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A comment on The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger. Parent comment

Re:The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger by legerdemain on Thursday September 17, 2020 @07:11PM (#24511079)
Luckily, the name just means "ready to eat" in French.

Perhaps they could have done like Panera and renamed themselves to something that wouldn't upset easily confused American diners?

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Re:The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger by TeMPOraL on Thursday September 17, 2020 @07:34PM (#24511243)
I always misread it the same way and I'm Polish.

English misreads confuse everyone, not just Brits and Americans, because for better or worse, English is the international language. Lingua franca, to make an obvious pun.

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Re:The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger by pbhjpbhj on Friday September 18, 2020 @12:26PM (#24518759)
OT: 'Lingua franca' might be my favourite term. AIUI its a Portuguese term to refer to the 'Frankish language', the Franks being Germanic (not Gallic; somewhat akin to the situation of Angles and Britons) and somehow it's used normally to refer to English [not exclusively ofc, there are many lingua franca].

We could just say 'common tongue', but that's just not the English [Language] way - far too simple.

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Re:The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger by alfu on Friday September 18, 2020 @03:08AM (#24513810)
It confuses me because the accents are 'missing' (prêt-à-manger). I wonder if people more familiar with French are better at interpolating accents.
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