Your favourite foreign words with literal meanings

[Brefugee]

We were chatting about this on The Archers thread and i wondered if anyone else would like to join the convo.

I can't remember how it came about but anyway, two of my favourites are

• The Russian for machine-gun translates literally to bullet thrower
• The German for gloves translates literally to hand shoes

It becomes much more obvious if you do something like 16:8 , @GameofPhones !

True. Although God pops up in eg Goodbye - God be with you.
My favourite Irish ones :-
Husband- Fear Chéile , Together Man
Wife Bean Chéile - Together Woman
Butterfly 🦋 Féileceán ..Little Festival

Broc is Irish and - I think - also Welsh. No doubt related to Breac ( pron. brack) - speckled , striped, spotted etc. A lot of animal names are the same or very similar across Europe?

Houndstooth pattern (pretty evocative itself!) is literally "Plover feather lattice" in Japanese.

Those clouds that are really high up and scattered thinly across the sky (altocumulus) are called "fish skin clouds" in Chinese.

In most East Asian languages, the linguistic distinction between green and blue came relatively recently, so for example the words qing in Chinese, aoi in Japanese and xanh in Vietnamese all mean both green AND blue. (Incidentally, green traffic lights in Japan are sometimes, but not always, more blue-hued than elsewhere.)
So other words have been used now to make the distinction clear. In Chinese, for example, the most commonly used word for blue is lan, which was originally only the word for the indigo plant. But my favourite are the Vietnamese words to differentiate the two: green is literally "leaf xanh" and blue is literally "sky xanh" or "ocean xanh".

On a different note "to bite the dust" in German is "ins Gras beissen", to bite into the grass.

ohdrearydrearyme

"to bite the dust" in German is "ins Gras beissen", to bite into the grass.

Yes I've wondered whether the French 'rigoler' to laugh, and 'rigole' (drain) are related to our 'laugh like a drain'.

not entirely on topic but I've just been refilling my herb jars and they all match except the one for Tarragon which is in the jar i bought in The Netherlands because it says "Dragon"

“Kurwa” in Polish. Swear word but I don’t know any other word that can express so many feelings and emotions.

Well you may be right, Brefugee because Oxford Languages says

"mid 16th century: representing medieval Latin tragonia and tarchon, perhaps from an Arabic alteration of Greek drakōn ‘dragon’ (by association with drakontion ‘dragon arum’)".

Orange is an interesting colour in many European languages, coming relatively recently so that things we would say are orange are often called 'yellow' or 'red'.

A carrot is a 'yellow root' in Iceland (though I believe they did used to be more yellow), a ginger cat is 'yellow striped', an egg yolk is the 'red' of the egg, and the colour orange itself is 'Chinese apple yellow' where Chinese apple is the fruit orange.

I think a lot of languages call an orange a Chinese apple! It's funny that before we had this fruit in Europe we apparently didn't have a clear concept of that colour between yellow and red.

Not wishing to let go of the supposed Welsh popty ping for microwave oven (since debunked as an urban myth), could it be a nursery word? Like 'bobbo' for horse in my native English dialect.

Abhannmor · Today 10:05

Butterfly 🦋 Féileceán ..Little Festival

That's cheered me right up!

A carrot is a 'yellow root' in Iceland (though I believe they did used to be more yellow), a ginger cat is 'yellow striped', an egg yolk is the 'red' of the egg, and the colour orange itself is 'Chinese apple yellow' where Chinese apple is the fruit orange.

OMG! Apfelsinen (oranges) in German - and the same word in Russian - which is sadly nearly unused these days here, makes complete sense now!

Yep, appelsína here 🍊

Though apple is epli and China is Kína so it comes via other Nordic languages I think.

Those clouds that are really high up and scattered thinly across the sky (altocumulus) are called "fish skin clouds" in Chinese.

And mackerel skies here, which I think is even better

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackerel_sky

I'm sure there's a German one for a chunky body, that literally means 'comfort lard'! Anyone know?

ah yes, that would be Kummerspeck - the fat you get from eating your feelings (where "Speck" is a kind of extra fatty bacon type of thing)

I love these. My Mum's family is Austrian and I'm familiar with so many of the German phrases having heard them a lot.

I'm trying to think of some to add but, great thread!

Oh that's it! Thank you!

I would spoil the party here once more with the warning that Kummerspeck is honoured more in the breach than the observance - you’ll find it in lists of weird German words far more than people use it in practice. Liebeskummer, sure (lovesick), but Kummerspeck less so. Everyone knows it though, maybe via osmosis.

I‘ve just remembered the immense list of machismo terms in German for insulting someone as a softie: the most common one is Weichei (a soft (boiled) egg), but we also have Warmduscher (someone who showers in hot water), Sitzpinkler (a man who pees sitting down), and Schattenparker (someone who parks in the shade because they‘re not hard enough to tolerate a hot car). And obviously Schlappschwanz (a non-erect penis). Whoever said the German language lacks creativity?

I've heard "Kummerspeck" uttered seriously my a Gen-Z within the last year about her sister. Deffo German to the nth degree (it was about how sis needed a new Trachtenkleid...)

Ah, well if it was a young person talking about a Trachtenkleid then there is a very big regional difference at play here. It‘s not something you would ever hear in Berlin, heh alta. Are we talking about Bayern?

Mahlzeit is used throughout. Also in Saarland, but people also say it if someone burps or farts. We tend to say Guten Appetit around here - don’t know if it’s the French influence.

Yes.
Ah you're in Berlin... Not real Germany 😜

The old English word for bee is 'dumbledore'.

LadyGreySpillsTheTea

"I‘ve just remembered the immense list of machismo terms in German for insulting someone as a softie: the most common one is Weichei (a soft (boiled) egg), but we also have Warmduscher (someone who showers in hot water), Sitzpinkler (a man who pees sitting down), and Schattenparker (someone who parks in the shade because they‘re not hard enough to tolerate a hot car). And obviously Schlappschwanz (a non-erect penis). Whoever said the German language lacks creativity?"

Whereas the only other English equivalent I can think of atm 'milquetoast' disguises itself as half French.