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

Ha, same with welsh- bysedd traed- feet fingers!

In Icelandic, taxi is leigubíll - rent car.

Unfortunately this leaves them with no choice but to call a rental car a bílaleigubíll - car rent car.

@LauderSyme The Icelandic word for pelvis is lífbein - literally lifebone. That's the pubic bone specifically. Pelvis is mjaðmagrind - hip frame.

Thought of another French one, morbid but satisfying in its accuracy: l'appel du vide - the call of the void.

It’s the term to describe that feeling you get when on a high building and feel the urge to jump, or if driving in traffic to suddenly swerve. I think some people refer to it as intellectual suicide, the thought without the intention.

My favourite German word has to be ‘durchfall’ - diarrhoea. Literally ‘through fall’.

I used to laugh at Germans watching their Far-Seeing-Apparatus but that's literally what television means.

Vintique · Today 13:44

Russian for ladybird - bozh’ya korovka, God’s little cow.

And "my God" is bozhe moi, so Russian speaking kids often call it bozhe moi karovka.

A couple more Danish ones:

vandslange=watersnake=hose
livmoder=lifemother=uterus

From Portuguese “Para inglês ver” literally means “for English to see” and means doing something for appearances sake

I have swapped to a previous user name for this becuase it's my all time favourite, from Afrikaans.

Word: matches
Afrikaans: vuurhoutjies
translation: little fire sticks

The Irish for hello, Dia dhuit, meaning God be with you as posted above is interesting.
Goodbye is a contraction (via usage) of God Be With Ye.
Go(o)db'''''ye.

So Hello and Goodbye are both God Be With You.

The Dutch for gloves is Handshoen.
Hand shoes.

Apparently the replies can go on and on like: “Dia is Mhuire agus Pádraig duit” (God and Mary and St Patrick be with you for other posters) and so on and so forth naming all the patron saints. I’ve never actually heard any longer variations used but I’ve always pictured it playing out in a Mrs Doyle trying to name Fr Todd Unctious kind of way!

The best language has to be Bislama spoken in Vanuatu!

examples are

• Bra: Basket blong titi
• Sexual Intercourse:Hambag
• Diving Mask: daevaglas
• Everything Everywhere:Evri samting Evri samwea
• Helicopter:Mixmaster blong Jesus Christ
• Piano: black fala box we igat black teeth, hemi gat white teeth you faetem hard I singout
• Saw: Pulem I kam, pushem I go, wood I fall down

loads of phrases on line 😂

The Irish for ladybird, bóín Dé, also translates as God's little cow.
Madadh rua means a fox in Irish and translates as the ginger or red haired dog.

I love these, thanks for such a cheery thread!

Just off the cuff, toddler is a good English literalism. There are plenty of others; teapot, legwarmer, skateboard, etc but I like the cute imagery of toddler.

Why am I not surprised?

I think the para in parasol and paraguas is for 'stop' not 'for'

My favourite in English is the movies. Sounds like something a child should say not an adult.

Spanish has lots.
Rascacielos = skyscraper ( scratch the sky)
Thanks for the thread @Brefugee

I studied German for a while. Don't remember much but kinderschwerigkeiten ( Sp ?) - teething problems. It was used in a business sense - no idea why I remember it.
My friend says her husband made her laugh when he insisted a bra in German was Stoppen Die Floppen.

From the Ancient Greek verb diarrheo, to flow through...

Unfortunately that’s an urban myth! It’s meicrodon.

butterfly
welsh: iar fach y haf
literally: little summer chicken

My favourite in Danish is baptism - barnedåb - baby dipping!