Multilingual false friends 2

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-30, 22:55

Spanish (es) loco - crazy
Hawaiian (haw) loko - interior of an island, inland, small lake
Esperanto (eo)Ido (art-ido) loko - place
Romani (rom) loko - light, gentle

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby Olinguito » 2018-07-31, 12:29

French (fr) peu – few, little
Catalan (ca) peu – foot


vijayjohn wrote:Spanish (es) loco - crazy
Hawaiian (haw) loko - interior of an island, inland, small lake
Esperanto (eo)Ido (art-ido) loko - place
Romani (rom) loko - light, gentle
Latin (la) locō – place (dative/ablative singular of locum)
Bassaricyon neblina

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby linguoboy » 2019-04-22, 15:20

I'm reading a novel by Yoel Hoffmann (an Israeli writer of Austro-Hungarian origin) in English translation and at one point he takes advantage of the chance resemblance between German komm and Arabic فم qum. An Ashkenazic boy raised bilingually in Hebrew and German is found wandering by a Bedouin and given a bed for the night. When the old man wakes him the next morning, he says فم ("Get up!"), which the child hears as Komm! ("Come!") and thinks at first it's his German-speaking uncle.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-04-22, 15:27

Isn't فم fam 'mouth'? Qum 'get up!' AFAIK is قم. EDIT: Unless maybe you're using Maghrebi style? :P

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby Olinguito » 2019-05-18, 10:52

English (en) in time
French (fr) intime – intimate

French (fr) superflu – superfluous
English (en) superflu – a killer disease :silly:
Bassaricyon neblina

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-05-19, 0:05

Hebrew (he) שולחן shulkhan - table, desk
German (de) Schule - school

Idk it helps me remember them. :P

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby Massimiliano B » 2019-05-25, 11:50

(Guarani) mano death
(it) mano hand

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby Linguaphile » 2019-07-06, 1:35

fɛo beauty
(es) feo ugly
Last edited by Linguaphile on 2019-07-08, 15:08, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby Homine.Sardu » 2019-07-06, 8:23

(es) atropellar (to run over, to trample, to injury, to insult)
(sc) tropeddare, trobeddare (to gossip)

(es) empezar (to begin)
(sc) impittare (to utilize)

(la) appellare (to call)
(fr) appeler (to call)
(sc) appeddare (to bark)

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby Vlürch » 2019-07-07, 12:18

This one made me laugh way too hard:
Icelandic (is) kakkalakki - cockroach
Finnish (fi) kakkalakki - poop hat

Of course, the Finnish term is just "theoretical" since hats made of shit are obviously not a thing (or at least not really a thing, although I wouldn't be all that surprised if someone has made one), and the pronunciation isn't even that close, but in writing... :rotfl:

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby Naava » 2019-07-07, 13:36

Vlürch wrote:This one made me laugh way too hard:
Icelandic (is) kakkalakki - cockroach
Finnish (fi) kakkalakki - poop hat

Oh my god... :rotfl: I am delighted to know there could be a hotel review somewhere complaining that they woke up at night and saw kakkalakkis roaming on the floor! :lol:

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby Linguaphile » 2019-07-08, 15:14

Naava wrote:
Vlürch wrote:This one made me laugh way too hard:
Icelandic (is) kakkalakki - cockroach
Finnish (fi) kakkalakki - poop hat

Oh my god... :rotfl: I am delighted to know there could be a hotel review somewhere complaining that they woke up at night and saw kakkalakkis roaming on the floor! :lol:

:rotfl:
No, it can't be! Because it's such a clean, well-decorated hotel:
(et) Kõik ruumid on koristatud. All the rooms have been cleaned.
(fi) Kaikki ruumiit on koristettu. All the corpses have been decorated.

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-07-11, 5:05

I'm probably opening Pandora's box, but...

English (en) penis
Persian (fa) پینه peeneh - callus

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby Vlürch » 2019-07-15, 18:45

Naava wrote:Oh my god... :rotfl: I am delighted to know there could be a hotel review somewhere complaining that they woke up at night and saw kakkalakkis roaming on the floor! :lol:

Reading that, for some reason I immediately imagined a bunch of those American police hats with four tiny legs running around in circles, stained with shit and dropping small turds in their wake... that'd be a pretty confusing thing to see.
Linguaphile wrote:No, it can't be! Because it's such a clean, well-decorated hotel:
(et) Kõik ruumid on koristatud. All the rooms have been cleaned.
(fi) Kaikki ruumiit on koristettu. All the corpses have been decorated.

How... how does Estonian... :lol: I can't...

Tomorrow I'm going to Tallinn for two days with my dad so I tried to look up some simple phrases in Estonian, but the false friends have convinced me that it's better for me to just use English there because I'd literally die laughing even just trying to say "thanks"...

Estonian (et) aitäh - thanks
Finnish (fi) ai, täh? - huh, what? (or whatever; not very natural to me (but "ai mitä?" is), but probably is for some, and it's exactly how the Estonian term sounds)

Estonian (et) tänan - thanks
Finnish (fi) tänään - today

I can't turn my Finnish off with Estonian at all, probably because the languages are so closely related. But it almost seems like there are more true friends and less false friends between Finnish and any other language than between Finnish and Estonian... :para:

EDIT: Even though nobody cares, I don't want to lie so I'll edit this post to mention that because I barely slept last night and had a massive panic attack, I ended up not being able to go. My dad will probably never even talk to me ever again. I had a horrible "premonition" that the ship will sink, and I'm still afraid of that, so I'll text my dad to ask if he got there safely later today... but he probably won't respond, so... :?

~

Finnish (fi) himo - lust, craving
Japanese (ja) (himo) - string, pimp, gigolo

Interestingly both can refer to something sexual but can also refer to something non-sexual.

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-07-22, 8:37

Swahili (sw) tuna - we have
Romanian (ro) a tuna - to thunder, speak thunderously
Indonesian (id) tuna - damaged
Czech (cs) tuna - ton

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby Linguaphile » 2019-08-20, 0:10

Besiro aka Chiquitano (es-BO) arux mouth [aruʃ]
Aymara (ay) aru language [aɾu]

I just found that interesting because the languages are both native to Bolivia, but unrelated. (And neither language uses the word "mouth" or "tongue" to mean "language", so it seems to be a coincidence rather than a borrowing.) The words certainly aren't exactly the same but the similarity (similar sounds together with loosely related meanings) made me kind of pause when I saw the Besiro word, wondering if there could be a connection. I'm pretty sure there isn't.

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-08-23, 23:17

English (en) roomies
Afrikaans (af) roomys - ice cream


English (en) mahal - summer house, private lodgings, territorial colonial-era division, division of farm or hunting preserve
Urdu (ur) محل / Hindi (hi)/ महल /mahal/ (pronounced something like [mɛ̤l] or [mɛl]) - palace, women's quarters
Persian (fa) محل mahall - place, location, residence, quarter
Arabic (ar) محل maḥall - place, location, spot, station; store, shop; residence, abode, quarter; time and opportunity; delay, respite; assembly in the house of a dead person
Malay (ms)/Indonesian (id)/Waray-Waray (war) mahal - expensive
Tagalog (tl) mahal - dear, expensive; beloved; to love, raise in price
Last edited by vijayjohn on 2019-09-14, 23:09, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby Linguaphile » 2019-09-14, 17:48

(vro) kokkokõla harmony
(en) Coca-cola
Seems like a marketing opportunity (albeit a small one, what with less than 90,000 Võro speakers) :mrgreen:
I would love to see a soda with that name though.
(It's actually composed of kokko "together" and kõla "sound, resonance".)

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-09-17, 5:02

English (en) milk
German (de) die Milch - milk
Arabic (ar) ملح milḥ - salt
Hebrew (he) מלח mélaḥ - salt

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Re: Multilingual false friends 2

Postby h34 » 2019-10-13, 21:18

(et) karu = bear
(fi) karu = bare, unfertile, barren (land)

(cy) carw /ka(:)rʊ/ = deer, stag
(ast) caru /karu/ = dear, expensive


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