What do you associate with the word "backshop"?

[Torsten]

Hi,

What do you think of when you hear the word "backshop"? In German the word is made up of the German word "backen" which means "bake" and the English word "shop". So a German "backshop" is supposed to be a modern bakery that sells its products through its own shop.
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[Innominata]

Hi, Torsten! Very interesting interpretation really According to my associating "backshop" is some factory that makes certain product which can be sold in "frontshop". Such a tangled treatment. Like "frontoffice" and "backoffice".

[Haihao]

Hi Torsten,

So interesting a combined word it is! Without looking it up with a dictionary, my first response to it would be:

1. A workshop in a backyard, in the English or Western way of thinking.
2. A store on a side street, in the Japanese way of thinking.

Haihao

[Mister Micawber]

.
'Backshop' means nothing to me, but what you describe may be related to 'backdoor sales'-- although the latter has a negative connotation.

If you are looking for an English equivalent, I believe that your bakery operation is just 'direct selling'.
.
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[Jamie (K)]

The word "backshop" also means nothing to me, and sounds like it was invented by a foreigner. When I saw it, I understood it to mean the rear portion of a factory, like a little room with a lot of power tools, where quick, simple machine repairs are done.

I actually tried looking up "backshop" in a dictionary. It's not there, and I see right now that the Safari browser's spellchecker underlines it in red as a misspelling. However, my dictionary did have "bakeshop", which means the same thing as "Backshop" in German.

[Stew.t.]

Hi all

As Jamie pointed out a "backshop" would be in the direction of workshop or could be a contraction of back of the shop, as in they are working in.............

It could be used although not predominately, as after all we have back office. So why not. A language needs to develop. As for bakery, they tend to have a lot od delivered produce, and the ovens are at the front and near the counter, so a backshop in a bakery would not really occur so often.

cheers stew.t
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[Yankee]

[Stew.t.]

Hi Yankee

I think you missed my humour there.
I was not serious about introducing "backshop", certainly not for bakery.
Could be used for the back workshop in contract to the front retail end area.

"Handy" could make it you never know, its is used in areas in Japan. I quite like the word even if it is already used for handyman. Maybe we could use a different word for that instead.

What could we suggest?

After all maintenance seems now to be facility management.
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[Yankee]

Hi Stew

I was reacting to what I thought might be misinterpreted by non-native speakers and I was also responding to Torsten's question.

One thing I encountered quite often in Germany was the erroneous assumption that English (or English-sounding) words used in German must have exactly the same meaning in English and/or are also used in English. I also encountered the mindset, for example, that English non-count nouns that frequently end up with an 's' on the end when used by a German in a German text can also be pluralized that same way in an English text.

Germans have incorporated quite a few English words into everyday German. Unfortunately, such words are often no longer English, but rather a form of "Denglisch" and can only be "correctly" understood in a German context.

[Jamie (K)]

[Yankee]

Hi Jamie

Oh, oh, don't get me started on the word 'mobbing'!
I've had many frustrating discussions with Germans about that word. It very often required quite a bit of very long and patient conversation to convince them that it has a different meaning in English. Some were never convinced. Some of the companies I worked at actually refused to accept my advice that the English versions their HR documentation should not use the word 'mobbing'.

[Jamie (K)]

I've always found it a bit freakish when supposedly more "cosmopolitan" Europeans insist that English must have some phony word that it doesn't have.

Maybe my experience is limited, but I've never seen an American argue with a Spanish teacher over the fact that "embarazada" means pregnant, not embarrassed. I've never seen an American tell a German teacher she doesn't know what she's talking about when instructing that "aktuell" means current, and not actual.

I have never seen an American insist to a German teacher that "Stopsemfromfloppin" is the real German word for brassiere, or that some other weird, made-up word should be part of German.

So, if Americans are so stupid about other languages, why does it always seem to be Europeans who make these stupid arguments, and why always about English? Do they ever argue that Germans and Spaniards should be able to make up their own French words?

[Haihao]

[NinaZara]

Yes, Haihao. I thought it was weird too but I just gave it the benefit of the doubt.

Anyway I was chatting on the MSN messenger with someone who likes to correct my English and I used the abbreviation HP for "Handphone" and the good soul told me not to use HP because it reminded the person of Hewlett Packard.

Apparently according to this person, HP is used in Hong Kong or in China. People in Malaysia use it too. But now I have stopped using it, I prefer to say mobile phone nowadays.

Nina

[Haihao]

To me, HP would mostly refer to 'hit by pitch' (baseball) other than Hewlett Packard and high pressure, but I came aross it too as to mean cellphone by Chinese speaking people as you mentioned. I 100% agree to your opinion, Nina, that it seems a little overburdened for HP to expand its range to 'handphone' in common English.

Haihao