Beamer
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Someone recently wrote to tell me that he had:
…constructed a linguistic theoretical framework based on the principle of "one-to-one correspondence between Chinese characters or symbols and their semantics", aiming to explore the mathematical basis of language symbol structure, semantic relationships, and context adaptation.
It was a longish communication and all in Chinese except for one word. He said that he had a 50-page "Beamer" presentation that he wanted to show me to convince me of the worthiness of his project. "Beamer" was the only word in his message that I couldn't understand. So I google it, and AIO instantaneously returned the following:
The word beamer has multiple meanings, including:
Cricket: A dangerous type of delivery where the ball is bowled over the batsman's waist without bouncing. This can injure the batsman, and the bowler is penalized with a no-ball and a free hit in some matches.
Data projector: A device that projects a person's images in a circle around them.
BMW nickname: A nickname for the BMW automobile. BMWs are also known as "Bimmers" or "Beemers". In China, BMWs are also called "bao-ma", which translates to "precious horse".
LaTeX class: A class for creating presentations and slides in LaTeX. Beamer presentations support features like incremental content, 2-column layouts, and customizable column layouts.
Machine: A machine that winds yarn or cloth on a beam.
Operator: The operator of a machine that winds yarn or cloth on a beam.
Leather worker: A leather worker who uses a beaming knife to remove flesh and hair from wet hides.
Bone implement: A bone implement with cutting and scraping edges that is found in Mississippi sites and in later cultural stages of the southwestern U.S.
I followed up on AIO's suggestions by googling on La/TeX, and this is what I found:
Beamer is a LaTeX document class for creating presentation slides, with a wide range of templates and a set of features for making slideshow effects.
It supports pdfLaTeX, LaTeX + dvips, LuaLaTeX and XeLaTeX. The name is taken from the German word "Beamer" as a pseudo-anglicism for "video projector".
I love the word "Beamer", and all such German-English words, e.g., "handy" for cell-phone.
Again, AIO:
The German word for "cell phone" is handy. The word is related to the German word for "hand", die Hand, as you hold a cell phone in your hand. To ask someone for their phone number, you would say "Gib mir bitte deine Handynummer".
The term handy is not unique to German, and is also used in other languages, including Japanese and in some parts of continental Europe. The term may have originated from the Motorola HT 220 Handie Talkie, a walkie-talkie used during World War II.
German "Beamer" and "handy" remind me of Japanese wasei-eigo, not to be confused with gairaigo ("loanwords", i.e., "words from abroad"):
Wasei-eigo (和製英語, meaning "Japanese-made English", from "wasei" (Japanese made) and "eigo" (English), in other words, "English words coined in Japan") are Japanese-language expressions that are based on English words, or on parts of English phrases, but do not exist in standard English, or do not have the meanings that they have in standard English. In linguistics, they are classified as pseudo-loanwords or pseudo-anglicisms.
Definition and examples
Wasei-eigo words, compound words and portmanteaus are constructed by Japanese speakers on the basis of loanwords derived from English and embedded into the Japanese lexicon with refashioned, novel meanings diverging significantly from the originals.[1]: 124
An example is handorukīpā (ハンドルキーパー, "handle-keeper"), derived from "handle" with the meaning of "steering wheel", with the full phrase meaning designated driver.[2] Some wasei-eigo terms are not recognizable as English words in English-speaking countries; one example is sukinshippu (スキンシップ, "skinship"), which refers to physical contact between close friends or loved ones and appears to be a portmanteau of skin and kinship . In other cases, a word may simply have gained a slightly different meaning; for instance, kanningu (カンニング) does not mean "cunning", but "cheating" (on an academic test). Some wasei-eigo are subsequently borrowed from Japanese into other languages, including English itself.
Americans are fond of making up our own Denglish and Wasei-eigo style words, e.g., "walkie-talkie".
Selected readings
- "EU English again" (12/31/16)
- "Denglish" (9/21/10)
- "Crippen (2017) – Using TikZ for linguistic diagrams", Phonolist (March 2017)
- "Too many English loanwords in Japanese?" (7/12/13)
- "Magi, myrrh, and mummies" (12/24/14)
- "Massive borrowing" (2/18/19)
- "'When does one's native language stop being native?'" (8/26/13)
- "But, will think" (3/14/19)
- "Chinese loans in English" (7/10/13)
- "Seitan" (12/21/18)
- "Too many recent Japanese loanwords in English?" (7/17/13)
Philip Taylor said,
November 28, 2024 @ 3:53 pm
If you consult Google "Ngrams", Victor, I think that you will find (as I did) that the phrase "walkie-talkie" was attested in British English before it was in American (1945 v. 1948).
[Links omitted to avoid unnecessary moderation].
Bybo said,
November 28, 2024 @ 4:35 pm
Can't recall where, but I once saw a list titled 'if more things were named like walkie-talkies' or similar. It had entries like, I don't know, shovie-clickie for computer mouse, or pointie-watchie for remote control (I'm making these up right now, but you get the idea).
Yves Rehbein said,
November 28, 2024 @ 4:39 pm
I have a "mathematically proven" theory, to abduct Don Ringe's parlence, to prove everything. The answer is 42 but I'm not sure what the question was
BasJ said,
November 28, 2024 @ 5:02 pm
"Beamer" for "video projector" is also used in Dutch. People often don't realise this meaning doesn't exist in English and are surprised when English speakers don't understand what they mean when they use the word.
Jim Breen said,
November 28, 2024 @ 6:14 pm
As a diehard LaTeX user, I've been using Beamer for creating OHP material for years.
Apropos of 和製英語, the JMdict dictionary tags them, for example the ハンドルキーパー entry has:
handle keeper
About 4% of the approx 50,000 loanwords in JMdict are tagged as wasei.
Jim Breen said,
November 28, 2024 @ 6:17 pm
Hmm. The XML markup I quoted was stripped out by the LLog demons. I'll try again (a pity there's no preview available.) I'll try again.
\handle keeper\
Jim Breen said,
November 28, 2024 @ 6:19 pm
Failed again. Here's the full entry:
https://www.edrdg.org/jmwsgi/entr.py?svc=jmdict&sid=&disp=jm&e=1099892
Jenny Chu said,
November 28, 2024 @ 6:45 pm
@Yves
From the original Reddit post:
Defibrillator: The Hearty Starty
Cruise missile: zoomie boomie.
Forks would be Stabby Grabbies
Spoons would be soupy scoopies
Thomas said,
November 29, 2024 @ 1:25 am
Does Denglish go both ways though? One word that comes into mind is "uber" as in "being uber hip and ultra cool" (wiktionary). This form of usage is unknown in German.
Lasius said,
November 29, 2024 @ 4:11 am
@Thomas
Yeah, we would use the Latin and Greek cognates super and hyper instead.
Peter said,
November 29, 2024 @ 4:39 am
The French for walkie-talkie – as I discovered when working on the Channel Tunnel – is talkie-walkie. I don't know why that sounds more hilarious than the original.
David Marjanović said,
November 29, 2024 @ 6:44 am
A Beamer is not a video projector. It's specifically a computer projector, attached to a computer and most often projecting PowerPoint presentations – videos, too, sure, if they're running on a computer.
Handy is well documented as having come from the Handie-Talkie®, a long-forgotten competitor to the Walkie-Talkie®.
Rodger C said,
November 29, 2024 @ 11:00 am
I own a perfectly preserved beamer of the bone implement type, which I found in an abandoned house in London, KY, lying on top of the stones of the collapsed basement walls, it having no doubt been buried adjacently. As artifacts go, they're quite common.
/df said,
December 1, 2024 @ 3:47 pm
How did it come to be "handy" in a language with no natural "y" s and unlike pulli or Mutti?
Milan said,
December 2, 2024 @ 2:57 pm
@df
The word is perceived as an Anglicism. It is pronounced with /ɛ/ for as well, a common German approximation for English /æ/. I suppose German speakers were aware of the use of '-y' in English, but not of the convention to use '-y' for adjectives in '-ie' for nouns. Using '-y' signals that the word is an 'anglicism'.
/df said,
December 9, 2024 @ 3:07 am
But then "der Pulli"?
Interested to tease out the difference, I found confirmation of @Milan's point. From https://www.dwds.de/wb/Pulli, "pullover" was imported in the 1920s and then abbreviated in the '50s — thus conforming to traditional diminutive formation.
Whereas "das Handy" came almost fully abbreviated from the '40s "Handie-Talkie" handheld battlefield radio-telephone which appears to have become a generic name in its area of application, though not generally in English. From my own experience, "Walkie-Talkie", the larger backpack-based product, did become a generic term, at least in the UK, for any sort of portable short-range handheld radio-telephone, with no backpack expected. Whether or not connected to "Handie-Talkie", the abbreviation "handy" for "handheld" by English-speaking CB radio users was imported by their German-speaking counterparts in the 70s and ready for use when a snappier alternative to "Funkfernsprecher“ or "Taschentelefon" was sought. And so, just as we have auto(mobile)/car/Auto from the early 20th century, we have cell(phone)/mobile/Handy from its end.
In another domain, the "handhelds" of the '80s-90s computer industry were portable, probably ruggedised, devices for on-the-go data entry, that would have to be docked at base or connected to a dial-up modem to transfer data, but smaller than "portables" (laptop precursors) and "luggables" (the still clumsier precursors of portables).
George said,
December 9, 2024 @ 10:53 am
@David Marjanović
In South Africa 'beamer' is also used for the good old overhead projector. No computer required. But, yes, it's for presentations of still images or text rather than showing video.
Milan said,
December 11, 2024 @ 5:42 pm
@df I doubt that "Pullover" is perceived as an anglicism by most Germans. Of course, they may _know_ it's an anglicism, but they don't treat it like one when speaking. The phonology and the phonology/spelling mapping is the same as it would be with a native word. They don't mark the break between "pull" and "over". It's syllabised as 'Pu.llo.ver'. The word "pullunder" ('sweater vest'), is pronounced with an /ʊ/ in the second rather than with an /a/, which is the usual approximation for English /ʌ/. It's German pseudo-anglicism based on analogy with 'pullover' and the English word 'under'.