Comments on: Being Politely Surprised http://benabuya.com/2007/03/12/being-politely-surprised/ looking for alternative explanations Tue, 10 Jan 2012 01:43:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Conrad http://benabuya.com/2007/03/12/being-politely-surprised/#comment-721 Sun, 18 Mar 2007 04:43:57 +0000 http://deba.wordpress.com/2007/03/12/being-politely-surprised/#comment-721 A calque is the translation of an idiom, eg. ‘Deus Omnipotens’ becomes ‘God Almighty’, even though ‘Almighty’ would not be natively constructed in English from ‘all’ and ‘mighty’. I think ‘oh my’ is certainly an abbreviation of ‘oh my God’.

]]> By: Simon Holloway http://benabuya.com/2007/03/12/being-politely-surprised/#comment-718 Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:11:42 +0000 http://deba.wordpress.com/2007/03/12/being-politely-surprised/#comment-718 Oh, the tribulations of never having studied linguistics!
Isn’t a calque the phenomenon whereby a word is adopted from another language, but remodified as though it belonged to the adopting language?

]]> By: Joel Nothman http://benabuya.com/2007/03/12/being-politely-surprised/#comment-717 Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:22:03 +0000 http://deba.wordpress.com/2007/03/12/being-politely-surprised/#comment-717 Do you really mean a calque?

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