Thread: the love of language

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Excessive speed can make you windy..

Especially in translation.

There's a little country town of about 600 people (often the butt of many jokes) that I used to work just south of.



We had a growing South African community who thought this was just great.
In Afrikaans "Ek het 'n hoender" (which is apparently very similar in pronunciation) means "I've got a chicken"

Then again...
the Afrikaans word for traffic light(signal) translates into English as "Robot".
So just drive down the road and take a left at the 3rd robot.

True story-Some good friends (also from South Carolina) went to Ireland. You may or may not know that the state dance in SC is called The Shag. While visiting an Irish Pub, our friends told some Irish locals how they loved "shagging." You can just imagine the hilarity that ensued.

I lived in Brazil for awhile. In my early days before I had grasp of the language I made a blunder in their language. I called a shirt a condom. I wanted to say, this shirt, instead i said this condom. Now that I think about it, who know how many mistakes I made.

Originally Posted by Mephisto

I called a shirt a condom.

Curious slip of the tongue ! O_o

Originally Posted by dudness

Curious slip of the tongue ! O_o

Everyone was rolling around laughing while I was scratching my head going, hey, hand me the condom please.

I remember seeing a Japanese girl politely try to control her giggling when a German girl introduced herself as Ushi. Ushi is cow in Japanese.

Intercourse, PA.

A quote from Wikipedia sums it up:
Intercourse is a popular site for tourists because of its location in "Amish country" and its sexually suggestive name.