Norwegian
Spanskrør - lit. spanish tube - rattan cane (dying out as corporal punishment becomes a forgotten phenomenon)
Svenskeknappen - lit. the Swede/Swedish button - the on/off-switch on a piece of computer equipment, also the ctrl-alt-del combination, but especially a switch that physically cuts power. The computer froze up, so I had to use the Swedish button.
Franske mansjetter - French cuffs - indian burns
Cor anglais is an English horn, and it is much more like an oboe than it is like a French horn.
Maybe in Montreal, because I’ve never heard it. Or do you mean Quebec in the sense of Quebec City?
Perhaps it is only in Montreal; I’m not sure.
In Bengali, peanuts are called “Chinese nuts.”
Are these anything like Boston baked beans, or maybe French burnt peanuts? Both of which I now have to have?
We call those Candy-coated Peanuts or Candy Peanuts. I’m sure it’s the same thing.
mmmm…sort of. The coloring is wrong. The coating for American peanuts is actually sort of peanut butter flavored, and isn’t very sweet. I wouldn’t consider them to be candies at all, which is why I referred to them as a “snack food”. They’re more on the savory side.
btw, although I can read Hebrew, it’s not as “natural” to me as reading Latin letters, so a lot of the time, I never really made the effort. So I actually didn’t realize they were called American peanuts for a LONG time. I only found out when an Israeli friend asked me if Israeli American peanuts were anything like American peanuts in the US. I had no idea what he was talking about. What the heck is an American peanut? Oh? These things I’ve been eating for months? facepalm
I’m amazed this thread has got this far without mentioning Mexican standoff.
We also shouldn’t forget the Spanish Flu and the Hong Kong flu.
Quoth septimus:
Really? I would always presume that a burger comes with tomatoes, unless specified otherwise. When I see “California” in a food name, I generally assume avocados.
No, it’s true. In the pre-McDonald’s days, a California burger was one that had lettuce and tomato on it.
Chinese whispers.
Chinese chequers.
French skipping.
Russian roulette.
Spanish omelette.
French bread.
Scotch pancakes.
French fries.
Jap’s Eye (NSFW and offensive).
Siamese twins.
Dutch Uncle.
Greek salad (though this is, tbf, quite Greek so maybe counts more as a description rather than a phrase).
Oh, and in Spanish un francés is not the same as a French kiss in English. This has led to very strange dialogue in movies where for example two young teenagers were discovered kissing “with tongue” but, due to a too-literal translation, the girl’s father later raised Hell about
blowjobs
I’ve always been amused by that old Yiddish phrase “goyische kop,” or “gentile head,” which means being a dumbass. Pretty damn offensive, you ask me.
Which is what happens when your Nancy Drew addiction gets way out of control.
As in German and Scandinavian.
And the name has nothing to do with England at all. It means “angled” or “bent” horn.
And wienerbröd in Swedish. Someone once said to me that the name comes from a Danish baker called Wiener, but I don’t buy that. The most plausible explanation I’ve read is that it has something to do with Vienna.
According to Wikipedia, that’s a false etymology. It is from “angelic horn” in German – engellisches horn. Apparently at the time, engellisches meant both “angelic” and “English,” so it became “English” even before the term was adopted into French and English.
In Finnish, “it’s all Greek to me” is “täyttä hepreaa”, complete Hebrew.
Due to our historically fairly strained relations with the guys next door, we also have a verb “ryssiä”, to screw up some task, literally “to Russian”.
To vomit is “puhua norjaa”, to “speak Norwegian”.
In Thailand, “Dutch treat” is called “American share.”
I just remembered that in Mandarin (at least in Taiwan) they say 我沒有那個美國時間 (I don’t have any of that American time, or better translated: I don’t have the benefit of being on American time), meaning that if I were twelve to fifteen hours behind, I would have that much more time to work on this project, but now I’ve got to bust my butt because I don’t have the benefit of that time difference.