As I was writing an entry over on Geek Notes about a new LaTeX solution for slide presentations called “beamer”, I was reminded that when I go to Germany, I am always struck by the many cases of English words in common discourse that are not really English words. In German linguistic terminology, they are called “Scheinentlehnungen”, something like “Pseudo-Loanwords”. My two favorites are ubiquitous:

• “Beamer”, for multimedia or data projector.
• “Handy”, for cellphone.

There’s a decent article on this and related topics in the monthly webzine of the MacMillan English Dictionary. A Google search also turned up Professor David Yeandle in the German Department of King’s College London, who has a forthcoming paper with the title ‘Handy Callboy Seeks Evergreen Dressman for Flipper Fun’: Pseudo-Anglicisms in Modern German, which is unfortunately unavailable electronically.