Bad company
Among the more popular lame running jokes round this house are those that involve language manglings. Like, say, the fact that pain is the word for bread in French, so Sunday mornings must begin with raisin or chocolate pain (if forced to suffer, this is the way to go).
And I sometimes wonder about the effect of false cognates on people’s relationship to a new language, whether odd associations are created with seemingly innocuous words (curiously enough, once you’ve become bilingual, things are so well-compartmentalised that you tend to notice them less).
I wonder whether French people associate chairs with flesh*, or Dean will ever get over his market trauma of ordering salami without condoms, whether an English expat’s strolls in Germany are tainted by an association with bums, or with gladiators on the beaches of Spain (where molesting is annoying not truly vile), how the Dutch fare when looking for an apartment to rent in Deutschland, how many elementary school teachers have paused with dread before telling her students the French word for shower… and, oh, I remember the day I couldn’t wait to get home to share the empirical proof, having learned that the Russian word for brother is brat.
*In French, chair = flesh, and préservatifs = condom.
In German, Bummel = stroll and Huren = whores but means to rent in Dutch.
In Spanish, arena = sand.
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Comment
- Maybe no one has commented because it’s so hard to outdo Dean’s spectacular gaffe!
I’m sure I’ll have plenty to add as soon as I once again set foot on french soil, but for now the only one that comes to mind is Chevrolet’s naming of the Nova, a car model they subsequently tried to market in countries where the name meant ‘No go.’
— wizmo Jul 30, 5:49pm # - just come back from spain where i tittered over and over again at bonka coffee. I drank alot of coffee.xx
— ruth Jul 30, 7:58pm # - You’ve put your finger on a class of word pairs for which the term ‘false cognate’ actually makes sense.
Fr. chair and En. chair are not cognate at all: the former comes from L. caro, carnis (flesh), the latter (as well as Fr. chaire, chaise) from L. cathedra (chair).
Cognate means sharing the same ancestor; there’s no implication that cognate words should have the same meaning. In fact, cognate words in the same language are almost required to have different meanings, or they wouldn’t be recognised as different words; cf. grammar and glamour.
So-called false cognates are almost always true cognates, so it’s a very poor term for ‘faux amis’.
— Bob Jul 31, 2:33am # - And how do the French fare in London, where in all the shops huge red and white signs proclaim DIRTY / DIRTY / DIRTY.
— bhikku Jul 31, 10:06am # - I still giggle for a few Czech words, remembering how I took offense when I learned them.
Like the word for whip is biÄ (the Ä sounds like CH as in CHURCH). I jokingly told the students I would whip them into shape, there was some muttering and some consulting of dictionaries and then, I thought, some name-calling, which I didn’t take well.
And (rude Czech slang for lady parts) = piÄa (which I learned when trying to teach fruits to a group of children. Banana, apple, pear all went fine, but PEACH inevitably brought down the house in horrified giggles.)
And the Japanese word for umbrella, which is kasa. Mi kasa es su kasa, I would think every time I took an umbrella. All my unlearned languages have gatherings in my head.
— anne Jul 31, 1:32pm # - Mitsubitschi pajero is not called like that in Spain, although being called “masturbator” is not completely unappropritate for an SUV ancestor.
Esquisito in portuguese (=weird) is a homophone to exquisito in Spanish, or exquisite. I was delighted to hear that my portuguese colleague found my parents’ house so special, but then it was just uh, “special”.
Another great Spanish/portuguese is suspensorios, which Potuguese who don’t like belts use to stop their pants from falling Chaplin style, and Spanish sportsmen use to keep their “eggs” (tomatoes in portuguese!) in condition.
Spaniards who are not embarassed at all to talk about their constipation that has them blowing their nose every two minutes…
— eloisa Aug 1, 1:33am # - Will the “Nova” myth ever die? The explanation at Snopes http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp gives the real story. I offer this additional personal observation; the Nova must have sold quite well in Mexico, for they can still be seen on the street in Mexico City from time to time… nearly 30 years after the Nova was discontinued.
— Margaret Aug 1, 3:54am # - “All my unlearned languages have gatherings in my head” is a very fine sentence.
— rollo Aug 1, 10:51am # - Add “gift”, meaning “poison” in German. Quite frightening on first encounter.
— Robert Wetzlmayr Aug 3, 8:56pm # - A real “champ the bouteilles” this topic it seems. Jonathan Swift wrote a short story by using the “Bad Company” technique in “Ars Punica”. As did the Abbe Henry Boudet of Rennes les Bains in his “La vraie Langue Celtique” in which he claims (proves) that English is the mother of all languages. There you have it!
— Raf Aug 3, 11:35pm # - I’ll never forget the time I told someone i was embarrassed (embarrasada) in Spanish and ended up saying i was pregnant!
— Julia Aug 10, 7:36pm #
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