Padkos in English?

At home we spoke English, Afrikaans and Gujarati (an Indian language). 3 generations down the line, we still use the word padkos . Though we now mainly tell Afrikaans jokes hehehehe
 
The English language is just like British colonialism. If your shyt is useful, it'll appropriate the crap out of it.

Seriously though, the English language has been cannibalising other languages since forever. A huge amount of it's vocabulary is French or Latin via the French for a start, but if it doesn't have a word for something it just adopts the word from the language it's dealing with at the time often without even the slightest attempt at Anglicising it.

If you speak English well and you find yourself asking what the English word for something is, chances are the "non" English word is the English word.
 
Nick333 said:
The English language is just like British colonialism. If your shyt is useful, it'll appropriate the crap out of it.

Seriously though, the English language has been cannibalising other languages since forever. A huge amount of it's vocabulary is French or Latin via the French for a start, but if it doesn't have a word for something it just adopts the word from the language it's dealing with at the time often without even the slightest attempt at Anglicising it.

If you speak English well and you find yourself asking what the English word for something is, chances are the "non" English word is the English word.
Click to expand...

koppie
veld
trek
fundi
papsak
 
Nick333 said:
Seriously though, the English language has been cannibalising other languages since forever. A huge amount of it's vocabulary is French or Latin via the French for a start, but if it doesn't have a word for something it just adopts the word from the language it's dealing with at the time often without even the slightest attempt at Anglicising it.
Click to expand...

I doubt that is unique to English. In my opinion, Dutch is even worse. Many proper Dutch words simply fall out of use as they adopt the English or French words. Some examples: fruit, training, teamwork, portemonnee, paraplu.

I love teaching them some of the unique Afrikaans words (like "daknatmaak") or reminding them of the correct words (like "hoender").
 
konfab said:
I always used "snacks"

usage
"Can you bring some snacks for the car trip?"

The context of the sentence usually implies where you are going to be eating them. This allows it to be more general than a specific travelling activity.

So you can get snacks for hiking:
"Remember to pack some snacks for the hike tomorrow"
Click to expand...

"Snacks" are what you buy when you go to the movies.

"Padkos" means having real food to take on a trip, which invokes memories of stopping next to the road, hauling out the "parafien stofie" and boiling water for Koffiehuis "koffie" (not the instant version) with "kondensed melk", to have with "Ouma's legendary toebroodjies", boiled eggs, left over braai tjops.

Snacks? nee man! :cry: Nothing describes the joys of a road trip with "padkos" like the word "padkos".
 
MickeyD said:
koppie
veld
trek
fundi
papsak
Click to expand...
Kommando (that had me stumped - invented during the Boer War iirc).

English is a bit of a bastard language, yes (not dissimilar to Afrikaans in that sense). Surprisingly, it's not a very old language (maybe a few centuries?), either. Remember, England wasn't always English - it was ruled by the French for a long time, and English was only spoken by the poor - everyone else spoke French.

Shakespeare, a pioneer of literature, didn't write his plays for the upper class - they probably would've had a hard time understanding them. The English used in his plays was what the common, lower class folk spoke.
 
Yep, I also as a soutie use Padkos. If I had to use English I would for actual meals say "packed lunch/dinner/breakfast" and "snacks" for everything in-between.
 
Betonro said:
I doubt that is unique to English. In my opinion, Dutch is even worse. Many proper Dutch words simply fall out of use as they adopt the English or French words. Some examples: fruit, training, teamwork, portemonnee, paraplu.

I love teaching them some of the unique Afrikaans words (like "daknatmaak") or reminding them of the correct words (like "hoender").
Click to expand...

All languages do it, but English is known for it. There's a reason why the English vocabulary is the biggest of any language many times over. It's interesting that Dutch is heading that way though. They both evolved from the same Saxon dialect from about 1400 years ago if I'm not much mistaken. There is a Frisian dialectic that linguists believe is the closest to the original Saxon dialect that English evolved from, that has a very recognizable (to English speakers) vocabulary. Afrikaans also seems to be in the process of adopting large parts of the English vocabulary to me. 20 years ago it was considered a bit common to just drop in an English word for convenience sake where as now a days it seems to be quite acceptable. I have an Afrikaans friend who prefers speaking English because her English vocabulary is more accessible in her memory than her Afrikaans vocabulary.
I think Dutch, English and Afrikaans are more adaptable than say French (and other romance languages) and probably German, because they have stricter grammatical rules were as French and German rely more on modifying verbs and nouns to convey meaning. It's harder to adopt a word when, unless there are strict rules for modifying it, it could make absolute nonsense of a sentence.
 
The Voice said:
Kommando (that had me stumped - invented during the Boer War iirc).

English is a bit of a bastard language, yes (not dissimilar to Afrikaans in that sense). Surprisingly, it's not a very old language (maybe a few centuries?), either. Remember, England wasn't always English - it was ruled by the French for a long time, and English was only spoken by the poor - everyone else spoke French.

Shakespeare, a pioneer of literature, didn't write his plays for the upper class - they probably would've had a hard time understanding them. The English used in his plays was what the common, lower class folk spoke.
Click to expand...

Let's not forget that the majority of the English have always been the poor. :p Also for the sake of clarity it wasn't ruled by THE French, it was ruled by some French people.

English isn't a new language by any means. As a distinct language, it's about 1300 or 1400 years old. Modern English (i.e. a version of English that we can more or less understand) began to emerge around the 12th or 13th century when English monarchs began to consider themselves English and actually began to use the language officially. What you had then was a language that had many, many regional dialects that were so diverse that you'd be hard pressed to understand another Englishman who'd lived not 50 miles away all his life. What happened when the nobility began to speak it, was that the English they spoke became the common English that we all speak today (more or less). Dialect English of the sort that Will Shakespeare wrote in had some very different throw backs in pronunciation and the meanings of some pretty common words. This is why it's actually pretty hard to understand a lot of his stuff and why things that were obviously meant to rhyme just don't. A lot of his contributions to English vocabulary and idioms have been filtered by modern pronunciation and even meaning. Some of his famous sayings don't mean what we think they do. "Where for art thou Romeo?" doesn't mean "where are you, Romeo?". It means "why are you named Romeo?".
 
Nick333 said:
Let's not forget that the majority of the English have always been the poor. Also for the sake of clarity it wasn't ruled by THE French, it was ruled by some French people.

English isn't a new language by any means. As a distinct language, it's about 1300 or 1400 years old. Modern English (i.e. a version of English that we can more or less understand) began to emerge around the 12th or 13th century when English monarchs began to consider themselves English and actually began to use the language officially. What you had then was a language that had many, many regional dialects that were so diverse that you'd be hard pressed to understand another Englishman who'd lived not 50 miles away all his life. What happened when the nobility began to speak it, was that the English they spoke became the common English that we all speak today (more or less). Dialect English of the sort that Will Shakespeare wrote in had some very different throw backs in pronunciation and the meanings of some pretty common words. This is why it's actually pretty hard to understand a lot of his stuff and why things that were obviously meant to rhyme just don't. A lot of his contributions to English vocabulary and idioms have been filtered by modern pronunciation and even meaning. Some of his famous sayings don't mean what we think they do. "Where for art thou Romeo?" doesn't mean "where are you, Romeo?". It means "why are you named Romeo?".
Click to expand...
Yeah, the dialect issue still exists today. I work with people from Scotland, NI, Manchester and Newcastle. I sometime have no idea wtf they're saying
 
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