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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
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Kartof
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4816 days ago

391 posts - 550 votes 
Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish
Studies: Danish

 
 Message 2601 of 3737
09 September 2012 at 6:43am | IP Logged 
Julie wrote:
When you take a shower 15 minutes longer than usually because you've just realized there
is a Dutch description on your shower gel you'd bought in Germany. Oh, and a French one.
So much better than Czech and Hungarian (or, alternatively, Lithuanian, Latvian and
Estonian) you usually get on your shower products you buy in Poland (and precisely at the
moment when you're writing this you start to think if learning one of these languages
could be a nice idea after all). But back to the shower... after you've read all
descriptions you start to compare language versions, trying to figure out which is the
original one.


Yea when I was in Bulgaria, they had the same thing! Usually Macedonian, BCMS (oddly with BC and MS separately),
Albanian, Romanian, and sometimes Greek, Slovenian, and/or Turkish
1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 6906 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 2602 of 3737
09 September 2012 at 7:08am | IP Logged 
Kartof wrote:
Julie wrote:
When you take a shower 15 minutes longer than usually because you've just realized there
is a Dutch description on your shower gel you'd bought in Germany. Oh, and a French one.
So much better than Czech and Hungarian (or, alternatively, Lithuanian, Latvian and
Estonian) you usually get on your shower products you buy in Poland (and precisely at the
moment when you're writing this you start to think if learning one of these languages
could be a nice idea after all). But back to the shower... after you've read all
descriptions you start to compare language versions, trying to figure out which is the
original one.


Yea when I was in Bulgaria, they had the same thing! Usually Macedonian, BCMS (oddly with BC and MS separately),
Albanian, Romanian, and sometimes Greek, Slovenian, and/or Turkish


When I shop at the local discount store, I sometimes get a bit of a kick looking at the everyday merchandise under unfamiliar brands (They're unfamiliar since they come from virtually unknown exporters to us on this side of the pond (e.g. Turkey, Philippines, Malaysia, Slovenia)). Of course the description and contents/ingredients' list comes in a languages other than English, French or Spanish (the usual languages for us North Americans) and I sometimes just go through the aisles and randomly look at the products to see if I can make sense of the languages used (I've been able to recognize Arabic, BCMS/SC, Filipino (or was it Tagalog?), German, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian (or was it Malay?), Polish, Slovenian and Turkish)

This talk of different languages on hair care products reminds me of this gag from Scandinavia and the World.


2 persons have voted this message useful



montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4578 days ago

2371 posts - 3676 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 2603 of 3737
09 September 2012 at 2:18pm | IP Logged 
The small printing on things like shower-gel would probably defeat me (especially without
glasses), but on a lot of the cat foods we buy, there are often nice, easy-to-read
alternative descriptions in a surprising choice of languages. I was puzzled as to why the
word "kylling" seemed familiar when I encountered it in my TYS Danish, until I
remembered: ah yes: cat food!   Another fun thing there is that the famous Danish TV
series "Forbrydelsen" was known as "The Killing" in the UK (and of course remade under
that title in the USA), and I wonder if Danes when first reading that translated title
would think of it as "The Chicken"! :-)
1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6453 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 2604 of 3737
10 September 2012 at 1:39pm | IP Logged 
montmorency wrote:
.. I was puzzled as to why the word "kylling" seemed familiar when I encountered it in my TYS Danish, until I remembered: ah yes: cat food!   Another fun thing there is that the famous Danish TV series "Forbrydelsen" was known as "The Killing" in the UK (and of course remade under that title in the USA), and I wonder if Danes when first reading that translated title would think of it as "The Chicken"! :-)


No, - if anything we would think of the offspring of a cat which is called "en killing".

And speaking about "kyllinger": the Swedish word "kyckling" is more suggestive of the origin of the word for the formerly feathered thing on my dinner plate: it is simply a diminutive form of the old Germanic word *keuka in the derived form *kūka - which happens to be the same word as English "cock" (lo and behold - I expected this word to be starred out by the forum software - if so, I would have to substitute a Cyrillic 'o' for the Roman one, but methinks the software is growing a bit lax)

And I probably wouldn't have bothered to write that explanation anywhere else but here at HTLAL.

Edited by Iversen on 10 September 2012 at 7:01pm

9 persons have voted this message useful



tractor
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5203 days ago

1349 posts - 2292 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan
Studies: French, German, Latin

 
 Message 2605 of 3737
10 September 2012 at 5:26pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
No, - if anything we would think of the offspring of a cat which are called "en killing".

In Norwegian en killing (or, just as often, et kje) is a kid goat. A kitten is called en kattunge. What do
you call the young goat in Danish? I think it's et kid in old-fashioned Norwegian Riksmål, so I would guess it is
the same in Danish.

Iversen wrote:
And I probably wouldn't have bothered to write that explanation anywhere else but here at HTLAL.

And I'd probably never ask a question about what kid goats are called in Danish anywhere else...
7 persons have voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6453 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 2606 of 3737
10 September 2012 at 6:58pm | IP Logged 
Gedekid
2 persons have voted this message useful



strikingstar
Bilingual Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4923 days ago

292 posts - 444 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written)

 
 Message 2607 of 3737
11 September 2012 at 10:45am | IP Logged 
When you almost miss your flight at Joburg because you're actually hearing a "click"
language in conversation for the first time in your life and you want to hear more.
6 persons have voted this message useful



stifa
Triglot
Senior Member
Norway
lang-8.com/448715
Joined 4623 days ago

629 posts - 813 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German
Studies: Japanese, Spanish

 
 Message 2608 of 3737
11 September 2012 at 3:50pm | IP Logged 
When you consider picking up a new language because your university offers free 3-
credit language classes...


5 persons have voted this message useful



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