These are all words borrowed from French, where the meaning is the same in German and French and different from English. The French words are carte, conséquent, éventuel, isoler, massif, and sympathique.
Here are some more:
adéquat = correct, appropriate délai = time period, time frame complicité = closeness, fellow-feeling, trust, close relationship pétulant = impetuous tuile = roof tile (properly, other kinds of tiles are carreaux) attendre = to wait assister = to attend supporter = frequently used as an anglicism to mean “to support” but more properly means “to put up with, endure” (support is appuyer) militant = activist of any kind, by no means necessarily an extremist (so you can speak of des militants pacifistes) culte = worship (as in “lieu de culte,” place of worship); a cult is a secte manifestation = demonstration, protest rally baccalauréat = in France this is an exam at the end of high school, although in Canada it means a bachelor’s degree animateur = moderator, discussion leader
In Bulgarian, “magazine” means “market”, but I think that’s stolen from some other language. Maybe French? It certainly doesn’t sound Slavic, anyway.
“Peach” is slang for “dude” or “man” or something like that. Like, if you’re saying “hey man, what’s up?” My students thought this was hilarious when we learned the English words for fruits.
The word for “how” in Bulgarian is “kak”. It’s pronounced pretty much identically to the English word “cock”. God, I’m glad I was teaching English to Bulgarian children and not vice versa (like anyone would want to learn Bulgarian), cause that would have been a show-stopper on the first day. (“How are you?” is “kak si?”)
Let me see if I can come up with a few Japanese ones. Somebody already mentioned the ubiquitous ‘hi/hai’ thing. I could cheat and use Roman characters as if they were pronounced like English, but I want to stick to the authentic Japanese pronunciations. I’ll write in Roman characters of course though.
Go - It doesn’t mean move, it’s the letter five.
Shi - Not her, but the letter four, (or death :O)
Ni - Not a knee, but the letter two
I just realized this is also a fun way to teach the basic phonology of Japanese, haha.
Kyuu - Not a wait in line, but 9
Juu - Not an ethnicity infamous for big noses, Kidding! Not Jews, but the number ten.
That’s all I can think of for now. Sorry it’s only boring numbers.
I approached the ticket sales window in the Stockholm railroad station, where a very pretty young lady waas doing some counting of money. At the last second I noticed a sign on the window that said “SLUT”.
I pointed to the sign and was about to make some smartass remark when she said, rather patiently, “I know what it means in English. In Swedish it means “Closed”. We are not selling tickets at this time.” And she gave me a sweet smile, like she had run into this situation once or twice before.
Kind of like a Hawaiian having to tell a mainlander “Yes, sir, I am aware that “lei” has another meaning. And that’s the 3,845th time I have heard that joke, sir.”
Along similar lines, the French for “disturb” is “dérange” (You see signs hanging on hotel doorknobs: “Ne dérangez pas.”)
I remember in several early Hercule Poirot mysteries, Poirot would say that he hoped he hadn’t deranged someone, until it was explained to him (by I believe the doctor in “The Muder of Roger Ackroyd”) that ‘derange’ means to drive someone crazy in English.)
Yeah, you could open a Gifthaus, like they have all over eastern Pennsylvania. Since Gift is a word in German and English, but Haus is only a German word, the only possible meaning of that is Poison House.
In English pants doesn’t mean pants, it means… pants. And biscuit doesn’t mean biscuit either, rather it means biscu… oh you know what? Forget it.
You can make a passable case for “iie” (no) sounding an awful lot like “yeah,” it’s not the best example, but close enough that it’s thrown me off when listening to music before.
Oh, I forgot one. My name is apparently a derogatory word for “Jew” in Amharic. Every time I met an Ethiopian in Israel, they would do a horrified double-take.
The word “shiten” means…something innocuous in Albanian. I don’t know what, but I saw it on homemade signs everywhere. Maybe “for sale” or something like that. It made me snicker every time, because I am apparently a 13-year-old boy at heart.
Yeah, but they also aren’t keen on collecting slang usages or documenting change - like a lot of other language academies (the French Academy probably being the worst offender) they tend to be very reluctant to ‘allow’ new words into the Spanish language.
It’s also the Spanish academy - that is, it’s located in Spain - so if some of the words in this thread are Argentinian they probably won’t be in there. I was looking up some translations for words in El Gaucho Martín Fierro which is by no means new or slang-y, it’s just Argentinian Spanish which to me (educated on Mexican and Spanish Spanish) is almost an entirely different language.
