The Armenian word for kiss is batchik. Pronounced out loud, it sounds like “butt cheek.” If I ever hear someone saying “Give me a kiss” in Armenian, I’m going to think “Kiss my butt cheek.”
If the people of Nagoya, Japan detect an unusual interest by Russians in their city, it’s probably because nagoya is Russian for ‘female nude’.
Embarazada, surely. Hard to imagine anything other than female being pregnant.
Visiting Denmark this summer gave me some words that aren’t quite polite in English. Their word for a clearance sale is slutspurt. Books are bøger, pronounced more or less “booger.” And whipped anything is skum.
The word phoque (pronounced something like /fuk/) in French simply refers to a seal (the animal). Definitely a different meaning than the English word with a close pronunciation.
My husband was trying to send an email at work that kept getting bounced back to him. Finally he realized it was because of a spam filter. He was writing in Swedish – and used the word “slut” (to mean “end” or “finish”).
Brilliant filter for an major international non-governmental agency to be using. :rolleyes:
Fart - Fahrt (Trip) Habe Eine Gute Fahrt. Have a good trip.
Gift - Gift ( phoenetically) poison. The wine bottle has dust on it…oh…it must have been gift wine." (german relations giggle as it was indeed a present and indeed not all that good.)
I once commented to my (fluent English-speaking) Russian friend that it was a good thing Irina wasn’t raised in the US because she would have been teased something fierce. My friend gave me a blank look. “Because of her last name,” I said. Still blank. “Slutskya.” … Nothing. “SLUTskya.” … “Ooohhhh. Yeah.”
Language-context can make otherwise giggle-worthy things seem totally innucuous. Different neural pathways and all.
In Latin class we had to decline the verb facio “to make”. We were taught to pronounce it with a hard “c” (unlike in altar boysm, where the Church Latin gave is a “ch” sound). So the guys would address each other out of class: