Dream here

Some weeks ago it struck me that when electric cars were to get widely adopted, a glorious part of language would get deprecated. I live near Antwerp in Belgium, we speak Flemish (Dutch with a twist). While there are Dutch terms for car parts, every local car mechanic tends to use, at least some, French terminology. The nice thing about it is that they are French words, pronounced in a Flemish way. Some words are not French at all, but look French in some way.

Because of this part of language about the fade out, I decided to already start compiling a list. Maybe I’ll use it for something sometime. Thanks to all contributors who replied to my tweet, to be honest – I learned a lot just looking up the terms I didn’t know myself!

• Vis platinées
• Joint de culasse
• Carburateur
• Catalysateur
• Chappement
• Bougie
• Embraillage
• Villebrequin
• Vitessenbak
• Amortisseur
• Piston
• Démarreur
• Alternateur
• Bobine
• Boîte
• Bielles

Under debate whether they’d actually go away when EV’s get adopted (they probably won’t) but mentioning them anyway:

• Silentblokken
• Jantes
• Intercooler
• Radiateur

I had this list lying around for a while, but reading Anab Jain’s tweet motivated me to put it online.

I could imagine an exhibit about future mobility where I’d be crying over the loss of local language and heritage … obviously recognising that the combustion engine was never a good idea in the first place.