General > Language Board
False friends
zetkaj:
False friends are great! I mean, they're awfully confusing, but fun.
There's probably a ton of them, but ones I remember now (from Polish) are: dres, which means tracksuit; fart, which is a rather rarely used word for luck; smoking, meaning a tuxedo. The word for hangover, kac, is pronounced similarly to German Katze...at least similarly enough to laugh at it :d'
--- Quote from: Haiz on May 30, 2015, 05:35:36 PM ---edit: hang on, remembered another one! The czech word for snot, "sopel", sounds a lot like the norwegian word for garbage, "søppel". Not too alike, but it lead to my little brother once yelling "I DON'T HAVE GARBAGE IN MY NOSE" at my grandma once
--- End quote ---
It is the same (I guess?) as the Polish sopel, though. Which means icicle.
On a related note:my big confusion as a kid was the word jahoda, which means a strawberry in Czech, but is almost identical to Polish word for blueberry (jagoda). I spent some time wondering why is this blueberry icecream pink.
Ahh, I wish I could remember more! I like confusing things.
Fenris:
Bæsj. In Norwegian, it means poop. In swedish, it means beer. Cue jokes about the quality of swedish beer.
Auleliel:
In Japanese, /consent/ (コンセント) means electrical outlet, /home/ (ホム) means train station platform, and /punk/ (パンク) means flat tire. These supposedly are all loan words from English...
(I put what it sounds like to an English speaker in // and the Japanese spelling in (), in case that wasn't clear.)
Krisse Kovacs:
Hungarian-swedish stuffs?
in Swedish, Öl means Beer.
but in Hungarian Öl means “it kills”
in Swedish, Kaka means Cake
but in Hungarian, Kaka means Poop
Learning swedish is so much fun, however the bra, fart, slut and so on are so well swedish (or scandinavian) words.
Ando "here" means testicle in hungarian
Daéa Reina:
--- Quote from: Ana Nymus on May 30, 2015, 08:24:27 PM ---Ooh, I know a Spanish one! "Embarazada" sounds like "embarassed", but it really means "pregnant". That was a fun Spanish class when we all found out about it (after having thought it was a cognate for years). :P
--- End quote ---
Yes! This one!
I mean, "embarazada" (spanish) and "embaraçada" (portuguese) sound almost EXACTLY the same way. But in portuguese it really means "embarassed". This has been a great source for jokes in my family. XD
I need to make a list of spanish/portuguese false friends: there's a lot. Mainly because they sound a little alike, and most foreign people think it's all the same thing. And portuguese and spanish speakers must remind them that no, they're DEFINITELY not the same thing.
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