I just realized something.
The german word for poison is gift, right? Well, if someone who knew german only heard a person who speaks english say "I have a gift for you."...
There would be a LOT of confusion and explaining needed.
13 Comments
Well, if he only knew German, he wouldn't understand the rest of the sentence anyway. In general, people wouldn't pick up on an individual word like gift in an incomprehensible sentence – the brain just translates the whole thing as nonsense. For example (this is a fake language):
- Saka mulanto vets minas kill galad dirilum.
The English word kill is in there (let's say it means awesome in the fake language), but you probably wouldn't have even realized or noticed the word if spoken, because it's all nonsense to you.
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Whoops! :) Good job on noticing it. I really like how the German word for jewelry is Schmuck. That could really get confusing. ;)
Now I'm interested... what is the meaning of "Schmuck" in English?
Another nice word is "mist". In German it (Mist) means "dung". There is a product named Irish Mist... funny for English learners...
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/schmuck
Also, that's why they called it "Irisch Moos" (Irish Moss) in Germany :)
- 1411
Most people don't get it. "Der After" = "the anus" ;-)
Also a good wort is "Spanner" (voyeur).
Hah! Welcome to confusion! :D I come from Sweden and there "gift" means both married as in "Jag är gift" and poison as in "Det är gift". Then I can mix it up with the English "gift" AND with the German "Gift". And this is just the beginning... :D
Etter, ett, Adder, Edder, Eddercop, Edderkopp, adding, one, Spinne, spin, spinna...
well also english speakers may snicker when they realize a conjuged form of the verb "to drive" is "fahrt"
I knew that but I never put it in that way before! I usually just used it as a remembering method, but now in school we're talking about health class and then I said... I'll let you guess what happened (Hint: Food poisoning)
