Amusing language barriers and your favorite words

[Anarchemitis]

Bastion: A Type of fortification built as a strong point in a wall. I think it's just a darn cool word.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

I know that English is a bastard child of language, but you claim that we have common use Arabic words? Anything other than the word "assassin" or things that you would order at a restaurant?

hashish which is where assassin comes from
alchemy
admiral
alcohol
algebra
algorithm

i could go on but here's a list of more

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arabic_loanwords_in_English

the arabs also gave us our numbering system, well minus the 0, that's from india

there's also a bunch of hebrew in english too, tho it is a cousin of arabic anyways, both are part of the same language family

 

[jim_doki]

language barrier:
Here in australia Thongs are something you wear on your feet

words that sound dirty but aren't:
Spelunking
Wankel Rotary Engine

 

[cleverlymadeup]

fanny is another one

in the uk it's a woman's kitty
in north america it's your butt

another word i love that sounds dirty but isn't is dongle

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

language barrier:
Here in australia Thongs are something you wear on your feet

And libel is something on a bottle of wine.

America/English has lots of words that really don't mean the same. Fag/Bum/Chips/Crisps.

and south american do you mean maya or portugese?

I actually meant Louisiana type South, shugah.

Brummy is from Birmingham. If you're English, it's an annoying nasal whine. (Sorry any Brummies here, but it REALLY is.). Can't think of any actors who use it.

(It's why Dave Prowse (with his Dorset accent) wasn't given Vader's speaking part as well)

Chinese signature on credit cards in 'heiroglyphics'.

I know it's not heiro as that's Egyptian, but it's very funny to see them used as signatures; because you can imagine it's the safest signature in the world.

But English is the most bastardised language ever. And it makes NO sense. Forgetting the British 'U' and -ter/-tre; cough = Kof: bough = Bow or Bra: though = tho: enough = Enuff.

And pronunciation differs if you move 10 miles in any direction.

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

But English is the most bastardised language ever. And it makes NO sense. Forgetting the British 'U' and -ter/-tre; cough = Kof: bough = Bow or Bra: though = tho: enough = Enuff.

And pronunciation differs if you move 10 miles in any direction.

I've actually been listening to an MP3 lecture course on the history of the English language. The Great Vowel Shift [http://facweb.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/] fascinates me. All those weird spellings with the extra consonants, like "knight" and "enough" used to make more sense because they were actually pronounced the way they were spelled.

 

[Saskwach]

Scree: Small, loose rocks that gather on a slope and often at the bases of cliffs.
That is one specific type of gravel.
Striae: Fine, longitudinal lines, grooves or ridges for example on or under bark.
Concatenate: to link together as in a chain.
Bowdlerise: edit by omitting or modifying parts considered indelicate; "bowdlerize a novel".
Stevedore: Port worker engaged in the stowage of cargo in the hold of a ship or contractors employed in general loading.
And has anyone else noticed that languages put some of their best words to work on the subject of sex?

 

[Evilbunny]

the funny part about english is it's the hardest lang to learn on the planet, there's no family it belongs to, it is equally latin based as it is tuetonic with some hebrew and arabic tossed in for good measure

Really? I'd think it's actually pretty easy to learn to speak. I agree with you when it comes to learning how to write it, but we only have like two or three verb forms (I run, you run, he runs, we run, they run) as opposed to spanish, which has like six. Our adjectives don't change form when describing singular and plural nouns (the nice girl, the nice girls), like they do in a lot of romance languages. And finally, our inflection doesn't really affect the meaning of words, like it does in chinese.

 

[Pzest]

the funny part about english is it's the hardest lang to learn on the planet, there's no family it belongs to, it is equally latin based as it is tuetonic with some hebrew and arabic tossed in for good measure

Really? I'd think it's actually pretty easy to learn to speak. I agree with you when it comes to learning how to write it, but we only have like two or three verb forms (I run, you run, he runs, we run, they run) as opposed to spanish, which has like six. Our adjectives don't change form when describing singular and plural nouns (the nice girl, the nice girls), like they do in a lot of romance languages. And finally, our inflection doesn't really affect the meaning of words, like it does in chinese.

A quick Google search of something like "most difficult languages to learn" turns up plenty of good articles. English seems to be one of the harder languages, Spanish and Chinese seem to be among the easier ones. According to the British Foreign Office, Basque is the hardest.

 

[Evilbunny]

Well, yeah. But on September 27th a linguistic consortium in Paris has come up with following results:

the easiest languages to learn:

10. mongolese

09. aramaic

08. greek

07. norwegian

06. italian

05. romanian

04. croatian

03. bulgarian

02. english

01. the easiest language to learn is spanish

the most difficult languages: (linguists examined complexity of grammar, syntax, historical development, pronunciation, orthography, letter styles, signs, etc.)

10. german

09. french

08. chinese

07. japanese

06. korean

05. persian

04. arabic

03. finnish

02. hungarian

01. the most difficult language is Slovak

So I'm starting to think this is too subjective to judge properly since it has a lot to do with where you are from and what your mother tongue is.

 

[The Franco]

One that always makes me laugh is when Chevrolet tried to bring their Nova car to the south american market. (Nova doesn't mean exploding star in spanish, but translates into "doesn't go," which is a perfect name for any car in my opinion)

But one that always confuses the shit out of people is the only german phrase I legitimately know: Aufrichtung Kobold. Long story short, its a translation into german of a phrase I made up after watching Lord of the Rings, "Boner Troll." But the funniest thing about it is that it literally translates into "erection monster" which, to me, is way funnier than "boner troll"

 

[Pzest]

So I'm starting to think this is too subjective to judge properly since it has a lot to do with where you are from and what your mother tongue is.

Then there's also different difficulties depending on the extent to which you want to know a language i.e. the difference between functional knowledge of a language, fluency, and mastery.

 

[werepossum]

I'd have thought Basque one of the hardest, since if I remember correctly it's not related to any other language. But the Asian languages are probably hard too if you're not a native Asian speaker because of the inflection changes as Evilbunny pointed out. I'd also guess that any time you try a language with a difference scrypt, say, Romance to Chinese, that would add a level of difficulty since you'd be learning a new alphabet at the same time.

The best in language barriers I've heard is Coca-Cola when they moved into China and couldn't sell product. Turned out Coca-Cola in Chinese translated to "Bite the wax tadpole." They then changed the name slightly to translate into "Let the mouth rejoice" and sales took off.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

One that always makes me laugh is when Chevrolet tried to bring their Nova car to the south american market. (Nova doesn't mean exploding star in spanish, but translates into "doesn't go," which is a perfect name for any car in my opinion)

Urban Myth! [http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp]

The best in language barriers I've heard is Coca-Cola when they moved into China and couldn't sell product. Turned out Coca-Cola in Chinese translated to "Bite the wax tadpole." They then changed the name slightly to translate into "Let the mouth rejoice" and sales took off.

Urban Myth, but closer to the truth [http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/tadpole.asp]

 

[Wazzelbe]

My Chinese foreign exchange friends say that Coca Cola is pronounced "Kuh-kuh kuh-luh (that's the best I can do without pinyin)". The Chinese characters used in this pronunciation are basically their own advertisement, spelling out something like "Everything's-good Cola", which can be thought of as "If you drink this cola, everything will be good."

And LG? The Phone or whatever? "Life's Good"? Korean company. The American branch just took the letters and made something with them. I've no clue what significance "LG" has for Koreans.

Finally, "Ne ge": "Na ge" (nah guh) is Chinese for "This (something)", but slang causes it to be pronounced as "Ne ge" (neh guh) rather than "Na ge".
This basically wound up with me thinking the foreign exchange students spent much of their days addressing themselves and each other in a way I had not expected; "Nega, PLEASE!"
I finally asked and got set straight on that one.

Also, I asked, and they think "PIN number" is silly, too.
Oh! But they like "Badass".

 

[Limasol]

One i like to use:
Disasteriffic - A state of things that are disastrous but not out of ones control providing they don't ignore the problem.
(not a real word to my knowledge)

 

[werepossum]

The best in language barriers I've heard is Coca-Cola when they moved into China and couldn't sell product. Turned out Coca-Cola in Chinese translated to "Bite the wax tadpole." They then changed the name slightly to translate into "Let the mouth rejoice" and sales took off.

Urban Myth, but closer to the truth [http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/tadpole.asp]

Dang, I hate it when I fall for those. I should have known Coca-Cola was too smart to do that. But it's even stranger than an actual Chinese shopkeeper would advertise "Bite the wax tadpole" on his own. (I blame government schools.)

 

[CodeChrono]

It never seeems to amaze me the word "Engrish" being said by various languages. I know it's not their fault, but it just really makes me giggle.

Favorite word? : Kayak-Paddle

 

[cleverlymadeup]

Really? I'd think it's actually pretty easy to learn to speak. I agree with you when it comes to learning how to write it, but we only have like two or three verb forms (I run, you run, he runs, we run, they run) as opposed to spanish, which has like six. Our adjectives don't change form when describing singular and plural nouns (the nice girl, the nice girls), like they do in a lot of romance languages. And finally, our inflection doesn't really affect the meaning of words, like it does in chinese.

well actually spanish has latin, romanian, italian and french to borrow from, they are all romanitic languages and share the same base, french/italian/spanish are almost the same language, one or two letters different in a lot of word

english also has something like 500K words, the next closest isn't even half that

english has strong roots in saxon/tuetonic (german), gaelic/celtic, latin, arabic, hebrew. it has no family it fully belongs to, so there's no language for it to borrow on if you are learning it for the first time

english also has a LOT of grammatical rules to it and a lot subtle ones as well that change the meaning of the sentence.

frankly most of the people who say it is easy to learn are the native speakers and frankly most of them don't know how to speak the language themselves all that good.

and german is actually pretty easy to learn, teaching myself it right now, mostly cause the course i'm doing shows the similarities between english and german.

it's language bases that are foreign to us, such as hebrew, arabic, japanese, cantonese/mandorin that have different pronunciations and sound structures that make it difficult. like arabic and pretty sure hebrew as well have a couple syllables that are throat sounds and kinda sound like you are clearing your throat or have something stuck in it.

also i call into question that list because there is no chinese language, china has several different languages, the 2 main being mandorin (northern what Jet Li speaks) and catonese (southern and what Jackie Chane and Bruce Lee speak)

 

[cleverlymadeup]

M
Finally, "Ne ge": "Na ge" (nah guh) is Chinese for "This (something)", but slang causes it to be pronounced as "Ne ge" (neh guh) rather than "Na ge".
This basically wound up with me thinking the foreign exchange students spent much of their days addressing themselves and each other in a way I had not expected; "Nega, PLEASE!"
I finally asked and got set straight on that one.

Russel Peters has a sketch about that word when he was in china, from what he was saying it's the chinese version of "ummm" and "like" well at least how the teenage girls use the word "like"

it's a darn funny sketch, well Russel himself is pretty funny