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

I love German! It’s such an honest, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin language. It’s my second language and my father grew up in Silesia (now Wroclaw, Poland) speaking a German that isn’t really spoken anymore. So when I was 19 and went to work in the Western part of a newly unified Germany many moons ago, I spoke my German having no idea how old fashioned some of my words and phrases were. Well, as soon as people laughed at me I did know. I felt like I’d rolled up from Biblical times.

Anyway my favourite is not a German word but an Italian one. I love the word for moron (often said in response to really bad drivers): deficiente… deffi-chen-té is how it’s pronounced. Literally you’re telling someone they are deficient. 😆 I love it. It’s so direct.

I do love the German word for kitty (cat) which is the very sweet Miezekatze.

I also love habibi, the Arabic term of endearment for my love/my dearest or darling. We call our Miezekatze ‘Bibi’ which is short for habibi. 😻

In Korean, the idiom to be stood up translates as ‘to be hit by the wind’.

German
fernsehen = watch tv
literally to “remote see”

German
Zahnartz - tooth doctor (dentist)

Another German one, haustier. Pet. Literally house animal

Our friends the Germans again:
Biermuskel: beer muscle (the flab on a bloke who spends too much time in the pub)
Fussballbeine: football legs (splendidly muscular male pins)
Elefantenrennen: elephant racing (lorries taking ages to overtake each other on the motorway)

We were introduced to these fabulous terms by German friends of ours years ago, and they have stuck.

In Malaysia you might encounter a 'Jalan tikus', literally a 'rat road' or as we would say, rat run.

Yes it means stop, from the verb parar.

Also - parabrisa- stop breeze - wind screen

Yep! Or paracaídas.
(when I said 'I think' on the previous post I actually was completely sure, I just didn't want to come across as a know-it-all 😅😅)

I'm going to be up all night thinking about 'para' words now 😂

The Russian word for railway is voksahl - directly from ‘Vauxhall’, apparently because some U.K. workers who were employed on the first Russian railways were from Vauxhall, and the Russian workers heard them say it so often, they thought it meant ‘railway’.

That’s what our Russian teacher told us anyway!

The Russian word for ‘to giggle ’ is (roughly) ‘heeheekat’

I love ‘oberlippenbart’ German for moustache - translates as ‘over the lip beard’ 😁

I’ve always loved kindergarten - children’s garden, a place where children grow - very sweet.

French “faire de la leche-vitrine” - to lick the windows aka go window shopping. Suspect no actual French people use it outside of the Tricolore books of the early 90s but it’s always amused me.

Dutch again

1. Motorway = Snelweg (Fast Way)
2. Motorway barriers/central reservation = Vangrail (Catch Rail)
3. Medicine (remedy) = Geneesmiddel (cure product/medium/tool)
4. Washing up = Afwas (Off Wash)
5. Fridge = Koelkast (Cool Cupboard)
6. Binoculars = Verrekijker (Far Looker)

Thai for ice = hard water.

Is there an English word for the wonderful German discomumf ( I think you have to say it to get it), meaning the sound of a disco heard from afar?

Is there an English word for the wonderful German discomumf ( I think you have to say it to get it), meaning the sound of a disco heard from afar?

^

Nope. But maybe we'll adopt discomumf

Elefant snot - blutac.
^

Brilliant

Portuguese does this, though I don't know of any reasons.
Domingo - Sunday, OK, that's God's day.
The weekdays get predictable:
Secunda-feira - Monday, second day
Terca-feira - Tuesday, third day
and so on until, ta-da!
Sabado - Saturday, still the Sabbath.

@Oceangirl82 I LOVE those Bislama words 😍 You couldn't speak it without having fun! How on earth do people in Vanuatu cope with serious discussions??

And ladybird in Welsh is buwch goch gota - little red cow.

Maybe the spots are meant to be like cow markings?

But yes - 'lady bird'! 🤷‍♀️

In Finnish the word for Wednesday is Keskiviikko - literally 'middle of the week' which amuses me. The rest of the day names are taken from old Germanic or Swedish day names I think.

I like the month names, not boring Roman based names but nature based ones.
June - Kesäkuu - summer moon
July - Heinäkuu - hay moon
February - Helmikuu - pearl month (because the way the snow sparkles in the sun)
November - Marraskuu - dead month (because the ground is dead)
December - Joulukuu - Yule month

Ooo which brings me to the word for Father Christmas - Joulupukki - Christmas Goat as the traditional Joulupukki had goat horns (and wore an inside out fur coat and went door to door demanding offerings of food and booze instead of bringing gifts)

Trying to think of more of our own that might strike foreigners as funny - like clothes horse and skyscraper above. So far I only have heartburn, collywobbles and nettlerash. Then there's blackheads (and whiteheads), Miller's Thumb (a flat bottom-living freshwater fish that was called Bullyhead in my native dialect).

A lot of these literal words are also literal in English too:
television/telephone (see/speak far)
Parachute/parasol (against falling/sun)

It is from the Latin or Greek root.

I do like the French "tomber dans les pommes" (to faint). It's nice imagery.