bureau de change

[mindbullets]

so why do we call it a bureau de change in the uk ?

surely it should be a change office or something?

[kempie]

Likewise why not call a restaurant a restorative soup house.

[Loosehead]

and did you know the French do not have a word for Entrepenuer?

Why don't we call those Cul-de-sac thingy's dead ends?

[jno]

I think cul-de-sac implies a street with a circle at the end of it so you've got room to turn round and drive out again. With a dead end you might not have the space. The French are just as likely to call one an impasse, I believe, but that has a different meaning again in English.

[acw]

Heaven forbid we might have contact with a foreign word! ARGH! The horror!  We could call it a "Money Kiosk" - but then kiosk is Swedish and that would be a bit much variety for our totally pure language! *coughs*

[honkytonkman]

'Cul de sac' literrally means = ar$e of a bag... My French Canadian friends call it a 'dead-end'.. Guess we just swapped phrases...

[jno]

Kiosk is Turkish, from Farsi I think. They use it in Russian too but the signs say KNOCK (only the N is backward, being Cyrillic).

Actually, why we use the French phrase bureau de change... I don't know. Obviously we got it from France, which historically would be the first place most Britons would see abroad, and in those days you wouldn't go looking for one in Britain before you left, I guess, so you'd need to know the French name when you got there.

[acw]

How right you are jno.  (I was told kiosk was a swedish word by Swedes.  Just goes to show you can't trust anyone that came flat-packed in a box from a blue and yellow stork!!)  Here is a link to words that ARE from Sweden though.  Warning:  Do not look at this link if you are sensitive to horrible foreign words being in our pure English language!

http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-english-words-of-swedish-origin

This is also interesting.   

PS - Cul-de-sac literally means "bottom of a sack" rather than "arse of a bag" - according to some definitions!!! :-)