Even Greener Pastures
Language Learning => Questions about the Use of Language => Topic started by: Nikola on September 15, 2019, 05:45:11 pm
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Some people call it "a baguette". I doubt they know the meaning. I don't know either. Is it a French word?
It is a French word. It means small stick. It is a typical white crispy French bread. Some might be quite long. Maybe you saw them in a movie.
About Spaghetti (Napoletana Japanese style) with Ketchup... are you sure it isn't a simple tomato sauce (an onion, some tomatos, herbs, salt, cooked a very long time: the longer the better)? Ketchup has tomatos, lots of sugar and vinegar in it!
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Oh. The real explanation of the "Czech movie" phrase is more simple than I expected. There was a movie called "Nobody knows anything":
https://cs.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/czeski_film
So they started to say: "Nikt nic nie wie - czeski film", and the whole phrase has been shortened later.
The title has multiple negations so the title doesn't look so nice in English as in Slavic and Romance languages ;)
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Cockroaches... well... I heard some people calling them "rusy", but it's not very popular. One species of similar insects are called "prusaki", so Germans again ;)
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I don't think there were any translation problems of Czech movies really. And I know there were great movie makers in Czechoslovakia and in most of communist countries too. But I think there could be the availability problems with more ambitious movies. I imagine the first step was always the censorship in the country of origin - many good films in our countries were left on shelves without the censorship acceptance. Some of them were ridiculously cut before showing to the public. The rest had to wait for better times. Now imagine that a country wants to export its movie to show them abroad (in the other country of the communist block). They know it has to undergo the censorship in the other country too. So if they allow it and the others reject - it would be shame. You can imagine: "Are you crazy comrades? What are you trying to send us? It's potentially poisonous to the working class!"
So that's why I think the foreign movies we were allowed to watch were thoroughly checked against any lack of ideological correctness.
The other problem was, that the communism was different in our countries. In Poland we always had a little bit of freedom (going to church, possessing small parts of land, making movies that laughed at some aspects of life in our country), but our economical status was very low. The shops were empty. When a luxury article (e.g. toilet paper or meat) appeared, long queues were formed in front of the shop.
I was happy to travel to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and other countries then and I was surprised seeing things like chocolate, coffee, orange juice, ham, and other luxury goods there. We could buy it there and eat, but it was very hard to smuggle even small quantities to our country. It could be a reason some of us had problems with understanding the type of humour of our neighbours. We were laughing at different things.
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"I don't get it, it's like a Czech movie"
I think this opinion about Czech movies started during the communism times, when the movies had to be politically correct to be allowed to be shown in other countries - so we they had to avoid crucial problems. But I don't know.
That’s a bit strange to me. Czechoslovak moviemakers like Jiri Menzel and Milos Forman made outstanding and critical films during the communist era in the so-called Czech New Wave.
Maybe the partial but only partial intelligibility between Czech and Polish is more accountable, but of course it is a mere speculation.
In French there is a very pittoresque saying “parler français comme une vache espagnole” = to speak French like a Spanish cow. It seems that it refers to Basque people who speak their own language Euskara which is a language “isolate” that doesn’t belong to the Indo-European stem but is of older origin. If I reckon correctly.
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What about cockroaches? One that's called the German cockroach in English is "Rus domácí" in Czech. We tend to blame things on Russians so we obviously didn't think they came from the west, unlike the black rat, which is sometimes referred to as "němkyně" (Německo means Germany).
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But Czech movies (rather Czechoslovak in my young years) weren't incomprehensible.
I was thinking the same. You guys must understand them, at least a little.
I remember rather funny comedies like Chalupaři, children series (Arabela), medical ones (Nemocnice na kraji mesta, Sanitka) - sorry for bad spelling ;) Among newer ones "Vratne lahve" is one of my favourite. I think this opinion about Czech movies started during the communism times, when the movies had to be politically correct to be allowed to be shown in other countries - so we they had to avoid crucial problems. But I don't know.
I can't believe you know all these movies and TV series. You spelled them correctly, by the way, they're just missing the accents, which is understandable. I like Vratné lahve, too. My favourite Polish movie is Seksmisja.
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And "Czech mistake" (Czeski błąd) we say when we swap letters while writing a word (like I could write "wirting" instead of "writing"). It's probably because we have words looking similarly in our languages before we take a closer look. Sometimes we use it saying about swapped digits in a number.
French s.e.x (oral)
French doggie (about a person who seems to be to delicate and complaining about everything)
Russian/Ruthenian month/year (ruski miesiąc/rok) - very long time
English weather - rainy
Pretend to be a Greek - pretend not to know sth
Austrian talking - empty talks which lead to neither conclusions nor working
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Yes Nikola. It's often used here:
"It sounds like Chinese to me"
"I don't get it, it's like a Czech movie"
I'm not sure why is it like that. The thing with Chinese is obvious, though we could use e.g. Hungarian for it - much closer and similar comprehension level.
But Czech movies (rather Czechoslovak in my young years) weren't incomprehensible. I remember rather funny comedies like Chalupaři, children series (Arabela), medical ones (Nemocnice na kraji mesta, Sanitka) - sorry for bad spelling ;) Among newer ones "Vratne lahve" is one of my favourite. I think this opinion about Czech movies started during the communism times, when the movies had to be politically correct to be allowed to be shown in other countries - so we they had to avoid crucial problems. But I don't know.
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This reminds me of a Czech expression we use when we encounter something unfamiliar we struggle to understand. We say "to je pro mě španělská vesnice" (that's a Spanish village to me). In German, it's "Das ist mir ein böhmisches Dorf" (that's a Czech/Bohemian village to me). A bit of background and some expressions used in other countries (written in German): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6hmisches_Dorf
It says that to Polish people, things are "Chinese", and something incomprehensible is a "Czech movie" to them. Do you use these, Martin? :)
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Of course in the US syphilis was something you caught from black people, because if you need to be a racist in the US blacks are the default choice.
Even my grandmother who saw a cold sore on my mouth at age 16 said to me, "What have you been doing, kissing coloured girls?".
Sigh.
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But now about something different than food. Have you heard about 'French disease'? They used to call it French or German disease here, while English disease in France and Polish disease in Russia... The names show potential ways of spreading of... syphilis.
Indeed it shows how armies spread the disease all over the Old World. But there is always a bit of racism behind it, bad things come from the others never from oneself . Syphilis has to do with sexually, so nice people have nothing do do with it, only foreigners do certain practices, think about the “Greek way” for exemple.
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If I remember it well, the fruit salad is called "Macedonia" in a few countries (including Italy).
Indeed Martin a fruit salad is called “macedonia di frutta” in Italian.
Did you ever eat an “insalata russa”?
It’s cold cooked small bits of carrots, mixed with peas and other unidentifiable vegetables (usually canned), drowned in a heavy mayonnaise sauce.
Mayonnaise has also a geographical origin. Some say it comes from the name Mahon, one of the Balearic Islands.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayonnaise
Oh. The Russian salad. I saw this name while being somewhere in the West of Europe. We make the salad of cooked potatoes, peas and carrots drowned in mayonnaise... but we just call it the 'mayonnaise salad' (sałatka z majonezem).
We sometimes use geographical names of food, even if thus type of food is completely unknown in the country the name of which we use.
But now about something different than food. Have you heard about 'French disease'? They used to call it French or German disease here, while English disease in France and Polish disease in Russia... The names show potential ways of spreading of... syphilis.
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If I remember it well, the fruit salad is called "Macedonia" in a few countries (including Italy).
Indeed Martin a fruit salad is called “macedonia di frutta” in Italian.
Did you ever eat an “insalata russa”?
It’s cold cooked small bits of carrots, mixed with peas and other unidentifiable vegetables (usually canned), drowned in a heavy mayonnaise sauce.
Mayonnaise has also a geographical origin. Some say it comes from the name Mahon, one of the Balearic Islands.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayonnaise
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Nobody ever heard of French kisses?
I heard it many times but I don't know exactly. How do you do that? haha!
There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube! ;)
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It may sound strange but a turkey is not called a turkey in Turkey. They are called "Hindi". But Indian have no idea that Turkey was a Indian citizen! 😀
Great website and video, Sunshine.
But in French it is simply called DINDE!
In Arabic it’s ديك رومي (deek roomy) = Roman chicken
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Mais oui. Who could resist French kisses?
And while we're in a romantic mood, there's a tiny island off the west coast of Scotland called the Isle of Ewe. Guess how it's pronounced?
I had no idea, so I used the Google translator and the English voice. Aha! I got it!
I haven't said to my husband, "Isle of Ewe" recently..... ;D
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Nobody ever heard of French kisses?
I heard it many times but I don't know exactly. How do you do that? haha! Anyway, it reminds of me an old love story movie, French Kiss of Meg Ryan. It is a good movie. I watched three times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3W5oAOZAWY
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There is a word, 'France pan' in Japanese. Can you guess what it is? It's not a kitchen tool.
'Pan' in Japanese means bread. There was no bread until the Portuguese brought pão (bread) to Japan until 16 century. We call bread pan (pão). Even it is French bread and we call it in Portuguese. Some people call it "a baguette". I doubt they know the meaning. I don't know either. Is it a French word?
There is a dish, 'Napolitan spaghetti' that most Japanese love. It's cooked with a lot of ketchup, no piece of tomatoes. I heard that people from Napoli came and ate it in Japan. All of them said, "This is not Napolitan spaghetti" :D
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It may sound strange but a turkey is not called a turkey in Turkey. They are called "Hindi". But Indian have no idea that Turkey was a Indian citizen! 😀
https://scroll.in/video/822414/watch-why-the-thanksgiving-bird-turkey-is-called-hindi-in-turkey-and-indian-chicken-in-france
This video is interesting which shows how poor turkey is being mistaken by many names around the world. :)
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And while we're in a romantic mood, there's a tiny island off the west coast of Scotland called the Isle of Ewe. Guess how it's pronounced?
That's kind of cute. I was just preparing something for a lesson about Hawaii, thought the kids might like this. Let me share some lava with you, too ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh4dTLJ9q9o
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Mais oui. Who could resist French kisses?
And while we're in a romantic mood, there's a tiny island off the west coast of Scotland called the Isle of Ewe. Guess how it's pronounced?
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Nobody ever heard of French kisses?
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I know how to make a Mexican wave and I've seen a Pole dance but I couldn't make a Swiss watch.
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Anyone know how to make a Venetian blind?
A Swiss roll?
A Maltese cross?
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I like my turkey chile served on china.
Wow, Laos... I wasn't sure how it was pronounced. I had to check.
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Chizuko's comment made me realise that on the pronunciation level, there are more words like this: the whales of Wales and the lovely finish of the Finnish furniture...
Indeed. A Finn, a Swede and a Thai are all objects as well as people.
And back to countries that are also animals and/or food - don't forget Laos and Chile.
And remember that if Kim Jong Un spoke English with an RP accent, he'd be sure to emphasise the importance of his 'career'.
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Thank you SuKi. So if peru is turkey but Peru is Peru, they face the same problem. Chizuko's comment made me realise that on the pronunciation level, there are more words like this: the whales of Wales and the lovely finish of the Finnish furniture...
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And just to confuse things further:
In Portuguese, 'peru' means 'turkey'. The bird, not the country.
And in English, a swede is both a root vegetable and an inhabitant of Stockholm.
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If I remember it well, the fruit salad is called "Macedonia" in a few countries (including Italy).
I've heard a few Polish people using the word "Amerykanka" for a kind of sofa-bed (we call it "wersalka" more often, after the residence of French kings).
An African country Chad is written "Czad" in Polish, and this word means also carbon monoxide (the poisonous product of an incomplete carbon burning) and is sometimes used in slang speech as a synonymous with the good entertainment at a party or a rock concert.
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This video is the perfect answer to your question. The last 15 seconds is funny. You will laugh!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8pnec4Hxps
When she said Europe is a country, only a few people laughed. Most of audience seems to agree with her. It's normal. I had thought Africa is one big country for a long time.
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Are there any country names in any of the languages you know, that also mean something else? Anything like Turkey - turkey? I can only think of not Poland but Polish - polish in English. In Czech, "Peru" also means "I'm doing the laundry" and "Kuba" (Cuba) is a male name and also a dish made from mushrooms and pearl barley.