Everyone else can read of course and contribute if you can Sometimes a word exists in several languages but got totally different meanings. Can you name one or two? Kindergarten/Kingergarden actually has German origin but is used in the English language as well. What's Kindergarden in the States is called VORSCHULE(pre-school) in Germany and conversely. Pre-school in the US is what we call Kindergarten here.Lol Funny huh? But another funny one is dick .YEA the D-word In German it means thick but while guys in the US rather use THICK as a compliment in Germany saying"Maedchen du bist dick"(girl u re thick) is rather meant to express disgust.
Such words are usually cognates (they have a common root). When two cognates also have different meanings, not just spellings, in different languages, they are also called "false friends". The most frequent cause for such similar words is a common root, but there can also be simple coincidences, I guess the "dick" example is one of them. And so as not to kill all the humor in your thread, I'll give you one example of a simple coincidence: in Romanian, the word "clit" (archaic) means "pile" and there is even a village called Clit. Most young people don't know its Romanian meaning though. This guy must be a foreign tourist, by the look on his face, lol: P.s: In the area, we also have the Clit River, and the Clit Valley.
A well known example here in Scandinavia is the word "grine". In Danish "grine" means to laugh :smt042, while in Norwegian it means to cry :smt089. I don't know why that word has so very different meanings in the two languages. But it's a bit weird, cause Danish and Norwegian are almost exactly the same otherwise...:smt101
Oh yeah.Talking about funny names for places. Hell is actually a small town in Norway (so it freezes over quite often...) Here's a pic from the train station in Hell. In Norwegian "hell" means a flat rock. The place English speakers call "Hell" is called "helvete"
Oh, I remembered another one: In Romanian, "crap" means "carp". That's a carp roe salad, in the image.
Ahahaha I love it!!! lol In italian there r some false friends but most of our words end with a vowel, so the words change at the end. But ppl sometimes think that to enlish-ize a word, u can just take the last vowel off, so ppl get confused Morbid - in italian Morbid means "soft". So if an italian tell u u have a morbid skin... they don't mean to be rude, lol burrito in spanish means donkey, but burro in italian means butter, so italian ppl can think it's "little butter" parenti in italian means relatives, and genitori is parents ape in italian means bee aperitivo means the "happy hour" sole means sun argomento in italian means topic caffetteria in italian is a bar, a place where u can make breakfast and drink expresso what u call a solo (like in dance) is called assolo in italian. my friend always laughs at it...sounds like asshole lol and finally, since we r in the black men-white woman message board... negro is spanish means black... just black
