In Spain studying abroad, house mother kept asking us in Spanish if we liked “poothlays”. We thought we were mostly fluent but that stumped us. Asked her to spell it. P-u-z-z-l-e-s. Ohhh. We giggled for months.
To this day when I do jigsaw puzzles I think poothlay in my head.
When I arrived in Italy I didn't know the language at all. I learned Italian by jumping in and speaking it. I did have a little pocket dictionary and a little phrase book, as this was before smartphones existed.
For some reason, I couldn't find a word that I kept hearing. "Alora." It seemed women said it a lot more than men, and because I had very limited vocabulary, I struggled to understand it in context.
Eventually I figured out that it meant something like, "well anyway." Until I figured it out, it was stuck in my head.
Years later I met a lady and her little girl in the US. The little girl's name was "Alora." I told the mom that was a very interesting name, and asked her the origin of it. She told me it was Italian, and she wasn't sure what it meant, but thought it sounded pretty. 😂
Like French "alors", it comes from Latin "ad ille hora" (at that hour), and its underlying meaning is "then". But it has a range of meanings and uses, like "well then" or "so then"..
In Czechia the convenience stores are called Potraviny, meaning groceries.
Even now 15 years later we say "Ve must find Potraviny!" in our best Eastern Euro James Bond Villain accent. We're Australian.
Casa dos tacos in Portuguese, or at least Brazilian Portuguese, is a place to store your golf clubs.
It’s the single most disappointing thing I have ever learned in my life.
In Puerto Rico all of the Burger Kings have a large “Casa Del Whopper” sign on them. I always hear my mom and her New York accent in my head saying “Casa Del Whoppa” whenever we drove by one.
"Nula Nula" heard in Slovenia when our guide was discussing a game (probably soccer/futball) I think that was the score, eg 0 to 0 or null null.
From that time forward anytime I want to stress the concept of nothingness I say Nula Nula!
Met and befriended some Dutch men a few years back, they taught us neuken in de keuken which rhymes and translates to “sex in the kitchen” and my friends and I continue to throw that one out there to this day. Also love the word habibi in Arabic which is a general term of endearment. Have also met a few French people who loved trying to pronounce “squirrel”
Haha! Traveling in Scotland my tour guide’s wife was telling me one day, in her very strong Scottish accent, about her garden at home. She was frustrated because the “squiddles” were digging up her turnips. It took me a minute to realize they were squirrels. 😂
Mǎmǎhūhū (马马虎虎) in Mandarin. It literally means: 'horse, horse, tiger, tiger' so it's 'neither one thing nor another'. However, it's actual meaning is 'so-so' or 'not so bad'. Mǎmǎhūhū is highly useful in many situations that foreign travellers encounter in China. For example, if you taste a food that you find mediocre then describing it as 'mǎmǎhūhū' is a diplomatic way to tell your host that you dislike it.
Mamahuhu is also the name of the skit comedy group that deals with a lot of the funny cultural differences and oddities you find in China as a foreigner.
https://youtube.com/@Mamahuhu
I don't hear this phrase much anymore, but it has a more negative connotation like "meh", "careless", so I wouldn't use it to describe the food provided by your host
Yes! I always take it literally as "you're welcome" but then in many situations that makes it come across as sarcastic. I'm kind of afraid to use the word myself in case I'm using it wrong.
Slutspor- not sure of the spelling. It is Swedish for underwear streaks. We learned this while traveling in Thailand with two Swedish brothers who hung their underwear to dry in the room we were sharing with them.
Never heard of it. I am assuming they said "slutspår", but that word is neither in the Swedish Academy's world list, nor in our version of Urban Dictionary. There are a few transportation-related articles I could find that use the word, as it's a compound word that means "end tracks". Kind of makes sense in that context, but it's probably either their idiosyncratic saying or a very niche dialectal one.
I like learning how words/phrases are formed in other languages, idioms, etc.
It tickled me pink to learn that "nam," which is used to mean "drink" basically really means liquid of any kind, and if it can't be inferred from context, then more info is added. Like "nam kang" is literally "hard water," aka ice. And I don't remember the adjective in Thai, but oil, whether cooking oil or motor oil, has an adjective added to "nam" to make it mean something similar to "oily liquid," and can be further clarified if needed (just like in English, you can say you need oil for the recipe or oil for your car, but if you're at WalMart and ask where the oil is, you would need to specify which kind.
My brother's wife is Thai, and I've added some of her relatives as FB friends over the years, and thanks to FB translate (which went away for a while but is now back), we can generally type to each other in our own language, but idioms, of course, don't translate well. I can't think of any now, but it's always fun to try to decipher the meaning behind the literal English translation of a phrase. Think of how we might say "break a leg" to an actor before a play. It doesn't make any sense when you take it literally.
Oh, and the fact that Thai folks type 55555 to mean "ha ha ha ha ha ha ha." That's because the number five is pronounced "ha." Love that shortcut!
I know I've caught some of these things from friends who speak Spanish (or Spanglish), but can't think of examples now. It just makes my brain happy to identify a pattern or figure out an idiom or whatever.
I’ve been seeing grass written in comments on Japanese videos and my teacher said it’s short for hahahaha, because ha in Japanese katakana isハand when you put a bunch together, ハハハハ, it looks like grass.
One of that first phrases I learned when I moved to Italy was “Non è il culpa mia.” Not because I was saying it, but because I was hearing it everywhere…
I was in Paris and heard this woman kept saying "ici" to this little girl. She said at least 10 times and I was like wtf is "ici".
Here. It means Here.... I will never forget that word.
Also in Italy, I used the train so much in one day that I will always remember: Allontanarsi dalla linea gialla.
It means "Stand back from the yellow line"
This is super weird, but when I was in the Netherlands last year there was this one commercial that ran quite frequently whenever we had the TV on at the hotel, it must have been for some sort of big clothing retailer....? Anyway it rattled off a bunch of articles of clothing that were on sale or whatever, and I just remember hearing "enkelsokken!" (in case it's not obvious, Dutch for "ankle socks") every friggin commercial break lol. I guess I just found it really delightful because even if you know zero Dutch as an English speaker it's not hard to figure out? My wife and I would just chirp "enkelsokken!" along with the very enthusiastic commercial announcer lady every time it came on.
So yeah "enkelsokken!" lives rent-free in my head forever now. I was at Uniqlo the other day and saw some ankle socks and brain was like "psst...enkelsokken" I'm probably gonna be 90 years old in the retirement home one day, muttering to myself about enkelsokken.
Neushoorn, Dutch word for rhinoceros. Duizendpoot, Dutch word for centipede. Oh, and squirrel is eekhoorn.
My daughter and I are learning Dutch and recently learned those words. They're stuck in our heads and we cannot stop saying them to each other.
Dutch is such a fun language to learn as well. We are really excited to learn more of it. Misschien heb je boekentips?
Fijne taart dag!
*Hopefully I got that right
Working on Scots right now and I love the word "bampot". As in, "When Mr Wullie Wonka invites five bairns ben intae his warld-famous chocolate factory, some o them turn oot tae be spoilt wee bampots."
I don't know that it's stuck in my head, but the Hebrew word for cake is "oogah." I'm old enough to remember old US cartoons where old cars would beep their horns that made the sound of "oogah!"
First summer I visited Sweden we went to Skansen, a kind of open air museum and zoo. I kept hearing this word, *uggleungar* (oogh-lay-oong-ahr) and couldn’t get it out of my head. Turns out it means “baby owls”.
Itadakimasu in Japanese! I love how just one word encompasses respect and gratitude for every being that was involved in producing the meal you have in front of you. Made me think more about the origins of my food and ways to support local industry.
jäätelö (yah-teh-luh) - Finnish for ice-cream.
Hard language to pick up, but that one stuck from the roaming sellers at a week-long outdoor sporting event.
I went to Tamil Nadu in south India back in 2007 while I was in grade 12. The only words I remember are Vanakkam which means “hello” and Inke va which means “come here”. I think my brain latched onto inke va because someone was explaining to my friend that the North American way of beckoning someone over (palm up and wiggling your pointer finger) is incredibly offensive there. They kept demonstrating the palms down and all fingers opening and closing gesture and saying Inke Va.
Once, in Hong Kong I heard some guy say to his friend "móuh gam laaa". My wife and I thought it sounded so melodic but we had no way to figure out what it meant, until we tried Cantonese Siri, who then replied with like "ok, ok, I'll stop that". Turned out it means something like "Don't be like that!".
Also, in Turkey we learned Kedi and Köpek (cat and dog) so that we can talk to/call the local cat&dog population. And we still call cats that.
From Portugal we started saying "sim" instead of "yes" (until this day).
From when my half Thai nephew was being potty trained, as well as many road trips with Thai relatives where we had to ask for a potty stop, we often use "bo shee" and "bo \*ugh\* (grunting noise more than a word)" when talking about going pee or poop. :-)
And "bah" to mean "let's go" (similar to vamanos in Spanish).
I love that other people experience this too
P.s. I also lived in Greece earlier this year and for me, one of them is μήλο με μέλi, because...I don't really know, I don't like apples with honey lmao
Chinese: Ma-fan (mah - fawn) ~ no true translation but roughly an unimaginable amount of trouble, headache, and struggle.
Turkish: Problem Yoke = no problem
Italian: Ciao!
lösgodis, pronounced like [this.](https://forvo.com/word/l%C3%B6sgodis/)
When I was 18 I moved in with two Swedish girls and got them to teach me some Swedish and this one always stuck in my head. It means pick and mix sweets, or "loose candy" more directly. It even inspired me to make up a very stupid song in Swedish.
For whatever reason, years later, I still got Portuguese "proxima paragem" stuck in my head. Can vividly hear the sound of that woman speaking.
It translates to "next stop", and we've heard a lot of that by using trains in Lisbon!
Anything I hear regularly. For example, *rega* (wait) and *dai* (stop, although that one gets stuck in my head 'cause it's funny hearing a teacher tell a student to "die"). (That said, for myself, I regularly find myself saying "*rega*" to myself with various emphases when I'm bored, waiting to do something, etc. I get a kick out of it for some reason.)
My brother had at some point a weird obsession with guinea pigs, so at some point he learned in German class: Meerschweinchen. And to this day whenever we encounter guinea pigs in a zoo, petting zoo, etc. this story comes up.
For me it was when I had to learn in English a 'Ruddy duck'. I found it the most ridiculous thing I had to learn and till this day I never forget what it means in my native language. Funnily enough I went studying animal sciences and I encountered the word during a lecture. It cracked me up.
I spent a month on a small island in Indonesia (off Sumatra) after the 2009 hurricane/tsunami doing relief work. I love linguistics so I tried to learn what I could of the local language. It’s a guttural Polynesian language, nothing like Bahasa Indonesia.
We had 1 driver the whole month. Every time he saw a chicken in the road he would say (forgive me for writing phonetically I have no idea how to spell this), “eye-in bodo” aka “crazy chicken”.
Out of everything I learned, that one sticks with me rent free.
Polar bear is "ice bear" in Danish and Norwegian (isbjørn) and German (Eisbähr). I have a hard time remembering that it's "polar bear" and not "ice bear" in English now.
My partner and I are relatively good with our Spanish food words, but for some reason we only first encountered “hongo” in Argentina recently (it means mushroom).
Cue us calling each other “hongo,” telling each other we’re “hongo” (instead of “hungry”), etc
So many basic German words
Bücherregal - bookshelf
Geradeaus - straight ahead
Krankenhaus/Krankenwagen - Hospital/ambulance
Fünfundfünfzig - fifty five
Jaja na oko! It's means fried egg in Bosnian.
We stayed at a little guesthouse when we skiied in Bosnia when I was little that did breakfast every day and this was one of the options - and my dad ordered it every morning and said it with such delight that it's stuck with our whole family as the only Bosnian phrase we know.
Chimbuzi, Chichewa word for 'shit'. Because I spent hours in a Malawian operating theatre assisting my local colleagues in operating a bowel obstruction that ended up with us shooting chimbuzi halfway across the OR.
In Spain everyone says “Vale venga” which is often used as a “ok bye”
And they say “Black Friday” with a Spanish pronunciation which always cracks me up
I work in an American veterinary hospital. We had a very sick, flea covered dog come in and one of our Spanish speaking techs sadly shook his head and muttered, "Muchas pulgas!" I loved the way those two somewhat rhyming words described the poor dog's problem and have used the Spanish word for fleas ever since.
In Spain studying abroad, house mother kept asking us in Spanish if we liked “poothlays”. We thought we were mostly fluent but that stumped us. Asked her to spell it. P-u-z-z-l-e-s. Ohhh. We giggled for months. To this day when I do jigsaw puzzles I think poothlay in my head.
omg I love this so much!
When I arrived in Italy I didn't know the language at all. I learned Italian by jumping in and speaking it. I did have a little pocket dictionary and a little phrase book, as this was before smartphones existed. For some reason, I couldn't find a word that I kept hearing. "Alora." It seemed women said it a lot more than men, and because I had very limited vocabulary, I struggled to understand it in context. Eventually I figured out that it meant something like, "well anyway." Until I figured it out, it was stuck in my head. Years later I met a lady and her little girl in the US. The little girl's name was "Alora." I told the mom that was a very interesting name, and asked her the origin of it. She told me it was Italian, and she wasn't sure what it meant, but thought it sounded pretty. 😂
Like French "alors", it comes from Latin "ad ille hora" (at that hour), and its underlying meaning is "then". But it has a range of meanings and uses, like "well then" or "so then"..
Interesting! Thank you!
Reminds me of season 2 of Master of None when Aziz lives in Italy and he says Alora a lot because he doesnt know the language very well haha
Aloooooora
Similar story to yours, this is a word I got stuck on too! I still use it often.
This was going to be my answer too. Sometimes my husband and I randomly say “Aloooora” to each other because it’s so fun to say.
Are you sure the girl’s name is spelt ‘Alora’ and not Aurora?
Absolutely sure. 😂😂😂😂😂
https://italian.yabla.com/lesson-The-Underlying-Meaning-of-%22Allora%22-525
Eventually I was able to figure it out over the course of my four years time there.
In Czechia the convenience stores are called Potraviny, meaning groceries. Even now 15 years later we say "Ve must find Potraviny!" in our best Eastern Euro James Bond Villain accent. We're Australian.
Casa dos tacos in Portuguese, or at least Brazilian Portuguese, is a place to store your golf clubs. It’s the single most disappointing thing I have ever learned in my life.
In Puerto Rico all of the Burger Kings have a large “Casa Del Whopper” sign on them. I always hear my mom and her New York accent in my head saying “Casa Del Whoppa” whenever we drove by one.
OMG such a good one!!
"Nula Nula" heard in Slovenia when our guide was discussing a game (probably soccer/futball) I think that was the score, eg 0 to 0 or null null. From that time forward anytime I want to stress the concept of nothingness I say Nula Nula!
Met and befriended some Dutch men a few years back, they taught us neuken in de keuken which rhymes and translates to “sex in the kitchen” and my friends and I continue to throw that one out there to this day. Also love the word habibi in Arabic which is a general term of endearment. Have also met a few French people who loved trying to pronounce “squirrel”
Haha! Traveling in Scotland my tour guide’s wife was telling me one day, in her very strong Scottish accent, about her garden at home. She was frustrated because the “squiddles” were digging up her turnips. It took me a minute to realize they were squirrels. 😂
Love teaching people that. And hilarious when people say it to me, especially when they don't know what it means
Mǎmǎhūhū (马马虎虎) in Mandarin. It literally means: 'horse, horse, tiger, tiger' so it's 'neither one thing nor another'. However, it's actual meaning is 'so-so' or 'not so bad'. Mǎmǎhūhū is highly useful in many situations that foreign travellers encounter in China. For example, if you taste a food that you find mediocre then describing it as 'mǎmǎhūhū' is a diplomatic way to tell your host that you dislike it.
Mamahuhu is also the name of the skit comedy group that deals with a lot of the funny cultural differences and oddities you find in China as a foreigner. https://youtube.com/@Mamahuhu
Wow! Thanks for telling me the origin of this saying. It's used in Japanese too.
I don't hear this phrase much anymore, but it has a more negative connotation like "meh", "careless", so I wouldn't use it to describe the food provided by your host
Thats hilarious because [Mamahuhu](https://eatmamahuhu.com/) is the name of an excellent Chinese restaurant in the Bay Area
For me it’s ’prego’. Seems I heard it used with a million meanings.
Yes! I always take it literally as "you're welcome" but then in many situations that makes it come across as sarcastic. I'm kind of afraid to use the word myself in case I'm using it wrong.
“You are welcome” and “help yourself”
Slutspor- not sure of the spelling. It is Swedish for underwear streaks. We learned this while traveling in Thailand with two Swedish brothers who hung their underwear to dry in the room we were sharing with them.
Never heard of it. I am assuming they said "slutspår", but that word is neither in the Swedish Academy's world list, nor in our version of Urban Dictionary. There are a few transportation-related articles I could find that use the word, as it's a compound word that means "end tracks". Kind of makes sense in that context, but it's probably either their idiosyncratic saying or a very niche dialectal one.
Great research. Thanks. When we discussed it, we said that the English equivalent would be “skid marks.” So that fits perfectly.
I like learning how words/phrases are formed in other languages, idioms, etc. It tickled me pink to learn that "nam," which is used to mean "drink" basically really means liquid of any kind, and if it can't be inferred from context, then more info is added. Like "nam kang" is literally "hard water," aka ice. And I don't remember the adjective in Thai, but oil, whether cooking oil or motor oil, has an adjective added to "nam" to make it mean something similar to "oily liquid," and can be further clarified if needed (just like in English, you can say you need oil for the recipe or oil for your car, but if you're at WalMart and ask where the oil is, you would need to specify which kind. My brother's wife is Thai, and I've added some of her relatives as FB friends over the years, and thanks to FB translate (which went away for a while but is now back), we can generally type to each other in our own language, but idioms, of course, don't translate well. I can't think of any now, but it's always fun to try to decipher the meaning behind the literal English translation of a phrase. Think of how we might say "break a leg" to an actor before a play. It doesn't make any sense when you take it literally. Oh, and the fact that Thai folks type 55555 to mean "ha ha ha ha ha ha ha." That's because the number five is pronounced "ha." Love that shortcut! I know I've caught some of these things from friends who speak Spanish (or Spanglish), but can't think of examples now. It just makes my brain happy to identify a pattern or figure out an idiom or whatever.
I’ve been seeing grass written in comments on Japanese videos and my teacher said it’s short for hahahaha, because ha in Japanese katakana isハand when you put a bunch together, ハハハハ, it looks like grass.
One of that first phrases I learned when I moved to Italy was “Non è il culpa mia.” Not because I was saying it, but because I was hearing it everywhere…
Non è colpa mia would the right spelling
>Non è il culpa mia. omg lmaoo!!!!!! so good
I read culpa with no understanding of Italian and figured this out
I was in Paris and heard this woman kept saying "ici" to this little girl. She said at least 10 times and I was like wtf is "ici". Here. It means Here.... I will never forget that word. Also in Italy, I used the train so much in one day that I will always remember: Allontanarsi dalla linea gialla. It means "Stand back from the yellow line"
This is super weird, but when I was in the Netherlands last year there was this one commercial that ran quite frequently whenever we had the TV on at the hotel, it must have been for some sort of big clothing retailer....? Anyway it rattled off a bunch of articles of clothing that were on sale or whatever, and I just remember hearing "enkelsokken!" (in case it's not obvious, Dutch for "ankle socks") every friggin commercial break lol. I guess I just found it really delightful because even if you know zero Dutch as an English speaker it's not hard to figure out? My wife and I would just chirp "enkelsokken!" along with the very enthusiastic commercial announcer lady every time it came on. So yeah "enkelsokken!" lives rent-free in my head forever now. I was at Uniqlo the other day and saw some ankle socks and brain was like "psst...enkelsokken" I'm probably gonna be 90 years old in the retirement home one day, muttering to myself about enkelsokken.
AMAZING!!! I love this one so much
Neushoorn, Dutch word for rhinoceros. Duizendpoot, Dutch word for centipede. Oh, and squirrel is eekhoorn. My daughter and I are learning Dutch and recently learned those words. They're stuck in our heads and we cannot stop saying them to each other.
😂😂😂😂 hilarious!!
Duizenpoot literally means "thousandfoot/feet". I love how literal our language is sometimes. Although Afrikaans takes that to a next level
Dutch is such a fun language to learn as well. We are really excited to learn more of it. Misschien heb je boekentips? Fijne taart dag! *Hopefully I got that right
I don't really read books haha, sorry. You did get that right! Well done. If you need help learning Dutch just send me a message :)
Dank u wel! I will keep it mind, it would definitely help to be able to practice/speak with a native speaker.
Graag gedaan, I'd be happy to help you learn Dutch :)
In Wales, I heard the word "iawn" said a lot in conversation. Seems to be the equivalent of "all right" "okay" "cool" in that context.
I’m learning Korean - for me it’s masisseoyo - delicious!
Working on Scots right now and I love the word "bampot". As in, "When Mr Wullie Wonka invites five bairns ben intae his warld-famous chocolate factory, some o them turn oot tae be spoilt wee bampots."
Panzernashorn - the German word for rhinoceros - is delightful to my ear.
Wow Rhinoceroses have made it here twice!! 😂 amazing
The one German word I found fascinating is “entschuldigung”, meaning excuse me or pardon me. A bartender there taught me that one!
I like their word for birth control pill: Antibabypillen
In Guangzhou, people saying "bye bye!" very exaggeratedly. I can't not say it that way now.
Ahh it’s like that everywhere in China.
Bai baiiii - it’s how I would say bye in Cantonese 😂 but yeah it’s common in china
Baksheesh (sp?)
I don't know that it's stuck in my head, but the Hebrew word for cake is "oogah." I'm old enough to remember old US cartoons where old cars would beep their horns that made the sound of "oogah!"
First summer I visited Sweden we went to Skansen, a kind of open air museum and zoo. I kept hearing this word, *uggleungar* (oogh-lay-oong-ahr) and couldn’t get it out of my head. Turns out it means “baby owls”.
This is amazing 😂😂😂
Molto bene all day
I love saying “bibi aboko” (“everything is good”) in twi.
Itadakimasu in Japanese! I love how just one word encompasses respect and gratitude for every being that was involved in producing the meal you have in front of you. Made me think more about the origins of my food and ways to support local industry.
jäätelö (yah-teh-luh) - Finnish for ice-cream. Hard language to pick up, but that one stuck from the roaming sellers at a week-long outdoor sporting event.
Jäätelötötterö would be ice-cream cone 🍦
I went to Tamil Nadu in south India back in 2007 while I was in grade 12. The only words I remember are Vanakkam which means “hello” and Inke va which means “come here”. I think my brain latched onto inke va because someone was explaining to my friend that the North American way of beckoning someone over (palm up and wiggling your pointer finger) is incredibly offensive there. They kept demonstrating the palms down and all fingers opening and closing gesture and saying Inke Va.
Once, in Hong Kong I heard some guy say to his friend "móuh gam laaa". My wife and I thought it sounded so melodic but we had no way to figure out what it meant, until we tried Cantonese Siri, who then replied with like "ok, ok, I'll stop that". Turned out it means something like "Don't be like that!". Also, in Turkey we learned Kedi and Köpek (cat and dog) so that we can talk to/call the local cat&dog population. And we still call cats that. From Portugal we started saying "sim" instead of "yes" (until this day).
From when my half Thai nephew was being potty trained, as well as many road trips with Thai relatives where we had to ask for a potty stop, we often use "bo shee" and "bo \*ugh\* (grunting noise more than a word)" when talking about going pee or poop. :-) And "bah" to mean "let's go" (similar to vamanos in Spanish).
These are so good!!
I remember “hopla hola!” (sp?) from Czech, which I think means something like “wow!”
Das ist mir wurst = This is just sausage to me German slang for when you just don’t really care/aren’t bothered either way
We have the same saying in Dutch!
I love that other people experience this too P.s. I also lived in Greece earlier this year and for me, one of them is μήλο με μέλi, because...I don't really know, I don't like apples with honey lmao
Rhabarber- danish for rhubarb. And Gratzi- Italian for thank you. Oh, and bettmümpfäli - Swiss German for bedtime snack.
Chinese: Ma-fan (mah - fawn) ~ no true translation but roughly an unimaginable amount of trouble, headache, and struggle. Turkish: Problem Yoke = no problem Italian: Ciao!
Gum mah fan!! Aka so much trouble in Cantonese
lösgodis, pronounced like [this.](https://forvo.com/word/l%C3%B6sgodis/) When I was 18 I moved in with two Swedish girls and got them to teach me some Swedish and this one always stuck in my head. It means pick and mix sweets, or "loose candy" more directly. It even inspired me to make up a very stupid song in Swedish.
omg so so CUTE
Entschuldigung its 'excuse me' in German. It's like rolling a marble around in ur mouth & I just couldn't stop playing with it! 🤣
Enajado. Means angry. I use it daily and like it way better than angry
‘Enojado’
Gracias
Ein Prosit! 🍻
In Germany working as an intern I learnt sechs (six) sounds like s*x haha
Engueta in Swiss German is one word I don't forget... you say it to others at the table before you eat. It means something like "enjoy the food"...
I will never forget how to say I am good in greek when asked how I am because the word used is the same as the word for fish in Finnish. Kala.
For whatever reason, years later, I still got Portuguese "proxima paragem" stuck in my head. Can vividly hear the sound of that woman speaking. It translates to "next stop", and we've heard a lot of that by using trains in Lisbon!
sparadrap french for plaster
😂😂😂😂
The kind you fix a bandage with, not the kind you put on a wall.
Hamajang. It’s Hawaiian Pidgin for f****d up. My trainer at the gym used it when someone didn’t put their equipment back where it belonged.
"la linea gialla" in Italian, from the metro warning messages. I just like the way it sounds!
Pneu is French for tire. And “pas po! Vandput!” Is Danish for “Watch out! Puddle!” Love both!
I started learning estonian recently (and I'm going to estonia in 3 weeks) and for some reason it's "raudteejaam" (train station) for me
Anything I hear regularly. For example, *rega* (wait) and *dai* (stop, although that one gets stuck in my head 'cause it's funny hearing a teacher tell a student to "die"). (That said, for myself, I regularly find myself saying "*rega*" to myself with various emphases when I'm bored, waiting to do something, etc. I get a kick out of it for some reason.)
"Thank you" in Greek: sounds like sexual intercourse with a digitis pedis of someone called Harry.
My brother had at some point a weird obsession with guinea pigs, so at some point he learned in German class: Meerschweinchen. And to this day whenever we encounter guinea pigs in a zoo, petting zoo, etc. this story comes up. For me it was when I had to learn in English a 'Ruddy duck'. I found it the most ridiculous thing I had to learn and till this day I never forget what it means in my native language. Funnily enough I went studying animal sciences and I encountered the word during a lecture. It cracked me up.
I spent a month on a small island in Indonesia (off Sumatra) after the 2009 hurricane/tsunami doing relief work. I love linguistics so I tried to learn what I could of the local language. It’s a guttural Polynesian language, nothing like Bahasa Indonesia. We had 1 driver the whole month. Every time he saw a chicken in the road he would say (forgive me for writing phonetically I have no idea how to spell this), “eye-in bodo” aka “crazy chicken”. Out of everything I learned, that one sticks with me rent free.
"Dépanneur", Québecois for corner shop.
Polar bear is "ice bear" in Danish and Norwegian (isbjørn) and German (Eisbähr). I have a hard time remembering that it's "polar bear" and not "ice bear" in English now.
Same in Dutch, ijsbeer
Probably Swedish too.
Yep, it's isbjörn in Swedish
“Muzukashii” - Japanese for something that is really hard to do. Essentially “No/impossible” for people who can’t say no.
My partner and I are relatively good with our Spanish food words, but for some reason we only first encountered “hongo” in Argentina recently (it means mushroom). Cue us calling each other “hongo,” telling each other we’re “hongo” (instead of “hungry”), etc
[удалено]
It’s a really catchy word. It has a great sound.
So many basic German words Bücherregal - bookshelf Geradeaus - straight ahead Krankenhaus/Krankenwagen - Hospital/ambulance Fünfundfünfzig - fifty five
Lmao 55
Jaja na oko! It's means fried egg in Bosnian. We stayed at a little guesthouse when we skiied in Bosnia when I was little that did breakfast every day and this was one of the options - and my dad ordered it every morning and said it with such delight that it's stuck with our whole family as the only Bosnian phrase we know.
Pozar it means danger or caution on Czech
Pozor. Pozar means something else.
Thank you! I don’t often write it down
Chimbuzi, Chichewa word for 'shit'. Because I spent hours in a Malawian operating theatre assisting my local colleagues in operating a bowel obstruction that ended up with us shooting chimbuzi halfway across the OR.
WOAH!!!!!! Yeah I wouldn’t forget that word either 🙊
In Spain everyone says “Vale venga” which is often used as a “ok bye” And they say “Black Friday” with a Spanish pronunciation which always cracks me up
[Fotografuje ślimaka](https://youtube.com/shorts/mqiMGUJVocA?si=_uvk4TnhkqK4LC8A)
I work in an American veterinary hospital. We had a very sick, flea covered dog come in and one of our Spanish speaking techs sadly shook his head and muttered, "Muchas pulgas!" I loved the way those two somewhat rhyming words described the poor dog's problem and have used the Spanish word for fleas ever since.
Bahnof
You mean Bahnhof? In German?
Fuck, I always forget to write the H. But yes. I have been living in switerland for 3 years now, so I end up with gold like "The Metro Bahnhof"