Re: Respelling Quétaine in Canadian English
CDB
> Subject: Respelling Quétaine in Canadaian English
> It's in the Scrabble dictionary as Ketaine.
> Surprisingly, I find this respelling in a list of tags to search
> French text, so it must be used even in French.*
> Is French kétaine borrowed from an English respelling?
>
> Or is English ketaine borrowed from a Qubecois respelling?
> * Tags: comédie long superhéros effets spéciaux filtres after effects
> adobe compositing layers tornade pluie éclairs kétaine blur flou
> gaussian colocs super héros
> https://context.reverso.net/translation/french-english/k%C3%A9taine
French words sometimes that have "qu" plus a front vowel are sometimes
respelled with "k". I have the purely personal impression that that is
done to distance the speller from stodgy old-persons' rules: to
demonstrate that they are not quétaine, but with-it, tasteful, and
refined. The same may be true in Spanish: There is an Argentine group
called Intakto.
I don't think I've ever come across a use of "quétaine", however
spelled, in English. I might expect to see it used in a discussion of
Quebec French usage.
--
"Québec" is from the Algonquin word for "narrows", "Kebbek", spelled
variously but always with a "k".
Athel Cornish-Bowden
On 2022-03-21 14:05:07 +0000, CDB said:
On 3/20/2022 6:41 PM, Dingbat wrote:
Subject: Respelling Quétaine in Canadaian English
It's in the Scrabble dictionary as Ketaine.
Surprisingly, I find this respelling in a list of tags to search French text, so it must be used even in French.*
Is French kétaine borrowed from an English respelling?
Or is English ketaine borrowed from a Qubecois respelling?
* Tags: comédie long superhéros effets spéciaux filtres after effects
adobe compositing layers tornade pluie éclairs kétaine blur flou
gaussian colocs super héros https://context.reverso.net/translation/french-english/k%C3%A9taine
French words sometimes that have "qu" plus a front vowel are sometimes
respelled with "k". I have the purely personal impression that that is
done to distance the speller from stodgy old-persons' rules: to
demonstrate that they are not quétaine, but with-it, tasteful, and
refined. The same may be true in Spanish: There is an Argentine group
called Intakto.
There is a group of enzymes called kinases, which my wife and I have worked on, both separately and together. In Spanish they are quinasas. However, when my wife wrote an article for the magazine of the Spanish society, the publisher (who was not normally even a Castilian speaker, but insisted on Catalan whenever he could*) changed quinasa to cinasa throughout. That is a spelling used in Mexico and also, I think, Costa Rica, but nowhere else, and certainly not Spain. To say that my wife was cross about this would be an understatement: she insisted on a correction in a later number.
That affects the pronunciation as well as the spelling, of course. I know that Mexicans understand "quinasa" when they hear it, but I haven't noticed if they say "cinasa".
*At one dinner, in Barcelona, I think, he refused to sit at a table where the conversation would be in Castilian. Only Catalan would do.
I don't think I've ever come across a use of "quétaine", however
spelled, in English. I might expect to see it used in a discussion of
Quebec French usage.
--
Athel -- French and British, living mainly in England until 1987.
bruce bowser
-- https://www.google.com/books/edition/Trois_si%C3%A8cles_de_tourisme_au_Qu%C3%A9bec/kNVJ5kiMJbgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Certains+jug%C3%A8rent+que+cette+annonce+%C3%A9tait+trop+quaint+(on+dirait+de+nos+jours+trop+qu%C3%A9taine&pg=PA205&printsec=frontcover
Could 'quaint' mean an English equivalent of 'quétaine'?