifan]

But it's interesting to think AO3 itself has probably given "kudos" to a lot of other languages, a new loan word.* A new word - and probably a countable noun, as it travels. "That fic has over a thousand kudos." I think it might even get a singular form - I've definitely seen "leave a kudo" on Tumblr, which just delights me :D

Loan words are one of my favourite parts of language teaching & learning! Especially teaching loan words back to people who speak the language we took them from - it's so entertaining saying to a class of Italians, "latte doesn't mean milk, in English. Any ideas? Think Starbucks..." and then someone goes "COFFEE" and there's a general !!!



*A loan word, as lots of you will know but I didn't before I started teaching English as a foreign language, is a word taken from another language. Food, clothes, and tech are some of the contexts where this happens a lot - madras, sushi, hijab, sari, emoji, etc. And words like "wifi" are part of lots of other languages, untranslated.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Jeans!

[spiralsheep]

Obligatory "it's all Greek to me" pun.

I love kudo. That's genius.

London English has many lovely loan words for "a thing that's genuine": kosher, kushti, pukka.

[delphi]

That really is such a big one, and I think even within English, AO3 has probably contributed to keeping "kudos" in circulation at a significantly greater rate than it would otherwise be experiencing outside of certain streams of office culture. I think it's a foregone conclusion that it'll settle as a count noun in common usage. (I still remember arguments about whether the plural should be 'kudoses' or 'kudoi'.)

[cmcmck]

Nice to see you and thanks for subscribing! I did drop you a pm backchannel asking if you'd like to read my sticky comment and if you're cool with that I'll open up for you. My blog is partly f-locked for reasons which become apparent when you read said sticky post! :o)

English english is full of loan words from Indian subcontinent languages- words like Bungalow, Pyjamas, shampoo and so on. I have Romani ancestry and there are numerous words from that language too- kushti, wonga and chav spring to mind!