Author Topic: False friends  (Read 32682 times)

Silent Fox

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Re: False friends
« Reply #60 on: June 07, 2015, 07:50:34 PM »
I remember going to an American store w/my father when I was little, and this little gift store had opened up nearby. Now in English, "gift" means present, while in German, when capitalized, it's poison. Needless to say I got wide-eyed (because I spoke barely any English at the time) and he laughed and explained it me. ;D

I now imagine a sadistic owner selling poisoned chocolates as presents.  >_>
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Krisse Kovacs

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Re: False friends
« Reply #61 on: June 07, 2015, 08:31:20 PM »
Talking of capital cities...

Oslo sounds like 'oszló' in Hungarian, which means 'festering, decaying'.

Or some hungarian places, which seems english words, like Bag or Pest.
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Haiz

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Re: False friends
« Reply #62 on: June 08, 2015, 02:13:54 AM »
I remember going to an American store w/my father when I was little, and this little gift store had opened up nearby. Now in English, "gift" means present, while in German, when capitalized, it's poison. Needless to say I got wide-eyed (because I spoke barely any English at the time) and he laughed and explained it me. ;D

I now imagine a sadistic owner selling poisoned chocolates as presents.  >_>
ahahahaaa in Norwegian, gift can mean BOTH poison AND married, no difference in pronounciation or spelling, how's that for a false friend
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Pessi

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Re: False friends
« Reply #63 on: June 08, 2015, 05:36:05 AM »
I think it's the same with Swedish, at least our elementary school Swedish teacher told as some kind of joke about getting the two mixed in an official document. Something about a mistake between "ugift", unmarried, and "ugiftig", non-poisonous.
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Silent Fox

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Re: False friends
« Reply #64 on: June 08, 2015, 09:41:56 PM »
ahahahaaa in Norwegian, gift can mean BOTH poison AND married, no difference in pronunciation or spelling, how's that for a false friend
Goodness that is horribly awesome! ;D

And I've got a slightly more mature-tinged one my high school French teacher used to tell us.

There once was an English-speaking girl who was sent on a foreign exchange to France. While eating breakfast with her host? family, she asks to be passed a glass of marmalade and refers to it as wanting the "preservatif", sil vous plais". The folks give her a really weird look, and she doesn't know why. Only later did she find out that she was asking to be passed a condom!
If I remember correctly "confiture" would have been a good choice.
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Pessi

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Re: False friends
« Reply #65 on: June 09, 2015, 02:00:12 AM »
Just remembered a story my mom told about the time she was living in Netherlands in the 70's. She was invited to a party and they were drinking a toast to something and, being a Finn, my mother shouted out loud "kippis!", since that's what we say when toasting. Everyone was looking at her funnily and then they started laughing since in Dutch "kip" is chicken and "pis" is, well, piss.
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Krisse Kovacs

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Re: False friends
« Reply #66 on: June 10, 2015, 05:26:05 AM »
One word with multiple meanings is often in hungarian

Követ követ követ (seems/sounds same words 3 times,  but no)
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Auleliel

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Re: False friends
« Reply #67 on: June 10, 2015, 12:39:15 PM »
One word with multiple meanings is often in hungarian

Követ követ követ (seems/sounds same words 3 times,  but no)
There is a similar thing in English. Any number of the word "buffalo" can be put together to make a grammatically correct sentence, because it has a different meaning as an adjective, noun, and verb. As an adjective it means "from the city of Buffalo, New York". As a noun it means a large animal also known as a bison. And as a verb it has a meaning similar to "bully".
So the sentence " Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo" would mean the same as "Bison from New York bully some other group of bison." I think the most famous example of this kind of sentence has nine words, all "buffalo".
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Snommelp

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Re: False friends
« Reply #68 on: June 10, 2015, 12:46:05 PM »
There is a similar thing in English. Any number of the word "buffalo" can be put together to make a grammatically correct sentence, because it has a different meaning as an adjective, noun, and verb. As an adjective it means "from the city of Buffalo, New York". As a noun it means a large animal also known as a bison. And as a verb it has a meaning similar to "bully".
So the sentence " Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo" would mean the same as "Bison from New York bully some other group of bison." I think the most famous example of this kind of sentence has nine words, all "buffalo".

In that same vein, in Swedish one can ask "får får får?" which translates to "do sheep get sheep?" Apparently it's part of a children's riddle: "Får får får? Nej, får får lamm!" Do sheep get sheep? No, sheep get lambs!
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Laufey

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Re: False friends
« Reply #69 on: June 10, 2015, 12:58:09 PM »
Icelandic joining in with Árni á Á á á á á = Árni from the place Á has a sheep by a river. Declension does funny things in this language...

To break it up: Árni á (preposition) Á (a place called Á) á (the verb eiga, to own, in 3rd person) á (ær = sheep, in accusative) á (preposition) á (= river). Sometimes you see a slightly more grammatically correct version - Árni á Á á á í á, but that kind of ruins the joke a bit (besides using á is not entirely wrong, í and á as prepositions mean pretty much the same thing, it just depends on the verb, use, pure chance, the position of the stars and the speakers' Icelandic ability which one gets used when. :Þ
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Snommelp

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Re: False friends
« Reply #70 on: June 10, 2015, 01:05:20 PM »
...suddenly, the fact that Árni from the prologue decided to go be a shepherd became hilarious.
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JoB

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Re: False friends
« Reply #71 on: June 10, 2015, 05:48:40 PM »
There is a similar thing in English. Any number of the word "buffalo" can be put together to make a grammatically correct sentence
As demonstrated here, and shown for German as well by the same author. :)
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AuthorOfLight

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Re: False friends
« Reply #72 on: June 10, 2015, 06:33:52 PM »
and then, of course, in English you can have 'had' eleven times in a row, all while being grammatically correct. I saw something on Tumblr about this, to the effect of:

James and John were taking an English test, one of the questions of which was whether to use 'had' or 'had had' in a particular sentence. James, while John had had 'had', had had 'had had'. 'had had' had had a better effect on the teacher.

English is a retarded language.
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Re: False friends
« Reply #73 on: June 10, 2015, 07:50:17 PM »
English is a retarded language.

Don't forget about our lovely pronunciation rules. I don't know if this has been posted somewhere else, but here:
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/stuff/english-pronunciation.html
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Krisse Kovacs

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Re: False friends
« Reply #74 on: June 10, 2015, 08:20:09 PM »
English is a retarded language.
Don't forget about our lovely pronunciation rules. I don't know if this has been posted somewhere else, but here:
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/stuff/english-pronunciation.html

english has a pronounciation rule??? I thought it is like "pronounce how you like"

like there is this word "ghoti" which is same pronounced like "fish" because
GH - enough
O - wOmen
TI - pronounciaTIon
it is just a pronounciation joke...

english is the weirdest language of all
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