I've
grown up hearing and speaking a few different languages: Cantonese, English,
Vietnamese, and a bit of Mandarin. I've found that interesting things occur
when words go across the huge chasm known as "different languages",
though. The same word/ pronunciation of it can mean an entirely different thing.
There are countless examples out there considering there are roughly 6,500
spoken languages in the world today, but a couple distinct examples come to
mind.
The
first example I think of is the word "colorful" in Thai. I don't
actually know any Thai, but I do know one particular word because it’s rather
easy to remember. In Thai, the word for color is สี, which
is pronounced "sĭ". Coincidentally, "sĭ" is also how
you pronounce the word "poop" or “feces” in Cantonese. This makes it
quite amusing when you say colors in Thai to a person who speaks
Cantonese.
The
word for “blue” in Thai is สีฟ้า, which is pronounced
“sĭ fá”. “Fá” is also the pronunciation for “flower” in Cantonese. So, the
color blue means “poop flower” in Cantonese. Grey in Thai is สีเทา,
pronounced “sĭ thao”. “Thao” is also how you say “head” in Cantonese. So grey
in Thai means “poop-head” or “sh*t head”. Fun!
But
wait, we’re not done! The word for “that” in Mandarin Chinese sounds an awful
lot like the N-word in English, which makes it quite amusing when you know both
languages and hear the N-word every few moments in a Mandarin
conversation. So don’t always think people are being derogatory or racist if
you overhear people saying certain words. It can mean something completely
innocent in the language they’re conversing in!
This is really interesting. I didn't know some of these languages were so similar in such weird ways! I grew up speaking both German and English, and though those languages have some weird pronunciation confusions, like the examples you gave, a lot more of the confusion comes from uses of the same word. English was has incorporated many German words, but since they were borrowed so long ago, the same word in English often has a different meaning in German now, which gets confusing!
ReplyDeleteThat was super amusing to read. Things in the world are so goofy sometimes, and completely unexpected. I love how you had a variety of examples, and you didn't need to do a ton of extra research to discover them. I can't imagine the laugh you would get out of this in conversations.
ReplyDelete