[Multilingual Monday] Connotations, Plus: Engrish in Reverse!

[aadroma]

Man, thank God for sites like JeKai!! Japanese can be considered by many to be vague -- あいまい, aimai. Toss in the fact that, like any other language, there are words that garner other connotative meanings outside of their book definitions (some of which may be used far more frequently than what the dictionary says the word means!), and it just gets

Comments

So -- you guys are only Asian when it's convenient??

[aadroma]

I once asked my Japanese teacher for his thoughts on the kanji for warui (悪) and asked, quite innocently (wink) were they trying to suggest that the hearts of Asians were bad?

You DO like to be a devil's advocate, don'chya?? :: laugh :: Way to fluster the man!!

Keep in mind that 亜 has meanings like "substandard" and "hunchback" -- MY question would be, of ALL the characters you COULD use for "Asia", why this one? ^o^ :: laugh :: I have similar feelings for "Europe" (欧), which has roots in "the sound you make when you vomit".

[muckefuck]

I haven't heard "West(ern) Asia", but in my field we use "Southwest(ern) Asia". The reason for the change is that "Middle East" makes sense only from a Eurocentric perspective whereas "Southwest Asia" is a neutral term like "Northern Europe" or "South America".

[progbear]

Well, I’ve already gone on about why you say “me gusta” and not “yo gusto” (like was a common era in my high school Spanish classes). And there’s of course the obvious hurdles of pronunciation-“manejar” (to drive) not “manajar” (to fuck), “perro” (dog) not “pedo” (fart), etc.

There’s also documentation of novice French speakers mistakenly saying “Je suis complète” to mean “I’m full,” when it actually means “I’m pregnant.”

Funniest mistaken translation I’ve ever seen by an English speaker. The band Italian band Banco del Mutuo Soccorso has an album entitled Io Sono Nato Libero (I Am Born Free). They translated it as It’s Me, a Free Actor. I didn’t think I’d ever stop laughing

[akakuma]

Cockburn...I lolled...

[gorkabear]

Well, there's a lot of "inglix" here, because we can distinguish L/R perfectly but we're uncapable here to say other stuff.

Things I've randomly seen here in Restaurants

- Bread with tomato
- Mussels to the style of the sailorwoman
- Cured ham (Ok, I must admit that I'm having doubts regarding this one)
- Mixt sandwich
- Eggs to the plate

I have to keep a note of these.

(And then, keep the things my colleagues write at work)

[gorkabear]

Hey, these are the phrases I gathered for you today:

1) Length of message incorrectly informed.

2) Particular Test. Data validations

3) Row is found in access to _Table_ when FETCH for CURSOR 003. Message _Family_ with parameters (_Field1_Field2_) is showed.

4) Can test this error without the plan collection.

5) Test when some _Field1_ returned by module _Program_name_ are different. Validate message is correctly transmitted to client.

[muckefuck]

The reverse of Engrish would be the bad Spanish (and French and Italian and German etc. etc.) you see on menus here. For instance, a restaurant in my hometown describes its bruschetta as "served over a slice of pulgeise".

[scream4noreason]

I was chatting to my Japanese housemate about something and I asked her,"Ok,you agree?"

She looked at me incredulously,"Ug-ree??"

"Yes,you agree"

She looked very sad as she thought I was saying she was UGLY.

She had alot of trouble getting her R's and L's mixed up.

[dibsy]

I once saw a guy with an obvious prison tattoo reading "Born to loose". It was on his forearm.