# Any unrelated "words" have meaning in three or more languages? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 16, 2004, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-unrelated-words-have-meaning-in-three-or-more-languages/240375 "2004-04-16T15:46:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Tusculan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@Tusculan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tusculan)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2004, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-unrelated-words-have-meaning-in-three-or-more-languages/240375/41 "2004-04-18T17:31:53Z")
‘dove’ means deaf person in Dutch. ‘pan’ means cooking pot or skillet in Dutch. ‘trots’ indeed means pride or being proud. ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2004, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-unrelated-words-have-meaning-in-three-or-more-languages/240375/42 "2004-04-18T17:47:27Z")
> [@Tusculan](#): > > … ‘pan’ means cooking pot or skillet in Dutch. … and it is ‘tray’ using hanyu pinyin. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2004, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-unrelated-words-have-meaning-in-three-or-more-languages/240375/43 "2004-04-18T22:56:10Z")
> [@Asteroide](#): > > Here’s a good SDMB oriented selection - **pie** > > Eng. : bring pie > French : magpie > Spanish : foot And in Latin, “pie” is a form of the adjective “pius” meaning “dutiful, pious, devout, kind, good”, etc. From the Wikipedia page [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_false\_friends](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_false_friends) : fart - Polish, “luck”; Swedish, “speed” sale - French, “dirty”; Italian, “salt”; Spanish, “goes out” son - Spanish, “(they) are”, “song”; French, “sound”, “bran”; “his/her” (masculine thing possessed) ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2004, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-unrelated-words-have-meaning-in-three-or-more-languages/240375/44 "2004-04-18T23:10:32Z")
> [@Biffy the Elephant Shrew](#): > > A little off the track, but I just remembered the story of the correspondence between two musicians–I forget who–one of whom wrote a letter with the German epigraph “O singe fort!” (“O sing forth!” quoted from _Das Rheingold_.) The recipient, however, thought it was French, and was startled to receive a letter that began “O mighty ape!” I don’t see how that’s not dead on track, adding “singe” and “fort” (which have clear english meanings as well) to the list. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2004, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-unrelated-words-have-meaning-in-three-or-more-languages/240375/45 "2004-04-19T02:32:18Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > As for translating “do” in French as “C” – that doesn’t quite pass. Why not? It is a word in French, that refers to a specific musical note. English uses a different system of naming notes, but that doesn’t undercut the fact that the French have a different noun to describe each note in the octave. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2004, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-unrelated-words-have-meaning-in-three-or-more-languages/240375/46 "2004-04-19T16:28:35Z")
**Pan** and **leer** seem to be the champs here. … Okay, Piper – you talked me into “do”. So that’s a contender as well. … **TJdude825** , such a program would be highly desirable. It would not be cheating at all – there’s no need for this info to come from someone’s memory. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2004, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-unrelated-words-have-meaning-in-three-or-more-languages/240375/47 "2004-04-19T19:40:55Z")
My loglan pronoun stack’s all wrong, do-da, do-da … If you want to get somewhat silly, add loglan to the “do list”. Two letter constructs are reserved in loglan for “structure” words. In particular, da, de, di, do, du are the “free variable” words which serve as pronouns. Loglan has the concept of the speaker maintaining a mental “stack” of words available for substitution, irrespective of gender or any such feature used to disambiguate pronouns in most languages. “da” means the most recent, “de” the second most recent, etc. **TJdude825** , it would be fairly easy, if you can get ahold of translated word lists, say for a foreign language version of the UNIX “spell” utility (this one’s handy because the program itself doesn’t possess any sophisticated stemming capability - instead, -ing’s, -ed’s and so on are actually listed in the master word list). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-unrelated-words-have-meaning-in-three-or-more-languages/240375.md?page=2)