1

Is it appropriate to use ish-suffix for “it's sort of English but not quite”?

Standard Russian order is “surname, first, patronymic”, because there is special abbreviation "ФИО". “first, patronymic, surname” is Englishish order.

yalov
  • 161
  • 1
  • 7
  • 1
    What is your goal here? What do you understand the -ish suffix to do? – Catija Mar 31 '17 at 19:03
  • No -- English is both the name of the language and the adjectival form. ... Likewise, Russian is both the name and the adjective. (Actually, both started as adjectives!) – StoneyB on hiatus Mar 31 '17 at 19:03
  • 3
    It's weird with English because you're doubling the -ish... but the reason I asked the question in my first comment is that, in very informal English, it's not uncommon to add a second suffix, occasionally -ish, to change the meaning, so someone might say "German-ish" to mean "it's sort of German but not quite". That being said, if it is actually German, Stoney is correct... it's already an adjective. – Catija Mar 31 '17 at 19:10
  • “first, patronymic, surname” is not English order, because English doesn't have patronymic, but it is kind of English, because there is “first, second, surname”. So “kind of English” = Englishish, isn't it? – yalov Mar 31 '17 at 19:13
  • 3
    As you'll note in my example, the use of the hyphen actually helps clarify that it's being done for effect... "English-ish" is how I'd do it if that's your intention. – Catija Mar 31 '17 at 19:18
  • Related question on ELU: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3663/when-is-it-appropriate-if-at-all-to-use-the-suffix-ish – Catija Mar 31 '17 at 19:21
  • 2
    Other options are -y and -esque. http://www.glossophilia.org/?p=7521 – Catija Mar 31 '17 at 19:22
  • Yes, hyphen! Thank you, it is answer. Usually there is simple words: “girlish”,“greenish”, so I didn't think about hyphen. – yalov Mar 31 '17 at 19:26
  • I have heard the term "Engl-ish" as a very informal (tongue-in-cheek) way to describe a phrase or sentence that resembles English, but isn't quite parsable as English. Here, it refers to a poor use of language, not merely a stylistic convention as you seem to be describing. – p.s.w.g Apr 05 '17 at 01:18

1 Answers1

4

As long as you recognize that it's pretty informal English, sure. You can add -ish, -y or -esque to some words to give it the sense of "almost but not quite". There are some minor differences between the three, so you might want to take some time to read up on them a bit but I think -ish in your example works pretty well. It might be a bit of a mouthful to say, though.

In English, they usually say first name then family/surname, so saying first, patronymic, surname would be "English-ish" (and Russian-esque).

While in most uses of this you don't need the hyphen (greenish, girlish as you mentioned in a comment) but in some cases it really helps to have it as it sets the suffix apart and makes it more evident, which makes sense since when you do say it, you're probably going to accent it more strongly.

Catija
  • 25,400
  • 4
  • 63
  • 95