hyperforeign

H4Y4P3E1R1F4O1R1E1I1G2N1

adjective

Resulting from the misapplication of foreign reading rules, such as dropping the ‘t’ in claret.

Scrabble 24

Meanings

adjectivehyperforeign (not comparable)

alternative hyper-foreign

  1. not comparablehuman sciencesResulting from the misapplication of foreign reading rules, such as dropping the ‘t’ in claret.

    Half-literate persons, who try, without proper knowledge, to pronounce a foreign language, are apt to coin hyper-foreign forms, a special kind of hyper-correction.

    1970, Joshua Blau, On Pseudo-Corrections in Some Semitic Languages, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, p 17
    4 more examples

    This relation is further complicated by the literate persons who know something of the foreign pronunciation and orthography. A speaker who knows the spelling jabot and the English form [ˈžɛbow] (for French [žabo]), may revise tête-à-tête [ˈtejteˌtejt] (from French [tɛ:t a tɛːt]) to a hyper-foreign ['tejtetej], without the final [t].

    1933, Leonard Bloomfield, Language, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, page 449

    [pp 309–10] Professor Blau combines his thorough grounding in linguistics with vast knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and related languages to alert scholars to the occurrence of a phenomenon he terms “pseudo-corrections” in Semitic language texts. The term is a general one encompassing largely hyper-corrections which have been studied for some time in the Indo-European languages. Hyper-corrections occur when a speaker, or writer, attempts to correct his own speech by using forms from another speech which he regards as more prestigious, or “higher” than his own. When he uses a “higher” form incorrectly, producing a form that is correct in neither the “higher” nor “lower” speech, the form is called a hyper-correction by linguists. [p 310] Blau indicates that other pseudo-corrections may occur as the result of spelling pronunciations, reversal of sound shifts (regression), and may be found in hyper-foreign form, “inverted calques,” inverse spelling, and “literary pseudo-corrections” which are correct linguistically but incorrect stylistically.

    1973, Milton L. Boyle, Jr, untitled book review in Journal of Biblical Literature, v 92

    Had the norms of Eng. phonotactics been violated by the stimulus words, there would probably have occurred all sorts of further distortions in the responses, cf. the well-known examples of what an impression of ‘foreignness’ can do on a stage of imperfect learning supplied by the English school tradition of trilled r in French, or the Danish hyperforeign pronunciation of German <z> as a voiced [dᶻ].

    1983, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen, “Two Phonological Issues in Germanic”, in Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, volume 18, Copenhagen, page 203

    This playfulness and hyperforeign linguistic behavior is notably absent with [ŋ] in English, a sound that is systematically ruled out in initial position. Thus, speakers do not turn a name like Noam [noʷm] into *Ngoam [ŋoʷm] for any playful purpose or to underscore its seeming alien quality.

    2005, Gregory K. Iverson, Joseph C. Salmons, “Filling the Gap: English Tense Vowel Plus Final /š/”, in Journal of English Linguistics, volume 33, number 3, pages 207–21

Origin

First use appears c. 1933 as hyper-foreign, and c. 1983 as hyperforeign. From hyper- + foreign. Compare hypercorrect and hypercorrection.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

hyperforeign. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hyperforeign

MLA

“hyperforeign.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hyperforeign. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “hyperforeign,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hyperforeign.

Source: hyperforeign on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.