Serious in their language, silly in yours

[Eric]

You sometimes see the name of a product, building, organisation, or person that is perfectly seriously meant, but reminds you of something funny or silly in your mother tongue.

For instance, there is a Thai restaurant in mid-Stockholm which goes by the name of Pong. Another instance, for fans of the British spoof sci-fi TV series "Red Dwarf", is some administrative building that you see from the train as it pulls into Amsterdam station called SMEG. And there was Bums, which is some sort of Swedish cleaning fluid, as I seem to remember. There was also a German writer called Ludwig von Ficker which sounds silly even to Germans. Similarly, the Czech Writer Ladislav Fuks. Does he indeed?

That sort of thing. Any further examples?

[hdw]

There's a Chinese restaurant in Edinburgh called Hung Lam.

Harry

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Eric

There was also a German writer called Ludwig von Ficker which sounds silly even to Germans.

Ficker is a disconcertingly common surname in German.

[saliotthomas]

My wife would not believe me went i told her an famous French artist was named Chagall.

Also a story my father told many times(and i'm only now wandering if it's true) that the imigration officers in the state where giving new names to the appliers of residency,sometime taking the piss,and that william Procter from Proter and Gamble was one of those.Is this true?

[Eric]

I saw SMEG twice today. So you can guess which city I visited and my mode of transport thither and thence.

I wonder how long they hung the lamb (in the sense of sheep-meat). Was it well hung?

The plot grows ficker and ficker.

Shag all, eh. Randy bastard. No wonder your wife was incredulous.

I don't know, Saliotthomas, but a Jewish gent once told me that when naming Jews (which Aryan bureaucrats would do with sadism in the 19th century) one chap was given the surname Afterduft, which is, more or less, "fart". I believe this to be a true story.

[miercuri]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

My wife would not believe me went i told her an famous French artist was named Chagall.

I am so amused, my boyfriend and I were just talking about Chagall.

[hdw]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

My wife would not believe me went i told her an famous French artist was named Chagall.

It depends what you mean by French. His whole artistic creativity was rooted in his Jewish childhood in Vitebsk in Belorussia. I admit he ended up spending a large part of his life in France, but you wouldn't call him a French artist like you would Manet, Monet, Degas, etc.

I think Chagall's paintings are magical, and the Chagall Museum in Nice is fantastic.

Harry

[saliotthomas]

Originally Posted by hdw

It depends what you mean by French. His whole artistic creativity was rooted in his Jewish childhood in Vitebsk in Belorussia. I admit he ended up spending a large part of his life in France, but you wouldn't call him a French artist like you would Manet, Monet, Degas, et

Ouopps.Mea maxima culpa, caught doing Frenchocentrisme again.
We,meaning my people and i,have a tendancy to accaparate everything,but it's normal knowing that France is the centre of the universe.
The important universe that is...
Chagall was french like Picasso.

[Johan]

Originally Posted by Eric

And there was Bums, which is some sort of Swedish cleaning fluid

It's rarely used used these days, at least among younger people, and roughly translates as "instantly".

A few years ago Honda released a new car called the Fitta, which in Swedish is a vulgar term for female genitalia and a common insult, equivalent of "cunt". Needless to say they quickly changed it.

[miercuri]

The very straightforward term for 'dick' in Romanian is 'pula'. Pula is also a Croatian city. A few years ago some Romanian football team had to play the local team of Pula in a competition. Hearing news casters trying not to laugh while reading that piece of news was hilarious.

[hdw]

Škoda means 'pity' or 'shame' in Czech, and the eponymous cars seemed to live up to their name in the old days, although nowadays they seem to be better regarded. But I have always wondered why the Czechs themselves gave such a name to one of their major exports. I could understand if the name had been conferred in ignorance by non-Czech-speakers, but surely the original manufacturers knew what they were doing?

Harry

[Eric]

Oh, what fun we're having.

Johan, I wonder whether the Ford Cunt would have been popular in the 1960s...

Seriously, I think that Chagall is simply the word "jackal" in a Yiddish or other guise.

I too have marvelled at the fact that the Czech equivalent of the Trabant was called "damage", or "pity".

I remember a story, how apocryphal I don't know, that when Queen Elizabeth II visited Helsinki, where the names of ships are often in Swedish, given the Finland-Swedish connections with the sea, the name of a tug or pilot boat was discreetly covered up. The word for "speed" in Swedish, and the name of that vessel, was "Fart".

I now remember a wine called Terre Arse. Those in a hurry take note. See: Terre Arse Marsala Vergine 19%, Dessert, Italy - Sicily (1998) Tear arse virgins are all the rage nowadays.

And Johan will no doubt remember the Swedish way of describing the umlaut, or two dots over the ö" and ä". "His name is Jönsson with two pricks".

Mind you, the British minister called Ed Balls does seem to survive the endless jibes.

Who drinks Noilly Prat?

The Latin for a blackbird is interesting.

And the abbreviation for the Polish political party Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc is drink for thought.

[heidiadonis]

This is an amusing thread!

Here are some Korean words or phrases that are funny:

"Look at me once!" means "Look the other way this time."
"See you later!" means "I will revenge on this."

When a policeman caught a Korean guy, he pleaded to the policeman, "Look at me once!" When the policeman gave him a ticket anyway, he raised his fist and said, "See you later!"

I hope your name isn't George because "George" in Korean means a male organ in Korean.

I am sure saliotthomas can tell that there are many French words connoting with sex or sex organs in French.

I watched several episodes of Red Dwarf. They are strange yet funny.

[Eric]

Thanks for the Korean angle on road rage, Heidiadonis.

"Red Dwarf" was cultish, as can be seen from this website:

Gallery | Red Dwarf

An interesting mixture of characters, including a Liverpudlian smeg-merchant, a bald robot picture & voice, a moving robot with a fake American accent, a kind of laid back cat-cum-human, and the inimitable Rimmer, an unpleasant, self-centred man who thought he dominated the spaceship:



*

To continue our quest for silliness, I always thought the name of the Italian author and screenwriter Vasco Pratolini sounded especially silly, a combination of Vaseline and prats. I also note the agonised re-spelling by people whose surname should, by rights, be Kunz, to avoid eternal sniggers - e.g. Dean Koontz. Ilona Staller's husband Jeff no doubt changed his for that reason - but ran into another problem in doing so. One very silly Dutch surname is Suikerbuik which means "sugar belly". One Estonian writer reminds one of cruel mammaries - Tiit Kallas.

[hdw]

A bunch of us from my school were taken on a trip to Denmark when I was about 16/17 and we were hugely amused by the Boghandels (bookshops, to the uninitiated) in Copenhagen.

Nurses giving you an injection used to say 'you'll just feel a little prick', but I haven't heard that for a long time.

Yesterday's Media Guardian had an article about the local paper in Skipton, Yorkshire, which is causing shock and horror by moving its classified ads. from the front page (they don't like change in Yorkshire). The paper has a strong Methodist background, and on one occasion a reporter's reference to a bus "mounting" the pavement was tactfully rephrased.

Harry

[Eric]

I can see the headline now: "Omnibus copulates with flags".

Swedes also wonder about the frequency of gay bookstores in Denmark. You read the word "bøger" all over the shop.

Why can't English invent an unambiguous slang word for penis? One minute it's a male hen, the next an injection, then an implement.

[Clarissa]

Received this from a friend in the UK. Hope you all enjoy it.


Wonderful English from Around the World


In a Bangkok temple:
IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ENTER A WOMAN, EVEN A FOREIGNER, IF DRESSED AS A MAN.

Cocktail lounge , Norway :
LADIES ARE REQUESTED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IN THE BAR.

Doctors office, Rome :
SPECIALIST IN WOMEN AND OTHER DISEASES.

Dry cleaners, Bangkok :
DROP YOUR TROUSERS HERE FOR THE BEST RESULTS.

In a Nairobi restaurant:
CUSTOMERS WHO FIND OUR WAITRESSES RUDE OUGHT TO SEE THE MANAGER.

On the main road to Mombassa, leaving Nairobi :
TAKE NOTICE: WHEN THIS SIGN IS UNDER WATER, THIS ROAD IS IMPASSABLE.

On a poster at Kencom:
ARE YOU AN ADULT THAT CANNOT READ? IF SO WE CAN HELP.

In a City restaurant:
OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK AND WEEKENDS.

In a cemetery:
PERSONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM PICKING FLOWERS FROM ANY BUT THEIR OWN GRAVES.

Tokyo hotel's rules and regulations:
GUESTS ARE REQUESTED NOT TO SMOKE OR DO OTHER DISGUSTING BEHAVIOURS IN BED.

On the menu of a Swiss restaurant:
OUR WINES LEAVE YOU NOTHING TO HOPE FOR.

In a Tokyo bar:
SPECIAL COCKTAILS FOR THE LADIES WITH NUTS.

Hotel, Yugoslavia :
THE FLATTENING OF UNDERWEAR WITH PLEASURE IS THE JOB OF THE CHAMBERMAID.

Hotel, Japan :
YOU ARE INVITED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CHAMBERMAID.

In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian Orthodox monastery:
YOU ARE WELCOME TO VISIT THE CEMETERY WHERE FAMOUS RUSSIAN AND SOVIET COMPOSERS, ARTISTS AND WRITERS ARE BURIED DAILY EXCEPT THURSDAY.

A sign posted in Germany 's Black Forest :
IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN ON OUR BLACK FOREST CAMPING SITE THAT PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT SEX, FOR INSTANCE, MEN AND WOMEN, LIVE TOGETHER IN ONE TENT UNLESS THEY ARE MARRIED WITH EACH OTHER FOR THIS PURPOSE..

Hotel, Zurich :
BECAUSE OF THE IMPROPRIETY OF ENTERTAINING GUESTS OF THE OPPOSITE SEX IN THE BEDROOM, IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE LOBBY BE USED FOR THIS PURPOSE.

Advertisement for donkey rides, Thailand :
WOULD YOU LIKE TO RIDE ON YOUR OWN ASS?

Airline ticket office, Copenhagen :
WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

A laundry in Rome :
LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD TIME.

[Omo]

In the GDR there was a kind of coke called Prick Cola.

[Eric]

Yes, they're good ones, Clarissa. I had a good laugh. One serious thing some of them do illustrate is that syntax, word order, and so on are important for sense to prevail.

Strangely enough, the most graphic one I saw in my mind's eye was not one of the numerous sex ones, but the idea of a bony arm coming up through the soil, neatly picking daisies, buttercups, dandelions, clover, and so on, from a small heaped plot. Then the posy disappears under the earth...

As for the GDR, Omo, it had unspeakable habits.

[Manuel76]

There is a famous japanese film calles "Ai no corrida", which in spanish is specially amusing considering it contains "unsimulated sexual activity"