Random foreign language words/quirks/facts

[YesThatIsMyRealName]

A thread to share random words/quirks/facts about foreign languages you can speak.

In Korean, lol is written as either ㅋㅋ (sounds like kk) or ㅎㅎ (sounds like hh).

You know how we use an exclamation mark to lighten the mood and make texts seem less serious? Koreans use ~~ So like "see you soon~~"

Although the Korean word for dog is 개, gae, they usually use 강아지, gangaji which actually means puppy. They also frequently call them 멍멍, mungmung, which is like saying woofwoof. Sometimes old fellas will see our dog and say "oh look at that little woofwoof". So cute.

My favourite word in Turkish (and one of the few I remember now)... Binbasher. Means Captain (Army rank). Literal translation is 'head of 100 men'.

Binbasher! Love it!

I have several Korean friends and wondered what the ~~ meant.
Thanks!

shanghaidiva, I wondered about it for ages too. You even see it on signs here, like "please wash your hands~~~~"

I think it's meant to be like it elongates the word. So it always seems a little cutesy.

The Thai version of lol is 555. In Thai, the number 5 is pronounced "ha", so Thai people will write 555 to represent hahaha.

In Mandarin Chinese, "panda" is "da xiong mao" which literally means "big bear-cat".

In Hebrew, sausage roll is "Moses in a basket".

Mandarin Chinese can be tricky when foreign words are translated into characters by sound eg
Sandwich is 三明治, san Ming zhi
The characters make no sense eg san is three, Ming is the first character in Ming tian which means tomorrow etc, but together the sound is a bit like the pronunciation of sandwich so this is the translation. I have wasted loads of time trying to translate something only to find out it was someone’s name and was never going to make any sense!

@barfotoliv That's funny. 555

@Mucklowe I love big bear cat

@shanghai, I sometimes do similar in Korean, though it's an alphabet rather than characters. The way Korean is, you need extra syllables on English words so I'll be trying to read something thinking it's a Korean word and it's actually just like "birthday cake" or something.

Not as fun as since if these but, Bethlehem means house of bread in Hebrew.

In Arabic it means house of meat.

Danish for cellulite translates as orange skin. And blackheads are skin worms.

Same for German it's 'Orangenhaut' - if you look at it closely, you'll see why.
Blackheads are called 'Mitesser' = "things that eat with you" - persumably they once thought they were a kind of worm living inside your skin

There are 2 German words, that we have no equivalent in English, but I wish we did.
Ohrwurm meaning ear worm, and refers to a song stuck in your head!

Mittelschmerz- middle pain, refers to being able to feel ovulation

Ear worm is used in English to mean exactly that

@TheStuffWasBad- I love the term earworm! Maybe I've just never heard others use it?