This is written in French and actually means Four-sided metal grater. What normal words in your language mean weird stuff in English?
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Metal face rapers are popular in some countries, as they are more effective than tasers at staving off an attacker.
russian male names: Semen, Sirgay, Gayorgy
barberskum is something you smear on your face before shaving.
“Fart” in Swedish means speed in English
‘Dik’, which sounds like ‘dick’ means fat in Dutch
Ass means Ace in German.
So raping cheese in France won’t get you arrested.
Constipado/a in Spanish is to have a cold, not constipated. Embarazada is to be pregnant, not embarrassed.
Don’t go to France like I did and tell everyone you meet how amazing their bread is because it’s not full of preservatives. That’s the French word for condom.
Ich suche ein Handy.
German for, I’m looking for a cell phone.
Phoque= seal, pronounced fuck
In Korea, we have BJ’s – Broadcast jockeys/streamers
Die Bart Die!
A legendary quote by Petter Solberg is “It’s not the fart that kills you, but the smell”, which has a dual meaning in Norwegian (assuming someone with stereotypical bad vocabulary and pronunciation) as “It’s not the speed that kills you, but the crash”.
The German word “Gift” means poison
When we were in Paris on a school trip the “Sauf taxis” signs (“except taxis” in French) were a bit funny.
In German “saufen” means to (heavily) drink, in most cases refering to alcohol. The form “Sauf ” is the imperative, so it’s basically telling you to drink. Because of that “Sauf taxis” reads a bit like “Chug taxis !” in German.
French for eggnog is “lait de poule” which translates to “chicken milk”.
***Hug***.
In English, it’s a manner of showing affection.
In my native language Hindi, it means to poop.
I’ve lived in France for years and now an married to a native English speaker… the amount of time I’ve said “raped cheese” instead of “grated” you wouldn’t believe…
The Swedish word for “the end” is “slut,” resulting in this [great movie ending](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=071pe_pXAD4)
I asked a shopkeeper in mangled German/English for a “gift for my wife”, not realizing that “gift” in German means “poison.”
In Latvian “šitas” – plural fem. of English “these” – sounds very close to “shitass”, while genitive of “half” in Latvian is “pusi”, sounds like “pussy”. Combining those words in one phrase made US colleagues a bit stressed 😉
Brazilians pronounce BTS (that kpop band) as Bitchy Ass.
Most can’t pronounce T as the anglophones, it always sound like Chee (as in cheese).
We also don’t know how to differentiate the pronunciation of beach and bitch, tough, though and thought, tight and thigh, etc.
The best translinguistic fuckups I can think of are between Portuguese and Spanish
Correr (to run) = Cojer (to fuck)
Embaraçada (embarrassed) = Embarazada (pregnant)
Borracha (eraser) = Borracha (drunk)
Pelado (naked) = Pelado (bald)
My partner couldn’t stop laughing when he saw the Dutch word “slagroom”, which means whipped cream.
Danish: Turistfart. It means ‘tourist shuttle Company’ and is usually used together with a name such as “Benny’s turistfart” = “Benny’s tourist shuttles”. Also ‘fart’ = ‘speed’ or ‘velocity’ in danish
In Finnland a bag is called PUSSI.
So you can find big bags of chips which have MEGAPUSSI written on them 🙂
How about Canadian English vs UK English? I’ve a little cabin up at the lake. Told my Scouser cousin I was going cottaging for the weekend and he about died laughing.
Wir suchen dich!
Job adverts in German “we’re looking for you!” . I still chuckle when I see them, after many years living in Germany.
In Japanese, chin means something akin to dick or cock, where I’m from, some people toast with ‘chin chin’, which always used to make my Japanese friends laugh.
Fart = Speed
Smäll (pronounced exactly like smell) = Bang
Makes way for the swenglish car safety joke:
“It’s not the fart that kills, its the smäll”.
The Buick Lacrosse was originally sold in the Canadian market as the Buick Allure because Lacrosse was loosely used as slang for masturbating in Quebec.
There’s ‘dick’ in German, which means chubby, not penis.
Not English, but in my native language (Tagalog) a word for a cake made with rice flour (*puto*) means “male whore” and a word for sponge cake (*mamon*) means “idiot” in Spanish.
One oft-told joke among Filipino-Americans is how a patient got upset when he heard one Filipino nurse cautioning another, “you might/will trip.” The Filipino phrase is “Madapa ka.”
I once asked a grocery store employee where the pasties were, because I was having a party. i pronounced it like “PAY-sties.” She gave a long look before telling me that the “PAH- sties” were in aisle 12. 💃👙 ✨🥟
On a school trip to France (from Canada) my friend discovered that both taps in her hotel room produced hot water. When she went down to the front desk, she couldn’t remember the French word for tap, and did the age-old English thing of adding “ette” to the English word to make it sound French. However, tapette, in French, is slang for homosexual. So she basically said to the front desk “I have two hot gays in my room – what should I do??” 😆
In Vietnamese, the male name Dũng and its female counterpart Dung are very common. You can see why it’s so unfortunate in English.
Phúc and Phước are also popular names.
We had a Portuguese foreign exchange student around the time Wendys was running commercials of women declaring they LOVE their fresh stuffed pitas complete with moans of delight/satisfaction. He’d crack up at this because pita in Portuguese is vulgar slang for vagina.
Pedo is spanish for fart. Also the club for smart people MENSA, is spanish for dumb girl.
Negro in Spanish means black. We say the e like how you would say Ned or Bed but most English places say the E like Knee or need. Spelled out it looks worse than how it’s said and the context it is used.
“Hum” in Laos means “penis” so when people talk about humming I just think of “penising” and I think that’s pretty funny
All gourd-based plants in Thailand start with “fuck.” So a pumpkin is a “fuck-tong” (golden gourd). A lot of Thai dishes use pumpkin, zucchini, squash, etc.
So when you visit the market or a restaurant, it takes quite awhile for a politely-spoken English-speaking westerner to get that weird feeling out of their system. But yeah, some of my western friends feel right at home.
In Dutch the word “hoor” (sounds like “whore”) is an interjection used to confirm something. It’s often used at the end of a sentence as an intensifier. When my Dutch parents are visiting in the US, my dad will use this word in English sentences, like “No problem, hoor” or “That’s okay, hoor” … which sounds like he’s calling people a whore. I always have to remind him to stop doing that.
In Turkish if it’s plural you add ler at the end (the same way you would add an s in English). So Spotify has such classics as summer hitler and classic hitler. I was so confused when I first saw it.