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35 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 Next >>

vonPeterhof
Tetraglot
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Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Message 25 of 35

05 July 2014 at 3:06pm | IP Logged

pesahson wrote:

I'm a native speaker of Russian who has done this on occasion (and have had acquaintances who had the annoying habit of doing this literally every time they needed to call someone), and I had no idea we had a word for this. I mean, I know the word прозвонить in its literal, bell-related senses of "to ring once" or "to ring continuously for a certain period of time", so I can see how one could derive that idiomatic meaning for this word from the first definition, but I probably wouldn't have guessed it without having read the explanation. If I saw the sentence "Я прозвонил ей" without any further context I would just assume that it meant "I made a single attempt at calling her on the phone". A brief Google search didn't turn up anything with this meaning, but apparently this word also has a different meaning in the jargon of various technological professions, something like "to run a current through an electrical network (a cable, a device, etc.) in order to test its integrity and isolation".
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pesahson
Diglot
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Poland
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Message 26 of 35

05 July 2014 at 3:11pm | IP Logged

I'm sure not all of those are correct and it's supposed to be a Czech word. Not all the names of the languages are included in the picture, but in the link to the buzzfeed site from which I took it, you have the languages mentioned.
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vonPeterhof
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Message 27 of 35

05 July 2014 at 3:20pm | IP Logged

pesahson wrote:

I'm sure not all of those are correct and it's supposed to be a Czech word. Not all the
names of the languages are included in the picture, but in the link to the buzzfeed site from which I took it,
you have the languages mentioned.

*facepalm* Should have started my research from there, I
guess. And now I've become one of those people who assume that everything that looks remotely Slavic
must be broken Russian. Well, at least I learned some Russian techie jargon today :D
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Serpent
Octoglot
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Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
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4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 28 of 35

05 July 2014 at 5:09pm | IP Logged

I think my aunt mentioned the expression "играть в глухаря" or something. Also, omg do people really do this if they want you to call back and not to reply to an SMS or on something like twitter/whatsapp?
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montmorency
Diglot
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United Kingdom
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Message 29 of 35

05 July 2014 at 5:40pm | IP Logged

@pesahson: Some nice ones there, including nice illustrations.

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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
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China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
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Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

Message 30 of 35

05 July 2014 at 8:08pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

I think my aunt mentioned the expression "играть в глухаря" or
something. Also, omg do people really do this if they want you to call back and not to
reply to an SMS or on something like twitter/whatsapp?

Italians call it a "squillo".
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Stolan
Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots
Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese

Message 31 of 35

05 July 2014 at 8:59pm | IP Logged

I am not a fan of these "untranslatable" word lists, vocabulary is potentially limitless in any language.
Nevertheless, I love unique words from most languages.

Edited by Stolan on 05 July 2014 at 9:04pm
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Serpent
Octoglot
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Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6394 days ago
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Message 32 of 35

05 July 2014 at 9:13pm | IP Logged

pesahson wrote:

Oops, there's a Japanese restaurant chain with this name in Moscow, and I always thought it must be some kind of food, maybe similar to wasabi.

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