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

Actually I think it's currently:
die Einwegflasche - one way bottle, one use bottle bottle, and das Zahnfleisch - tooth meat, gums.

One of my favourite German words is Backpfeifengesicht.

It translates into English as Slappable Face.

Gesicht means face, and Backpfeife describes a specific kind of slap. It literally translates to “cheek whistle.” So when you give someone a Backpfeife, you hit him on his cheek so hard that he hears a whistle in his ears.

I literally just learnt that word the others day, and it made me chuckle.

And to make it more Christmassy...if you watch Die Hard in German, Bruce Willis says 'Yipeekayee Schweinebacke' instead of the English more adult insult

I so love this thread.

Dumbkoffe - stupid head (German!)
And they say the Germans have no sense of humour!

I think we might have a winner here!

DISCOMUMF

Oh how fabulous!

Thank You @coxesorangepippin!

x

French for "traffic jam" is "embouteillage" - embottlement, or putting something into a bottle.

I have some of them now, I love the illustrations, they take me back 60 years to that time.

I've just asked my German husband who is sitting next to me, he's going to have a think. 😊

My favourite German word is Arschgeige. 😊 You can put so much expression into it.

As an aside, I met a guy the other day called Herr Stingl, and I accidentally called him Herr Schlingl. He was too!! 😂😂😂

And ‘periscope’, from Greek words meaning ‘look’ and ‘around’.

This is mentioned in The Book of Heroic Failures by Stephen Pile, a wonderful book to dip into or leave by your guests' bedside. We have bought many copies over the years, because whenever we lend it to somebody we never get it back.
This is a very funny anecdote in there. 😄

Dummkopf!

Days of the week are also very boring in Mandarin:

xingqiyi - week 1
xingqier - week 2
xingqisan - week 3
etc.

Sunday is rather more imaginative, being either 'week sun' or 'week sky/heaven'

But (apparently) up until 1911, which was the end of the Qing dynasty, they were named after the planets:

Moon
Fire
Water
Jupiter
Venus
Earth
Sun

No idea why they changed

My favourite is the German Sehenswürdigkeiten - literally 'things worthy of being seen'. Much more fun and meaningful than 'the sights'.

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 adore Finnish. The sound of it is like birds chirping.

You have me thinking about the German word for Thursday which is Donnerstag or 'Thunder Day' from the old High German name for the God of Thunder (Thor), Donar.
And Freitag is named for Frija or Frige (Frigg, Odin's wife).

Some more cute English words, though I think collywobbles probably wins for me 😄

Goose pimples / gooseflesh
Bottleneck (see embouteillement above)
Heebie-jeebies
Battleaxe (fierce woman)
Chicken pox, Smallpox, Measles
Snot!

I love that the Celtic word - and still the Welsh - for River is Afon. This means the River Avon is called River River 🙃

My carer has just arrived, he speaks some Japanese.

Apparently the months of the year ate

month 1, month 2...

And breakfast is 'morning food', lunch is 'afternoon food' and guess what dinner is? 'evening food'.

@Fraaances that's quite sweet. Another group I was teaching couldn't identify the difference between cow's milk and soy milk.

You have me thinking about the German word for Thursday which is Donnerstag or 'Thunder Day' from the old High German name for the God of Thunder (Thor), Donar. That's interesting because Thursday is 'Thor's day' in English, I wonder when the change in name came.

@SerenityNowInsanityLater the English days are all named after the old gods:

Sun's day
Moon's day
Tiw's day
Woden's day
Thor's day
Friya's day
Saturn's day

Don't know how a Roman sneaked in there after all the Nordic gods, mind you.

I didn't know the Icelanders weren't the only ones boring enough to call Wednesday 'mid week day'.

I still wish they hadn't changed them though! Óðinsdagur would have been cooler.

The Finnish months sound brilliant. We have special Icelandic months too, but they don't align with the actual months and they're not used much anymore - just for certain days like Women's Day is the first day of the old month Góa and Men's Day is the first day of Þorri.

I could not love this thread more.

In Greek, a car is an aftokinito, literally meaning go there

So glad to know that goodbye is derived from God be with you! I've wondered about that for ages.

Duur!!
🤣🤣

I love that the Celtic word - and still the Welsh - for River is Afon. This means the River Avon is called River River

And there's more than one Avon.
And River Ouses. Even better, Ouseburn River.

There are lots of tautological place names, e.g. Brendon Hill and Pendle Hill being contenders for 'hill hill hill'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listofftautologicalplaceenames

For those of you who love languages ( so, all of us here), I recommend Charles Berlitz, Native Tongues. It's a great book about all aspects of language.
It's not too heavy either, so you can dip in and out.