[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

[muckefuck]

Words can be gendered in unexpected ways. Just as "beautiful" tends to be associated with women and not men in English, it's not idiomatic to use German apart "striking" to describe men (as my friend Nuphy discovered when he tried to talk of ein aparter Junge to a German acquaintance).

[basil_w]

Try translating idioms. Even among countries that speak the same language. For example, in (I think) Venezuela, a popular greeting meaning "hi, what's up" is da le che. If you say it fast, it sounds like da leche, which means give milk.