Mistranslations of furren words...now with ümlaüts gälöre!

The German word for table is “tish” (may be spelled wrong) which is close to a Belgian word for penis (which is not a dictionary word but used more in dialects).
The German word for clock is houer (or something, not sure about the spelling either), which is very close to the Belgian word for hooker.

So it’s remotely funny for someone from Belgium when a German sais “The clock is on the table”.

Yep, it’s “Uhr”, which is pronounced just like “hoer”, but without the initial h. My favourite is hearing my wife (Brazilians just can’t pronounce the “uu” in huur) asking if we can get a “hoersubsidie”. :smiley: This sounds like she is asking for a government grant to visit hookers.

Another one I just remembered is the English “tearing”, which sounds just like the Dutch “tering”, which means “consumption” (the old name for Tuberculosis). “Tering” is often used when cursing in Dutch, see “krijg de tering”.

In fact a good rule to come up with your own curse in Dutch is to use a nasty adjective, the name of a disease, and the name of a badly regarded profession. That’s how you end up with “vuile kankerhoer”, etc.