When Random Words become Cusses in Other Languages
Lost in Translation
This is a fun one to start off the weekend. I personally love learning new languages. Screw fluency, even a minute understanding of common phrases give you tremendous insight into a culture and people’s attitude. Even if I’m only traveling to a new place for a hot moment, i.e. Steemfest 3 in Poland, I’ll make an effort to learn at least a handful of words. This helps build trust, new relationships, and make a event a visit a more impactful and memorable experience.
And one of the most amusing aspects of learning languages here and there to some extent for each is the weird crossover that occurs. Case in point, some phrases in certain languages are cuss words/phrases in others.
Pretty self-explanatory. Let’s dive right in.
Beautiful Men, Not so Beautiful Words
“Ce Belle Homme” in French means literally “this beautiful man.” Those exact syllables, when pronounced with a bit of a Korean tinge and in a Korean context sounds almost identical to a phrase that is equivalent to “motherf*cker.” No joke, it transliterates into the most vulgar phrase you can utter in Korean.
Black Culture Suffer in China
There is a phrase used almost as frequently as the word “like” in daily Chinese language - 那个. This is pronounced “nae-gu” in many dialects. It literally means “that” in Chinese and attached to many things including “that car” or “that idea”. You can see how this might cause a problem if spoken around English speakers and especially Americans. So…. yea. If you hear an Asian person saying this phrase in another language, just be aware that that it probably isn’t targeted at you.
I’m sure many more like this exist in the world. I’m curious if anyone else who speaks another tongue knows of a native example like this. Feel free to share below!
I dunno about translations but I remember a German sociology tutor of mine saying he'd learnt to pronounce Immanuel Kant's surname incorrectly in front of his English students.
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Heheheh. That's where practicing an accent is just as important as the words itself.
aahaahahhaaa
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What you are talking about are called "false friend", and they are words that sound similar in two or more languages, but have different meanings.
In Spanish, for example, the word "billón" is not translated as billion but as trillion... a bit confusing.