To be fair, sometimes the hybrids can be fantastic: there is, or was, a lounge bar in Berlin called “Scotch and Sofa”, a brilliant name, but not something a native speaker would come up with; couldn’t say exactly why I think that. I quite like “Handy” for cellphone too.

My difficulty isn’t so much with “Nooduitgang” as with “Notausgang”. One quickly learns in any German city’s streets that “Ausgang” means “Exit”, but it may be worthwhile to keep in mind that “Notausgang” doesn’t mean “Not an exit”.

The Anglophone Latin preference doesn’t always serve us well. In English, Freud’s plain “es” und “Ich” wound up as “Id” and “Ego”. One might surmise that he would have used Latin if he’d meant to.

Bad Jim, I suppose “emergency” is understood in most “exit” signs, but is it really a difference in the languages that causes it to be omitted from the English sign and not the Dutch one? And is plain “uitgang” never found?

Yes, but in the US, signs point to “Elevator,” while in Amsterdam they point tersely to “Lift.”

I don’t think this is it. I think the only reason it’s distressing is because it’s part of what is seen as a very likely, if gradual, death of their language in favor of English. Educated speakers of any language will allways have there pet peeves.

Romance languages work differently. An educated Romance language speaker expects to know the root of any word, and how that word relates to all other words with the same root. All words have a family, and each family’s pedigree is apparent. A foreign word sticks out like an ugly, unwanted orphan.

This is why educated Romance language speakers – the French especially, but also Italians and Spaniards – find the adoption of English vocabulary so distressing, and also why native English speakers find their distress unintelligible, and therefore ridiculous.

PS- Mike, you’ll be interested to know that “cookie” came into American English from the Dutch settlers of the Hudson Valley. So when cookie eventually replaces biscuit entirely – as it will do – you can take comfort in the fact that it’s a European word after all.

PPS - I put that “do” in there to make you feel comfortable.

See Tarquin’s fine meditation on the difference between a fiasco, a debacle, and a fuck-up.

An example to illustrate the difference:
A movie is a “flop” if it does poorly at the box office but there are no other lasting consequences.
A movie is a “fiasco” if it does poorly at the box office, the studio executives responsible for approving it are fired, its failure becomes a staple of late-night comedy, and the actors find it very hard to get other parts.