Mandarin gone awry

Oops, I didn't know that the word "restauranteur" was used in english. It sounds so strange.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/restauranteur

Well there you go. As soon as I saw you commenting I was thinking that it would have to do with it's French origins. I have never seen or heard it without the "n" ,though I see the article says that was the case originally and considered more correct.Just goes to show what we Aussies know [as even the Brits sound like they frown on that spelling and I think we here have tended to lean towards British spellings rather than American],but maybe I shouldn't speak for my compatriots ...maybe I've just got it sorta wrong all these years.

I've always thought it was restauranteur, and I'm english!

Of course, I'm terrifyingly poorly educated.

ok,well if you google restauranteur google asks you if you meant restaurateur [lol] and only comes up with 145,000 results but comes up with 2,640,000 for restaurateur.

2,640,000 results? Amazing!

I've never heard of a restaurateur before.

is it a real word that I've been missing all these years?

Or does it mean that most English speakers couldn't spell properly to save their lives?

Whoops, I'm going to show my age here - I can't say that I have ever seen it spelled WITH the n before, not that I've been looking closely in recent years because I tend to avoid restaurants with restaurateurs. Nothing to do with education I can assure you Xiao_liang, I went to school in a colonial outpost where the classrooms had no walls.

@ bodawei

did some checking and it seems you are probably right.

well, blow me down, all these years I was the ignorant ass!

just as well I've never needed to write it in a sentence before

:-)

Hey,this is Aussie central here at the moment on the boards matey's. We have a superfecta. Cool bodawei,I suspect I've just missed it all these years.As restaurant has the n ,I suppose I must have just jumped to the wrong conclusion that restauranteur does too and not picked up on it...the n ..or lack there of being somewhat subtle I suppose...hearing what one expects to hear.I think this happens a lot in languages...hearing what we know or expect to hear.I think it's funny when it happens in Mandarin when one's vocab is small as it can give strange interpretation outcomes.

Hehe,maybe in light of this I should rename this thread Aussies and English gone awry.

I jumped to the same wrong conclusion myself, by crikey!

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the etymology:

A restaurant owner is called a restaurateur; both words derive from the French verb restaurer, meaning "to restore".

Why all the Aussies here at the moment? It's just past midnight!

yeah,I saw that but that just makes me think that restauranteur seems more fitting,otherwise it makes him sound closer to being the restorer himself [whereas he's probably neither cooking it or serving it] rather than restaurant owner.

This comment stream must be the classic side-tracking, like some people get hot under the collar about. And by a bunch of Australians. Mostly. Non-Americans are readily accepted in Australian society. Come to think of it we accept some Americans too. They got Rupert Murdoch and we got .. um .. Mel Gibson? Brain drain it's called.

Yes I think that you are right Barbs, we do hear what we expect to hear and 95% of the time (that's off the top of my head) we are right. Fortunately.

and we got Marcia Hines

fair trade, I think.

yeah,but this sidetracking is in a non lesson post and further buried in subthreads mostly.Still you never know when some random will stumble in and kindly sort me out with a few sharp words and get me back on track,hehe.Might even be a restaurateur.

yeah,me too obviously [love big bang theory that is].Yeah,I saw that episode the other day.Actually I'm such a nut on this Chinese that I get a real kick out of hearing it show up anywhere even if it's obviously pretty poorly pronounced as Sheldon did here [hehe,what cutting witty remark would he say about his Chinese?].I guess they're banking on a largely western audience who by and large don't speak Chinese as the humour works just as well if not better that way. Maybe they just grab a couple of Chinese looking extras from nearby the recording studios.

It's more likely the ask the desperate-for-work actor "how good is your chinese?" and the anctor replies "completely fluent!". I doubt the casting director speaks mandarin, hence it gets onto film :)