Hey, mone aster ene emtel/frigidaire!
Even today, it does happen that people use the word “Emtel” instead of “mobile”. Just like Emtel, there are a few other brands which are wrongly used in the everyday life of loads of people :
Despite that the guy uses another mobile operator, he might still say : “Prend mo numero emtel” lol.
Another example :
“Hey, tire sa depi FRIGIDAIRE“
“Frigidaire” is definitely not the creole equivalent of Fridge or ‘Refrigerateur’. Many might ignore this, but Frigidaire is in fact, a make, one just like hundred others.
But as usual, we Mauritians, we tend to invent our own words, and this raises something in my mind : The ‘official creole vocabulary’. Word Creation/Interpretation/Translation? That gives food for though.
Anyways, coming back to the topic, this is nothing new. Correct me if I am wrong, but this is somewhat related to “Cannibalization” in the marketing jargon. Briefly, cannibalization here is a situation whereby a product benefits from the market share of another product (by getting better sales for example) while the initial product gets no added value. In our example, the words “Frigidaire” or “Emtel” are used to refer to other different products at the expense of the real brands, i.e. “Frigidaire” and “Emtel” get nothing in return.
1. Do you come across people using these words?
2. Have you any other examples which you can quote?
