Monday, October 23, 2006

Sweet language jumping:

The best thing about learning two close languages is that you can use your knowledge on one language to express yourself in the second, this is particularly helpful while writing but can be pretty embarrassing in oral expression as you start mixing accents and sometimes Englishing French words leading to a meaningless expression for example!

Now learning two radically different languages can be challenging, as it is impossible to use the words from one language to speak the other. However, it can be very fun, because you would find the same word in both languages but that have totally different meanings.

So here’s my majesty sharing some of my priceless knowledge!

[ar]



This one’s a classic.

Aire
When we were in geometry class, we would learn about l’aire d’un carré, since we learn Math in French. The only problem’s that, in class, we only use French for the technical terms only. For example we would say:

Baddna Aire 3 cm2

Which could mean:

We need a surface of 3cm2

OR:

We need a 3cm2 Dick!


Yes my friends, air in Arabic means dick. Now in the Fus-ha it would be pronounced like Ayre with a “y” sound, but in the Lebanese dialect we’re too cool we say it Air. Our solution was to always say L’aire instead of just Aire but you know, mistakes are inevitable.

Air
Of course, when someone goes abroad s/he uses an airplane, going through the airport first, with one of the companies Such as airFrance or I don’t know what. And we, the Lebanese, are too smug and too attached to our Occidental half, we can’t use the Arabic term: Khootoon Jawwiyyah……NOOOOOOOOOO that would be an insult to our sophistication. We have to say: Air. So from time to time you would hear someone say:

Ija Bi Air France

in normal days you would just understand:

He came with Air France

But when you’re slightly (or extremely) horny you would only understand:

He came in France’s Dick


Ähre:
Now this one poses little trouble to the Lebanese population since few people speak German around here. But it’s still interesting never the less. Apparently, Ähre means ear (like corn ear)I wonder if that can actually make sense, I mean think about it, the form’s the same, the purpose’s almost the same. Maybe Wheat and men have more in common than they would like to admit.

4 comments:

NOMAD said...

funny :lol:

in french many prononciations look the same and the meaning is to find in the context, so we have to articulate and being logic :lol:

BHCh said...

"He has a big corn" has only one meaning in several languages. It's not the agricultural one.

I have real trouble with Chinese names. I have never come across one that you can say without blushing from the prominent leaders Qiao Shit and Mao Dzedun (Mao Backside in Russian) to my current family doctor Jimin Hui (Jimin Pennis, very rude in Russian).

Another interesting example is that in Russian Nasrallah means "I shitted" when said by a female.

Josy said...

Very funny!

In class, we always used to comment on that 'air' thing. The funniest of all was when the teacher used to ask us to open the windows in class saying : "pour aérer la classe" (which means "to get some fresh air in", but we always understood it in a whole different meaning of course! lol)

You forgot to tell the 'kiss' word story too ;)

Pazuzu HSP said...

lol jos: everything at the right time;)