There is a reoccuring phenomenon happening in the mass media recently. The media is constanly rewritting the word Miss (as in Miss Universe, Miss of Slovenia…), spelling it with a single S.
I ask you – Are they out of their fucking minds??
and I answer…
Miss comes from the word mistress, indicating a young lady or (originally) an unmarried woman (source dictionary.com). The slovene language adopted this word, mostly because Miss is short and catchy and the slovene word for the same object – GOSPODIČNA – sounds silly (I guess. Cannot find another reason for adopting an english word when you have a perfectly decent slovene equivalent).
Recently, that word is being mauled and rewritten with a single S. Which is wrong on many levels. For one, MIS does not mean anything neither in slovene or english. In slovene it actually looks like a misspelled word since a slovene word for mouse is MIŠ.
All in all, this looks like another failed attempt of a egomaniac journalists and editors who are trying to keep our language clean. Clean?
It’s a well-established custom in the Slovenian language, when adopting a foreign word, to move slowly from the original spelling to one based mostly on Slovenian habits and rules regarding spelling and pronunciation. Nobody in their right mind would complain about najlon or picerija or pižama or a multitude of others. Why then object to mis instead of miss, once we have become sufficiently familiar with the concept (which we surely have done by now, as this country will soon have more beauty contests than women)?
Miss vs. ‘mis’ is nothing in comparison to CD vs. ‘zgoscenka’. Anyone already invented a DVD ‘po slovensko’?