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Bilingual Jokes | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6644 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 9 of 76 07 April 2007 at 5:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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An Englishman, a Frenchman and a German were sitting around, and they started talking about how each of their languages was the most beautiful.
"Just listen," said the Englishman. "Butterfly." "Oh, that is nothing," said the Frenchman, "compared to 'papillon.'" They turned to look at the German, who said, "And what is wrong with 'schmetterling?'" 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6412 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 10 of 76 07 April 2007 at 6:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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In Esperanto, there is a letter that's funny like this. It starts with "Kara mamo kaj papo,", meaning "dear breast and Pope", though "dear mum and dad" was intended. The idea is that Germans are tempted to write "mamo" for "mum" because the German word is "Mama" and "papo" for "dad" because the German word is "Papa" and quite often you can guess the Esperanto word by just adding the typical Esperanto noun ending -o.
This habit can lead to an even funnier mistranslation: the satirical Esperanto magazine "Vola püg'" shows it at http://www.volapug.net/n004/eokurseto004.htm. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6607 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 11 of 76 07 April 2007 at 8:59am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't get it... Any explanations, please? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6644 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 12 of 76 07 April 2007 at 9:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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butterfly = papillon = schmetterling
They're comparing the words for the same thing in the different languages, with the obvious connotation that butterfly and papillon make the thing sound beautiful, while schmetterling makes it sound...German. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6539 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 13 of 76 07 April 2007 at 9:38am | IP Logged | |||||
5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6607 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 14 of 76 08 April 2007 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ah... But I still don't get it. To my ears, 'butterfly' and 'Schmetterling' sound pretty similar and I don't see what makes 'papillon' sound better than 'Schmetterling'. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6644 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 15 of 76 08 April 2007 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
They're just using the words to stand for the entire language, I believe. You could retell the joke with any number of words or sentences. In this case, it looks like they picked an object generally thought of as graceful and attractive (butterfly) which has an unattractive name in German. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| la CAT Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6431 days ago 2 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 76 08 April 2007 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Schmetterling is a gorgeous German word, IMO. Pretty much anything nature-related sounds great in German.
6 persons have voted this message useful |
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