The connection between “ass” = “donkey” and “ass” = “butt” goes back at least long enough for Shakespeare to have played on it in Midsummer Night’s Dream.
And the physical connection between butt and donkey goes back even further. What about before that? If it’s not a bowdlerization then are the words directly related historically, as it seems unusual to have differing derivations for two words in related languages that sound so similar and mean the same thing. Or for that matter, the French con and the Dutch Kut seem obviously close to the English ‘C word’.
Them fokkers was flying Messerschmidts!!
Oh, I just thought of another good French one to be careful of. The English phrase ‘pay-day’, the day salaries are paid, is pronounced exactly the same as the French P.D. which is slang abbreviation for either pederast or paedophile, I couldn’t figure out which. Either way, confessing you are desperate for pay-day will raise a few Gallic eyebrows.
The common and innocuous English phrase “I think so” sounds funny to Japanese because it includes the sound of the Japanese word “kuso” meaning “shit”. (I think so -> aisinkuso)
I was warned that ‘um’ means ‘cunt’ in Kazak.
And “pay day” sounds dangerously close to “I farted” in Portuguese—peidei from peidar, “to fart”
Well, not really – certainly nowhere near as the C-word is in North America. It doesn’t make the news if a politician uses it, for example. Actually, I’ve never heard it used literally to mean vagina (we have our own vulgar word for that in Quebec, and a host of kind-of-vulgar-but-funny ones). It basically just means “idiot” or “stupid/dull,” both as a noun and an adjective (c’est un gros con, cette émission est tellement conne, etc.)
I heard a story that the reason that they created the French word ordinateur instead of borrowing the English word computer is because the first two syllables of the latter are con and pute.
This is a bit of a tangent, but I might as well share: my friend Ros had to warn (mercifully in advance) her mother, a rather prissy woman, that the French expression ne pas savoir où donner de la tête (to be all over the place, not to know what to do next, more or less) must not be translated word-for-word into English.
Pédé (not an abbreviation), although derived from pédéraste, means “faggot.” (It’s used more in France than Quebec.) It’s a homophobic word but doesn’t really have connotations of child molestation.
Huh. So she had no reason to slap me other than for the fun of it?
A co-worker once wrote the following interesting fact on the whiteboard:
Terrible? Well, I know that merda means ‘shit’ in Latin…
I always thought that the Canadian clothing company “Roots” would have been a great success in Australia for that very reason.
Well, “merdeux” literally means “shitty”, which does also mean “terrible” or so in English. Although I’d be more likely to use “merdique” if I want to describe something as being of terrible quality. “Merdeux”, in Quebec French, might be understood as meaning “lucky” (pronounced with an /ɑ/ vowel).
And this tidbit sounds like one of those urban legends about products renamed abroad. I have no idea what a Mazda MR2 is, but I wouldn’t have made the link to “merdeux”, it’s not all that obvious. Not like that Grocon company which is just too obvious.
“.pdf file” sounds like “paedophile” in Irish, British etc. English. 
Incorrect. The MR2 is a Toyota.
I’ll defer to any native Korean speakers, but when I was growing up in a community of Korean immigrants in Orange County, the word for penis was definitely “cha ji.”
What does it mean in Australia?
Come to think of it, how about gestures? You never want to wave at someone with your palm forward in Italy, since that would be giving them the evil eye. The closest English translation would be “Go to Hell”, except they take it a lot more seriously.
To root is to fuck in Australia AFAIK.
Oh, well, if you want to know about gestures that mean one thing in one country and have a different meaning in another, Bulgarians do nod their heads the opposite way of everyone else, ie, they nod for no and shake their heads for yes.