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My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Difference between revisions

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My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels (view source)

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'' They watched him impassively.''
'' 'Damn. I mean... arranged beetles?... variety of waterfall?... Oh, yes... money.' '' }}
**:* Of course, the Counterweight Continent is a Discworld version of China, where most of the various languages are tonal, meaning the same syllable can mean several different things based on intonation. For example, the words for "wizard" and "blob of swallow's vomit" differ only by tone.
**:* The same thing happens with Mr. Saveloy, albeit to a slightly lesser extent:
{{quote|" That's right. You'd be very welcome to join us. You could perhaps be a barbarian... to push beans... a length of knotted string... ''ah''... accountant. Have you ever killed anyone?'"}}
*:* Earlier in ''Interesting Times'', the narrator claims that a simple word like "aaargh" can, in a certain language from Honwondaland, mean "More boiling oil, please!" which can have interesting implications for those uttering it.
*:* A [[Running Gag]] in the same book has Rincewind use an intonation while screaming "aaargh" that translates it into the counterweight continent phrase for "your wife is a big hippo".
*:* And then, of course, there's Vimes' attempt at dwarfish from ''[[The Fifth Elephant]]''. It nearly causes a diplomatic incident since the only word he knows for 'dwarf', having learned by picking up Ankh-Morpork 'street dwarfish', is the word for 'dwarf (indicating miscreant)'. He also calls himself "Overseer Vimes of the Look" and says "I am sure you are a dwarf of no convictions. Let us shake our business, dwarf (indicating miscreant)." In case that's unclear, imagine what would happen if you addressed the chief of police as "punk". Yeah, like that, but with more axes.
*:* ''[[Jingo]]'' mentions two Klatchian tribes who went to war over a translated word in a holy book, which meant either "god" or "man" - the difference in the original language is only one dot, and if the dot had been a little further to the left it would have been "licorice".▼
*** In case that's unclear, imagine what would happen if you addressed the chief of police as "punk". Yeah, like that, but with more axes.
**:* Modelled on the [[Real Life]] theologian disagreement whether [[God]] and [[Jesus]] are homoousios (of the same substance) or homoiousios (of a similar substance). Because it was in Greek, and the disagreement was over an iota subscript, it gave us the phrase "not one iota (of difference)"▼
▲** ''[[Jingo]]'' mentions two Klatchian tribes who went to war over a translated word in a holy book, which meant either "god" or "man" - the difference in the original language is only one dot, and if the dot had been a little further to the left it would have been "licorice".
*:* Also in ''[[Monstrous Regiment]]'', Vimes has a slight communication problem when, as a gesture of friendship towards Polly Perks and her regiment, he tries to say "I am a Borogravian" and instead claims to be a cherry pancake. An obvious reference to Kennedy and "Ich bin ein Berliner!" (see Real Life, below).▼
▲*** Modelled on the [[Real Life]] theologian disagreement whether [[God]] and [[Jesus]] are homoousios (of the same substance) or homoiousios (of a similar substance). Because it was in Greek, and the disagreement was over an iota subscript, it gave us the phrase "not one iota (of difference)"
▲** Also in ''[[Monstrous Regiment]]'', Vimes has a slight communication problem when, as a gesture of friendship towards Polly Perks and her regiment, he tries to say "I am a Borogravian" and instead claims to be a cherry pancake. An obvious reference to Kennedy and "Ich bin ein Berliner!" (see Real Life, below).
* In one of the [[MASH (novel)|''M*A*S*H'' novels]] (''M*A*S*H Goes to Morroco''), a new and rather naive foreign service agent declares that her Arabic training has been inadequate, since she couldn't figure out what a sheik meant by 'mudden yuri' or 'yumuth erware sar mishues'. (The sheikh in question is rather drunk, and is simply spouting what the people who got him that way - namely Hawkeye and Trapper - said every time they knocked one back.)
* ''[[Dave Barry]]'s Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need'' plays with this by having translation guides that mostly consist of random sentences in English like "You bum, there is a fish in your library." The foreign translations were mostly just gibberish.
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''"I noticed no insults," I replied. "You merely gnawed my arm."
''Gestures and smiles of perfect understanding.''}}
 
 
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