Note 72 — Chapter XV · CAUSES OF CHANGE—continued

Even in speaking a foreign language one may unconsciously apply phonetic correspondences; a countryman of mine thus told me that he once, in his anger at being charged an exorbitant price for something, exclaimed: “Das sind doch unblaue preise!”—coining in the hurry the word unblaue for the Danish ublu (shameless), because the negative prefix un- corresponds to Dan. u-, and au very often stands in German where Dan. has u (haus = hus, etc.). On hearing his own words, however, he immediately saw his mistake and burst out laughing.