False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

[Thrice Xandvii]

I was referring to Alice in Wonderland, but apparently my mind went back to Tim Burton's movie (and not the book or Disney movie)... in which the character was a female mouse who brandished a sword.

[sangi39]

If anyone's familiar with The Catherine Tate Show from the BBC, there's "dried shiitake mushrooms". Mostly based on spelling when both written using the Latin Alphabet, it takes Japanese [ɕíìtàkè] and shifts it to English [ʃɪt eɪk], the couple in the sketch reading the <ake> as [eɪk] in line with the "long vowel, silent e" type rule of English orthography. So ummm...

shiitake vs. shit ache

[GrandPiano]

Why not share some examples from within one language?

Mandarin's tonal contrast is something that foreigners often have a lot of difficulty with. While you can usually tell what's being said without the right tones from context, there are still some words you want to be careful not to mix up:

:zho: 买 mǎi "to buy", :zho: 卖 mài "to sell" (the diacritic indicates the tone)
:zho: 那 nà "that, those", :zho: 哪 nǎ "which"
:zho: 那里/那儿 nàli/nàr "there", :zho: 哪里/哪儿 nǎli/nǎr "where"
:zho: 妈 mā "mom", :zho: 马 mǎ "horse"
:zho: 汉语 hànyǔ "Chinese (language)", :zho: 韩语 hányǔ "Korean (language)"
:zho: 草 cǎo "grass", :zho: 肏 cào "to fuck"

[CMunk]

rar "nice" ~ rar "weird" (of course these are cognates with rare, so in Norway it was rare to be weird, as opposed to in Denmark where niceness was a rarity, apparently)
lort "shit" ~ lord (Jutlandic dialects pronounce lort [lɒːd̥] - very close to the English word)

That's all I can think of at the moment.

[alynnidalar]

which many English speakers hear as "n***er"

Many?

Yes!

My whole class thought our Chinese teacher was saying that until someone finally got the cojones to ask him what he was really saying!

Also causes confusion when you first start listening to K-pop and hear 내가 "naega" all over the place...

[Shemtov]

This reminds me of the worker who came to my apartment and parsed the transcription of the Hebrew/Yiddish word "Niggun" (a tune; or more specifically a song without lyrics) as "a firearm designated to kill African-Americans". I am dead serious.
Also the Racist Rabbi I once knew who kept making jokes connecting the Hebrew word /nɛgaʕ/ (the /ʕ/ being not pronounced in our reading) meaning "plague" and the English "N*gga"

[CMunk]

In Danish it is common to say Du er hjertelig velkommen "You are very welcome". The problem being the word hjertelig, which can be directly translated as "heartly", only that is not a very common English word, and may be easily mistaken for the much more common "hardly". So a Dane might say to an Englishman You are hardly welcome, when they arrive.

[Thrice Xandvii]

(Given the context, I'd think the word "heartily" would be a better fit.)

[Shemtov]

The Thai male greeting /sàwàtdi: kʰráp/ sounds like English "So what the crap?"

[Khemehekis]

Here's one that really tripped me up:

blanc (white) / black (opposite of white)

[Thrice Xandvii]

Weird, you'd think your mind'd go to blank and it would serve as a mnemonic.

[Lambuzhao]

In Danish it is common to say Du er hjertelig velkommen "You are very welcome". The problem being the word hjertelig, which can be directly translated as "heartly", only that is not a very common English word, and may be easily mistaken for the much more common "hardly". So a Dane might say to an Englishman You are hardly welcome, when they arrive.

Well, there is hearty[ADJ]; heartily [ADV]. Hearty means "full", "robust", "genuine", "wholehearted", with connotations of "large", "complete", "satisfying". Heartily can mean "fully", "robustly", "wholeheartedly", "very".

Therefore, while I don't think this is normally said in ('Murican at least) English,


You are heartily welcome

sounds okay by me.

I think this may be more common:

We gave him a hearty welcome.
Let's give her a hearty welcome, folks!

[Lambuzhao]

constipado stuffed up, congested; constipated unable to poop

(Weird, I just looked this one up and it appears as though Google Translate doesn't agree with me. I specifically recall this being taught to us in Spanish and our class having a lot of fun with this fact. Hmmmm.)

That was a funny little culture-shock for me when I heard that for the first time in

That, and when I heard congestionado used to describe traffic, and not sinuses or nostrils.

So, lemme add that one:

congestionado gridlocked (traffic) ≠ congested blocked up (sinuses, nostrils)

[Lambuzhao]

Bit of a stretch, but gave us some chuckles when we misheard this for the first time in class -


どういたしまして dou itashimashite you're welcome ≠ don't touch my moustache

[Lambuzhao]

Oh yes, and, speaking of , Peruvians liked to chortle about this one now and again:


Sacsahuayman (Pre-Colombian fortress just outside Cusco) ≠ sexy woman

[Avo]

I just spotted this nice pair:

German Fuß "foot" ~ Tarifiyt Berber fus "hand"

[Alomar]

So, lemme add that one:

congestionado gridlocked (traffic) ≠ congested blocked up (sinuses, nostrils)

You can definitely use congested in English for traffic.

[Thrice Xandvii]

I don't think anyone was contesting that. The point was that the Spanish word doesn't do double duty.

[HoskhMatriarch]

I've been starting to learn Georgian recently because I want another language and I'm really interested in Georgian (not sure how long I'll stick with it but so far it's fun), and right on my first vocab list I found some false friends.

:kat: mama "father" and mama "mother"
:kat: deda "mother" and dada "father"

[Dormouse559]

It's kat. You can find all the flag icons by clicking on the link below the emoticons to the left of the post editor.