So, somebody - I already forgot who, sorry - posted about the latest episode of Severance

[conuly]

and pointed out that it was directed by somebody from Quebec, which is (apparently) unsurprising, as it seemed Quebecish. That's my word, not theirs, and that's why I am posting, because as soon as the word "Quebecish" popped into my head so did "Quebecy". And, for that matter, so did "It's a very Quebec sort of episode", which is a different way to form the same adjective.

Which left me wondering how, exactly, English speakers know which formation to pick when neologizing. This is not a question you can simply answer, unfortunately, because whatever you think you're doing, you're bound to be wrong when you try to explain it.

Still, I'll take everybody's wild guesses and speculation, just for kicks.

Comments

[james]

My take is that the brain is doing more work than we're aware of, and it's probably doing a 'most times when a word ends like this, it's been neologized this way' and sticking the 'standard' on it, which may be how you get regional differences. (I.e., grow up hearing the same sorts of words.)

But you aren't really doing this consciously, in the same way you don't visualise the numbers when doing the math to figure out if you can cross the street before the car hits you.

This could also explain why sometimes you'd use a foreign word (or word style) - if your area has a large enough group of folks who speak that language that live there, you might pick up their words when someone a town over might not have picked up that word.

So maybe it's the sort of thing you could consider to be slang? Or explained in the same way as slang.

[conuly]

Yeah, probably, but I want a more satisfying answer.

[james]

Well, that's the only thing I can think of, and you said you wanted to be entertained with guesses, so I tried!

[conuly]

You did :D