I can think of a couple between German and English. Handy in German means your mobile or cell phone; while the word presumably comes from English and seems like it could be a perfectly functional noun in English, it isn’t.
Rocker in German usually means an outlaw biker or similar; in English it’s generally someone who performs rock and roll music or is otherwise associated with it.
Actual in English means true or genuine, but in German the word aktuell means “currently” or “as we speak”. AFAIK the corresponding word in most Romance or Germanic languages has the same meaning; it’s English that is the outlier here.
The American flan gets its name from Spanish. If you ask for flan in a Hispanic country you’ll get the same as in the US. You can identify with our surprise when we saw flan listed in a british restaurant and it turned out to be some sort of fruity cheesecake rather than what we were used to.
Interestingly, this meaning of “Actual” has also entered into Hebrew, which isn’t even Indo-European – one of the terms for “Current Events” (e.g., in the news) is “Aktualia”. Probably a loan word from either German or possibly Russian (maybe a Russian speaker can confirm or deny the meaning in Russian?)
In Spanish fresco means fresh, either in the sense of “cool” or “freshly picked”, it can also refer to the painting technique, but agua fresca means cool water, not fresh water. Fresh water is agua dulce, lit. “sweet water”.
Around here, agua fresca means cold water with cold fresh fruit juice, in every case I’ve seen watermelon. You’ll see a stand for limonada (which weirdly is a lime-coconut drink) and agua fresca.
I’ve read that people say (or said ca. 1904) “do you have any Gaelic on you” to mean “do you speak Gaelic.”
BTW, not challenging your statement, but I’m stunned to read that in the 1980s, many people in Ireland had no home service (even more than a handful would surprise me).
I imagine if they were only living here for a few months, it might have been when they were student age. Plenty of student flats and other accommodation wouldn’t have had a phone, even in the 1980s/90s, mainly because with tenants coming and going every few months it was probably a hassle to chase up payment. I imagine the same would be true of a lot of accommodation backpackers/tourists etc. would have stayed in at the time. My first student accommodation had a payphone in it but by that stage everybody but me had a mobile phone.
My aunt’s house didn’t have a home phone well into the '90s because the phone company expected them to pay to get the connection to their rural house. Even though it was only something like 100 feet the cost was too prohibitive. This was true of many rural homes.
English - Faucet marked “C”. For "C"old water.
Italian - Faucet marked “C”. For "C"aldo. Which means… Hot :smack:
(… and French - ‘Chaud’; Spanish - ‘Caliente’. Anybody see a pattern here…?)
Ha that reminds me. At some public toilets here you get signs saying Fir (Irish for men) and Mná (Irish for women). If you’re not in know and you were to guess, you’d likely pick the wrong one.
No, the popular Mexican TV show, El chavo del ocho, used the term aguas frescas to refer to something like lemonade or some other fruity drink. Of course, in that setup, the aguas frescas stand was not the most hygienic, or fresh. But it was through that show, and not through daily interactions, that I learned what aguas frescas was.
“Quite” can mean either “to a small degree”, “to a large degree”, or “completely” - the meaning is only clear from context, if at all, so it must be very baffling to non-English speakers.
E.g: “It’s quite cold today” = It’s a bit chilly, but not especially so.
North West of England. I’ve never met anybody from Lancashire, Greater Manchester or Merseyside who didn’t use “pants” to mean trousers. “Underpants”, “kecks” (slang) or some other word is used for underwear.
I have heard Karl Pilkington, who is possibly the world’s most famous Manc twat*, use the phrase “no bra on, no pants, and that,” to mean “without underwear.” Of course, he’s been living in London for some years.
Just search for “pants trousers lancashire” and you’ll see Lancastrians putting people right on their claim that “pants means underwear in the UK” Or consider this site on Lancashire dialect. I suppose in the South of Greater Manchester it may be different (not sure where Pilkington is from, but as he has a Manc accent I’m assuming it’s further south than me), but definitely a few miles further north “pants = trousers”.
I think this is one that would vary a lot in different locations, 'cause here, “agua fresca” would be water that is fresh (as in, not stale). We rarely use fresco as cool.
Well, I was living near Galway, on the more “primitive” West coast, and hanging out with college-age young folk – but even so, yes, Ireland was more like Crete and less like Denmark back then. This was in 1990.
But it was through that show, and not through daily interactions, that I learned what aguas frescas was.
Or consider