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Strange coincidences | ||
Tags: Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| sayariza Triglot Groupie Indonesia Joined 6763 days ago 42 posts - 54 votes  Speaks: Malay, Indonesian*, DutchC1 Studies: EnglishC2 | Message 9 of 44 23 May 2006 at 7:14pm | IP Logged |
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Nada = nope (Spanish) = intonation (indonesian)
belang = interest (dutch) = spot (indonesian) I know that at this moment I write 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vilas Pentaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6960 days ago 531 posts - 722 votes Speaks: Spanish, Italian*, English, French, Portuguese | Message 10 of 44 12 August 2006 at 7:42am | IP Logged |
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There is an american brand of pc games called Sega and it is advertised in Italy.
In Italian sega means saw but also means "masturbation". It is very funny when in the commercial is written something like "enjoy your Sega games" 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Frisco Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6856 days ago 380 posts - 398 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Italian, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 11 of 44 12 August 2006 at 3:36pm | IP Logged |
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Here's something I realized recently:
"peru" (Portuguese) = turkey (bird) and Peru (country) "turkey" (English) = turkey (bird) and Turkey (country) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 44 12 August 2006 at 4:18pm | IP Logged |
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According to Etymonline:
turkey 1541, "guinea fowl" (Numida meleagris), imported from Madagascar via Turkey, by Near East traders known as turkey merchants. So, there is a relationship between the bird and the country. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Alfonso Octoglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 6861 days ago 511 posts - 536 votes Speaks: Biblical Hebrew, Spanish*, French, English, Tzotzil, Italian, Portuguese, Ancient Greek Studies: Nahuatl, Tzeltal, German | Message 13 of 44 12 August 2006 at 4:19pm | IP Logged |
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burro: it means "donkey" in Spanish and "butter" in Italian.
Edited by Alfonso on 12 August 2006 at 4:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 14 of 44 16 August 2006 at 7:46am | IP Logged |
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It's not the same kind of coincidence, but I thought this was funny. In Japanese, ageru (揚げる) means both "fry" (food) and "fly" (a kite). It's an amusing pair of meanings, considering how the two English words would be confused anyway by most Japanese.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ydrwsdu07 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6547 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, German, Italian | Message 15 of 44 26 December 2006 at 12:51am | IP Logged |
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I'm not sure what the origin of this is. But in Hungarian the word for "who" is "ki" reminding me of "chi" and "qui" in Italian and French. Also the Hungarian word for "house" is "haz" (with an accent on the 'a'.) Also I find it interesting that although Hungarian is not Indo-European, the pronouns for "you" and "we" (te, ti, mi) look like it (particularly Slavic) maybe somehow the words were borrowed. I'm not sure. I just started studying the language today.
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 16 of 44 18 January 2007 at 6:28am | IP Logged |
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As earlier stated, single and even double syllable words aren't really that strange coincidences. If you take two languages with somewhat similar sounds in them, and look at the thousands of monosyllabic words in them, it'd be an amazing coincidence if there weren't any duplicates at all.
Here's a more surprising coincidence, at least in my book. It's not really a word similarity, but rather a grammar likeness. In many indoeuropean languages (at least Swedish, English and French) you can express a past tense by using the auxillary verb "to have". English: "I have done", Swedish: "Jag har gjort", French: "J'ai fait". This isn't too weird, as they're all related. But the fact that a negative past action in Mandarin is also expressed with the "to have" verb is more surprising, at least to me. "I haven't done" in Mandarin is "Wo3 mei2 you3 zuo4", literally "I not have do". As one of those not really surprising, but still pretty funny coincidences, there's always the wonderful Honda Fitta, which was about to be launched in Sweden, when the makers realized their error (as "fitta" is a vulgar Swedish (and Danish and Norwegian, I think) term for the female genitalia). The car was rebaptized Honda Jazz in the Nordic market, but there are still tons of jokes around it. A clipout of an interview in Swedish with some Honda hotshot is availible at http://jalsbo.com/bus/hondafitta.html, along with a number of cheerful slogans from witty Swedes, one of which also makes reference to the -- from a Swedish perspective -- hilarious German auto shop "Auto Knull". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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