Jon Pretty

It's funny how "delicatessen" in German is "Feinkost" and "double entendre" in French is "double sens". (Though sure, both world be understood in French/German.) Does anyone else know any other "loan words" which were not just loaned, but stolen?

"Showmaster" in German, when the proper English word is "show host" or "entertainer". Germans say "Ich mache home office" , but it's "I'm working from home" in American English. "Home office"= a room designed for that purpose, which most work-from-homers don't even have.

"Home office" was in use in Britain, from what I remember of the nineties, though I haven't heard it much since...

Relatedly, can you think of any words loaned to German which *partially* Germanize the pronunciation? For example, "Orangensaft" retains the soft "g" from EN/FR, but the vowels are German. I thought there were others, but can't think of them at the moment...

I think it's depends on the region. Prussians have adapted many words from French, so you'll find many words pronounced with hard consonants and German vowels. "Ensemble" (as in orchestra) = Angssambel, "Sanssouci" = Sangssussi.

English has the same (I *think*) contortion of "ensemble", which always sounds bad (to me) shoehorned into three syllables...

"Niche" is a word where American pronunciation always gets me.