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Thread: Musings on Language #2
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2012-10-10, 03:15 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
- Gender
Re: Musings on Language #2
I was rather surprised when a bulgarian kid I gave lessons to burst out laughing when I called a curve a curva, which is the italian word for it..
apparently in bulgarian it has to do with women of negotiable affection, as Pratchett puts it.
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2012-10-10, 03:56 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Switzerland
- Gender
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2012-10-10, 04:19 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2006
- Location
- Germany
- Gender
Re: Musings on Language #2
The English word "Gift" is a present. It's also the German word for "Poison".Si non confectus, non reficiat.
The beautiful girl is courtesy of Serpentine
My S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripjat Let's Play! Please give it a read, more than one constant reader would be nice!
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2012-10-10, 04:46 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2010
- Location
- This vicious cabaret
- Gender
Re: Musings on Language #2
Also, the French title of Jaws was "Les dents de la mer", which proved to be a problem when Jaws 2 came out.
I vaguely remember a friend of mine telling me that hey had to change the title completely, but according to IMDB, this is how they circumvented it: "Les dents de la mer, 2e partie". Heh."We need the excuse of fiction to stage what we truly are." ~ Slavoj iek, The Perverts Guide to Cinema
"El bien más preciado es la libertad" ~ Valeriano Orobón Fernández, A las barricadas
"If civilization has an opposite, it is war." ~ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Roguish | We Were Rogue | [3.5] Greek Mythology Variant | [3.5] The Fey Compendium
Avatar by Michael Dialynas
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2012-10-10, 05:03 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2010
Re: Musings on Language #2
I have several Romance-language-speaking friends who often misuse 'his' and 'her'. The problem being that possessive adjectives do use grammatical gender in their various languages, but agreeing with the gender of the thing or person possessed, not the one doing the possessing.
In French, for example, 'son pčre' could be either 'his father' or 'her father', while 'sa mčre' could be either 'his mother' or 'her mother'. This leads them to say things like 'I saw Sarah yesterday. She was with his brother.'
For a similar reason, I often find myself having to stop and think whenever I use 'cuyo' (whose) in Spanish, to make sure it's agreeing with the correct person!
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2012-10-10, 06:46 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2009
- Location
- The land of corn
- Gender
Re: Musings on Language #2
As my Spanish linguistics professor gave it to me, the thing with embarazar is that it originally did mean to be embarrassed. It just got co-opted as a euphemism, and wound up becoming standard in that sense and its original meaning fading away.
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2012-10-10, 07:19 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
- Gender
Re: Musings on Language #2
ah..spanish..
burro is italian for butter.
and spanish for donkey
so..don't ask for donkey on your toast for breakfast