[ivox3]

In slovak: Pustila som ho k vode.
In english: We breaked up. (girl about her ex-boyfriend)
Exact translation: I have released him to the water. pustit=released k vode=to the water

Yep, ....that's happened to me, ...what's the problem ?

[lsega77]

Well, I know that Spanish has it's own quirks amongst the different dialects too.

I remember my mother working with a woman from argentina. I went to pick my mom up from work one day and she was with this coworker. A nearby garbage can was filled with food and God knows what else. This attracted flies and gnats galore.

My mother's coworker exclaimed! "Mira todos los bichos!"

My mother and I (who are puerto rican) bust out laughing because for us the word bicho means dick (and I don't mean short for richard if you catch my drift).

So when her coworker said. "Look at all the bugs!"

We heard... "Look at all the dicks!"

My stomach hurt for a good bit after that.



Luis

[b-kandor]

Thinking of spainish - I went to Spain for my honeymoon and we toured the whole country. When in Seville we ate at a restaurant that mentioned at the bottom of their menu (english menus)

"please request our letter of prostate ice cream"

We passed!

[misterasset]

"please request our letter of prostate ice cream"

That should be in somebody's signature. Classic.

One problem with English is that it was an established language when the Anglo Saxons invaded England bringing their own language that was "close" to English. That's the reason why we have lots of "double words" and different rules over different words. By double words I mean things like "pork vs. swine." They mean the same thing but swine became less popular because it was spoken by the native people. But then you have other words that because they were the "working class" their language managed to survive.

(This is the first thread I've started that got the shaky "popular" post icon.)

[b-kandor]

That's interesting, actually ties in with a thing on cbc radio last week, they were talking about class divisions etc in England after the French conquered england:

That beef comes from cows is known to most, but the close relationship between the words beef and cow is hardly household knowledge. Cow comes via Middle English from Old English c, which is descended from the Indo-European root *gwou–, also meaning “cow.” This root has descendants in most of the branches of the Indo-European language family. Among those descendants is the Latin word bs, “cow,” whose stem form, bov-, eventually became the Old French word buef, also meaning “cow.” The French nobles who ruled England after the Norman Conquest of course used French words to refer to the meats they were served, so the animal called c by the Anglo-Saxon peasants was called buef by the French nobles when it was brought to them cooked at dinner. Thus arose the distinction between the words for animals and their meat that is also found in the English word-pairs swine/pork, sheep/mutton, and deer/venison. What is interesting about cow/beef is that we are in fact dealing with one and the same word, etymologically speaking.

[val2]

I posted this on another forum a while ago but thought it might be appropriate on this thread as well.


The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aodccrnig to a
rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dnsoe't mttaer
in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny
iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be
in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and
you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is
bcuseae the hmuan mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by
istlef, but the wrod
as a wlohe.

pretty amazing isn't it?

[JDHill]

[ivox3]

Wow, ......I'm nt gnoing ot botehr splleing eervr aigan. !!! tsih si graet! ! !

[Jozvex]

Yes that's scary!

I got stuck on "According" for a second but apart from that, no problems.

[SunlightRocker]

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aodccrnig to a
rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dnsoe't mttaer
in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny
iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be
in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and
you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is
bcuseae the hmuan mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by
istlef, but the wrod
as a wlohe.

Thats really cool. I have seen it in sweedish too. So I guess it works in any language.

[Mihai]

Yes, that's very cool I read the whole text almost as fast as if it was written normally. How strange....

[tom]

Even I could read is just like Mihai, so it's a fact

[Leonardo]

[quote="Jozvex"................As for other languages, I used to learn italian when I was at school but I can only remember how to count and some basic phrases now. Io non sono italiano e non parlo molto bene italiano. (hehe that was probably wrong!!).....................
[/quote]
Reminds me when I was studing at Rome for one semester, we pretty much confirmed all the steriotypes of our american culture were true

Io sono un studente Americano perduto e fame, dov'e la festa?
(Probably worse than Jozvex)

However, ther one phrase that we wanted to say so bad, but we coulnd't put it together (and most likely it would not make any sence in Italian either). We wanted to so say: "Who is your daddy?"
The closes that I got i think it was "Cual e tu padre?"

I'm so glad 90% of the people speack english

[rivoli]

I'm so glad 90% of the people speack english

speack english? we all do

btw, that daddy sentence should be something like: "chi è tuo padre?". you can say: "qual'è tuo padre?", but it sounds more as if you were picking someone's else father out of a group of people. more like "which one is your daddy?"