The English language lacks

I am from the American South …I love it when internationals here us talk and immediately open a book or app for translation to see what it is we said …because we pronounce things like no other English speaking people in the world, and have odd rules for specifics such as, 'What kinda Coke you want ? A Sprite ?"

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yep! :sweat_smile::joy:

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The shop owner of our favorite Korean shop always says instead of “Kartoffel” (potatoe) “Kartoppel”, which sounds so funny. :joy:

And the Korean band “VIXX” - I’m really glad, that this is pronounced like “PIXXE”, because the German pronounciation means a 19+ rated word for masturbation. People, who don’t know Kpop and read this name for the first time are kind of surprised, shocked and amused.

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Isn’t there “Opa” in the Greek language too? It’s like “Cheers!” , “Salud!”

For me the word “love” and “person” sounds kind of similar in Korean - please help? :grin:

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Ask @irmar! :slight_smile:

“Love” is 사랑 (sarang) and person is 사람 (saram). But I get it, there have been times that I tended to sing along “Saram, saram, saram!” with this song: :rofl:

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if it’s still not easy to distinguish the ‘ng’ and ‘m’ sounds, in most sentences sarang has ‘ha’ or ‘he’ attached to it since it is a doing verb and saram is a noun.

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Sarang can also be a noun, though. :wink:

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We almost need to create a new topic for “similar yet so different” words.:wink:

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Like the pabo pavo? :grin:

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In Ecuador they call liquor/Rum ‘’[Chicha]’’ which in my Island that word is the private part of the women. They call insects [Bicho] which is how we call the ‘‘genitals’’ of men.

Babo (Korean) sounds like Pavo (which means what we eat on Thanksgiving day: Turkey)

It’s such a blessing to know more than one language, and is not easy at all. trying to be perfectly correct in both ( or 3 or 4…) In the end, all that matters is how beautiful it is when instead of criticizing one or the other, we share our knowledge and learn from each other.

Thank you choitrio for this topic, and everyone that share their words, meanings and make us learn new things in another language and make us laugh as we learn together.

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I think it is this curiosity about, and willingness to learn, other language and culture, together of course with our love for Asian dramas, helps bring Vikiers in this community together.

“Bicho” reminds me of the Korean word 고추 (go-chu) which means “chili pepper” but older people sometimes use it to refer to a boy’s genitals.

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Often the confusion of various terms is achieved in both Korean and English, I have seen it, I have translated it not in viki, in other pages, and yes, it becomes a difficulty `(>﹏<)′

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The Russian word for “to write” is писать (pisat’) with the stress on the second syllable.
The same word gets a different meaning if you put the stress on the first syllable: “to pee”.
They are written completely the same, though.

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@angelight313_168 and @mirjam_465, so I guess not only do we have to be careful about what we say but how we say certain words as well. Lol.

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ah yes, how could i forget :sweat_smile::grimacing:
I’m actually scared to speak to people in different languages now :joy:

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They’ll probably forgive you … You might even make their day by giving them a good laugh.
And … making mistakes is the path to doing it right. :older_adult:

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When I was learning Hindi, I had a good laugh over the thing that kids can be addressed as laal cutely, mostly by moms to boys. Laal means red in Hindi and I enjoyed the fact that we can call kids “red”. Not long after I realized this laal thing in Hindi, I looked at Japanese and we call kids aka chan which also is a translation for red.
So, sometimes, some languages can have a weird thing in common.

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“Red” is also the first person singular present time of the Dutch verb “redden”, which means “to save”.

Ik red = I save.

It can also be an imperative:

Red mij! = Save me!

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So it is “Babo” not “Pabo” :grin: In Filipino, the word “Bobo” can mean “stupid”…

Also, my ears are still not keen on the pronunciations (and spellings) so forgive me but I hear what sounds like “Pali” in Korean that I think means “Hurry up!” or “Quickly” ? For me, it sounds somewhat similar to “Vale” in Spanish but I think it means “Okay” ? They say it 2x too like “Vale, Vale”?

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So fascinating and it shows how much I don’t know about Asia. Timur-Leste sounds like Spanish or Portuguese? And was that Russian in Mongolia?

At my old job, when customers request for a Chinese interpreter, I ask them first how they say “Thank you.” to figure out Cantonese or Mandarin. There are probably at lot more Chinese dialects out there though…

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