Literal translation of bad American French :)

Does anyone know what the literal meaning of les chiens chauds is? I'm doing a project on how people make up their own French words when really reffering to something else (in this case, les hot -dogs) and would like any suggestions.

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on December 7, 2010 at 5:22pm

Well, Lynn, this is terribly simple. Chien chaud is just a word-for-word translation of hot dog and doesn't mean a frankfurter sausage.

Bilingual people do that kind of thing all the time, just in fun. I like saying that something is cowly owl -- a deliberately absurd translation of the French vernacular vachement chouette. Then there's cat-water -- a facetious translation of château.