In My Language, That Sounds Like...: Difference between revisions

* Younger English-speaking viewers of ''[[Schindler's List]]'' may be surprised to see the sign on Schindler's factory that says "Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik" in a film set in 1939. While obviously predating the English usage of the word "email" by several years, in German "email" means "enamel"; the text on the sign means "German Enamelware Factory" (Incidentally, [[Throw It In|Schindler says "Deutsche Emailfabrik"]], but the sign shows the correct name). In Germany, electronic mail is referred to as "E-Mail" (with a hyphen, pronounced the same as the English word), although simply "Mail" is used too.

** Note the words are only homographs - "Email" without the hyphen is a French loanword and pronounced "aigh-MY," roughly the same as the original French word.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* [[Discworld]] uses this gag a few times.

* In ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'', "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle" is a deadly insult in the Vl'hurg language, tantamount to an act of war; fortunately, the Vl'hurgs misjudge the size of Earth and have their space fleet eaten by a small dog when they launch an attack.

** And then there's the fact in the same series that "Belgium" is the most vile swear word in the galaxy everywhere except on Earth.

* One book in the ''[[X Wing Series]]'' mentions that the Twi'leks sometimes fiddle with the pronunciation of people's full names to avoid insulting the person in question. In particular, Tal'dira calls Wedge Antilles "Wedgan'tilles", which is close to "slayer of stars" in Twi'leki. Apparently pronouncing it the way humans do changes the meaning to something like "one so foul as to induce vomiting in a rancor".

 

* Jerry [[Seinfeld]] dated a girl from another country, where "the Comedian" was a mythological great lover. At the end she told him, "You tell jokes, but you are no Comedian."

* Used as a joke in an episode of ''[[That '70s Show]]'', where Fez's very religious exchange family plays a KISS (I think it was KISS) record backwards to try to find hidden messages. Amongst the backwards gibberish, his exchange parents hear "worship the Devil," while Fez hears "I want to sex your monkey" in his own language (which, of course, we don't know). Laughing about hearing it doesn't help his case.

 

== [[Recorded and Stand Up Comedy]] ==

{{quote|'''Eddie''': Bonjour, je suis une catastrophe ... mais pas un catastrophe typicale. Une catastrophe ... executif. Une catastrophe d'action.}}

*** "Travesty" originally was a type of theatre—a play with lots of very broad topical satire, lots of physical comedy, lots of risque jokes, ''and'' all male characters were played by women and all female characters were played by men.

 

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[[Category:Older Than Steam]]

[[Category:Card Battle Game]]

[[Category:Language Tropes]]