False friends

[ButterflyWings]

Surma can actually just mean death in Finnish as well. It's an old way of saying it but not so old that Finns wouldn't easily understand it - other than that it can mean manslaughter as well (but not murder, murder = murha).

You forgot the best one though:

:finland: hallitus = the government
:estonia: hallitus = rotten/moldy food

Also the Estonian way of saying "Sit next to me" (Istu mu kõrval) sounds really similar as the Finnish "Sit on my d[forum cencor]"... thankfully it only looks like "Sit on my ear" when written.

hehe. This is very true. A bit like rathaus in German (means city-hall).

and as for surma, yes it's an old word where Estonian and Finnish have diverged. All dealing with the happy topic of death.

NetMOT says the following:

1. väkivaltainen t. tapaturmainen kuolema, hengenmeno. Joukkosurma. Usean ihmisen surma onnettomuudessa. Saada surmansa kuolla onnettomuudessa t. väkivaltaisesti. Maanjäristyksessä surmansa saaneet. Viisi ihmistä sai surmansa. Useita siviilejä sai surmansa [paremmin: useat siviilit saivat surmansa t. useita siviilejä kuoli] tulituksessa.
Kuv. Joutua surman suuhun. Ei suurin t. suin surminkaan [= ei kuolemakseenkaan, ei millään ehdolla] suostunut tulemaan.
2. oik. lieventävien asianhaarojen vallitessa tehty tappo.
3. surmaaja, tuhoaja; perikato, tuho, häviö, loppu, turma. Kissa on hiiren surma. Uusi lumi [on keväällä] vanhan surma SL.
4. Musta surma ks. musta 2.

[Auleliel]

Recently I have been seeing the word コク (sounds like "coke" to my English ears) on a lot of cans of coffee in the vending machines here, and I have been wondering why anyone would mix coffee with cola. It turns out that コク means "strong delicious taste", so I can stop avoiding that now.

[viola]

Yesterday I accidentally learned that "water" said with a thick New Jersey accent sounds like the Finnish word for prostitute.

[Krisse Kovacs]

Is that count when a word was taken from an other languageand gives a different meaning?

Because the german word, schmuzig means dirty or something, but in Hungarian (smucig?) means greedy

[JoB]

A couple months back, I walked by a sign advertising a dog food shop, focusing on something called "B.A.R.F.". Insert puzzled look here, but I had no idea what to make of that.

Today, I visited another pet store and noticed a couple books with "BARF" in their title. Turns out that it's an acronym for "biologisch artgerechte Rohfütterung" (biological, species-appropriate raw (food) feeding), and sort of the newest semi-esoteric "science" in full-tilt (single) pet care. So now you can fill a bookshelf with books on how to feed your cat or dog proper BARF.

Should I ever find out which punster passed the pet enthusiasts that terminology suggestion, I'll hand him a dozen medals.

[DancingRanger]

So as you guys may or may not know I'm writing a Fanfic, and I need help with a list of words that would crop up fairly commonly in the SSSS crews conversions and be confusing to an English speaker. Kinda like 'they're talking about what now?' And vice-versa. Thank you in advance!

[Solovei]

So as you guys may or may not know I'm writing a Fanfic, and I need help with a list of words that would crop up fairly commonly in the SSSS crews conversions and be confusing to an English speaker. Kinda like 'they're talking about what now?' And vice-versa. Thank you in advance!

You would primarily have to watch out for Swedish/Danish/Norwegian; being Germanic languages, they share a fair number of common origins with English. I have this list, it might offer a good starting point:

Swedish-English false friends

Finnish is from a totally different language family an shouldn't have too much in common as far as I know.

[DancingRanger]

You would primarily have to watch out for Swedish/Danish/Norwegian; being Germanic languages, they share a fair number of common origins with English. I have this list, it might offer a good starting point:

Swedish-English false friends

Finnish is from a totally different language family an shouldn't have too much in common as far as I know.

Thanks Solo!

[SasanachAerach]

When a lot of people first learn there is an Irish language their first reaction (after the argument where they try to convince you that your language is either dead or just a dialect of English) is to ask to say something simple, like "My name is X", the Irish for that is "X is ainm dom" but you can never convince someone to say it because "dom" (for/to me) is pronounced the same as dumb, and they assume you are trying to trick them into insulting themselves, so you have to tell them the much longer and more formal "Is é X an t-ainm atá orm", or the fairly terse sounding "Is mise X". Focal is another one which confuses anglophones who mishear it as the well known curse, when really it just means word/sentence. Ceap (pronounced cap) means think, not cap. Scoil means school and not skull (that got me when I first moved here and though the Irish had an extremely morbid passion for skulls in their education system). Dia means God, not day as many Spaniards think, and Dé also means god (in the genitive) though it is pronounced the same as the English word day, the word for day being Lá or Lae.

[JoB]

Finnish is from a totally different language family an shouldn't have too much in common as far as I know.

Non sequitur, I'm afraid. Just because Finnish and (say) Swedish cannot possibly have a word "X" in common, complete with etymology and meaning, doesn't mean that they could not possibly have a false friend "X" between them which just happens to sound / be spelt the same.

(I don't speak a word of Finnish, so I can't give you an actual example, but I guess that a glowworm being a "kiiltomato" (huh, what now!?) gets close enough for discomfort.)

[shaeira]

So this is a story one of my teachers told our class about differences in our dialects :
 So we have this word "sili" which means chili pepper but in another dialect it means pen*s (the male genitalia ). So my teacher visited a friend who speaks that dialect (its basically the same as ours except for certain words) and she saw a chili pepper plant and commented ," Look how ripe that sili is. So red and big !"

[Laufey]

So as you guys may or may not know I'm writing a Fanfic, and I need help with a list of words that would crop up fairly commonly in the SSSS crews conversions and be confusing to an English speaker. Kinda like 'they're talking about what now?' And vice-versa. Thank you in advance!

I'm a bit late to the party but there's actually one false friends couple that might be very, very usable in SSSS-verse! Kissa means a cat in Finnish... but "to pee" in Swedish (why yes I'm easily amused how did you know).

[Auleliel]

The Korean word for 15 (십오 /shibo/) sounds like the Japanese word for death (死亡 /shibō/). I am tempted to go around Tokyo counting in Korean...

[Fenris]

So as you guys may or may not know I'm writing a Fanfic, and I need help with a list of words that would crop up fairly commonly in the SSSS crews conversions and be confusing to an English speaker. Kinda like 'they're talking about what now?' And vice-versa. Thank you in advance!

I did do some work which included a canadian and some americans, so I know of some.

One is 'Bad', although mostly in written form. It means 'bathroom' in Norwegian at least, and also to swim. You got some names that sound odd/funny in English, like Odd and Randi.

Another is 'Pimpe' which has nothing to do with prostitution, but refers to drinking alcohol (often alone).

Then you got 'Korn' which means grains, while corn is 'mais'.

'Kondisjon' means physical stamina/fitness, rather than condition.

'Kraft' has nothing to do with crafting or suchlike, meaning 'power' generally of a physical or electrical type.

'Gift' could maybe qualify, although its generally pronounced 'jift', but it means either poison or marriage.

'Hell' has nothing to do with any afterlife, but rather means luck. In a similar vein, 'lykke' has only coincidental relation to luck since it means happiness.

'Mappe' is a folder rather than a map.

'Offer' in Norwegian means a sacrifice, rather than a proposal.


A lot of these should work for swedish and danish as well, but can't say for sure.

[Krisse Kovacs]

when the english cursing word, probably the most know sounds like you say "fák(, juh)" in hungarian, which just mean "trees(, sheep)"

if you say it could accidentally you can add, "I said trees in hungarian" xD