The CBB

Wouldn't be surprised if this one has been mentioned before

mentor
menteur "liar"

GrandPiano wrote:

clawgrip wrote:A false friend should be cognate but with a different meaning. ZH機 and ZH机 are cognate and have the same meaning, so they can't be false friends.

Are you sure? To my understanding, false friends don't have to be cognates, although they usually at least appear to be.

Correct. The whole point is that it looks like a friend, but it's not.

Imralu wrote:

GrandPiano wrote:

clawgrip wrote:A false friend should be cognate but with a different meaning. ZH機 and ZH机 are cognate and have the same meaning, so they can't be false friends.

Are you sure? To my understanding, false friends don't have to be cognates, although they usually at least appear to be.

Correct. The whole point is that it looks like a friend, but it's not.

I guess my own understanding of "false friend" has been too narrow up to now. I went to the Wikipedia article to bone up on the subject, but while I find the definition and examples there a bit nebulous, I guess I must relent. The German page, after talking about various types of false friends, then goes on to list a number of examples that I would actually consider false friends -- things you don't think you have to worry about in parsing/translating, but in fact, have different meanings from what you'd expect.

Il est sensible. is not He is sensible.

that sort of thing.

I personally wouldn't consider bra and bra to be false friends, nor Rat and rat

rolig vs. rolig seems to be one.

Cross-Pondian meanings of

pants
knickers
fanny

seem fertile ground for this sort of thing.

As for simplified Chinese 机 (which, as has been conceded, usually occurs in compounds), how could one possibly misinterpret that as desk or vice versa? I would hope it clear that I don't think the physical Japanese utterances of "tsukue" and Chinese "ji1" are related (beyond onyomi, and I don't know any Japanese words with this (let alone Chinese besides 茶机 (usually 茶几). The Wikipedia article talks about "homoglyphs", which may have been a better term for what clawgrip and I were discussing (and less to fewer misunderstandings). Perhaps in complete isolation one could misconstrue meaning, but if a false friend is the "false friend of a translator", how could this be misinterpreted in any sort of context?

Not that there aren't Sino-Japanese kanji misunderstandings or Chinese inter-dialectal shenanigans, but I don't think it occurs here.

Lao Kou wrote:fanny

*giggles childishly

Lao Kou wrote:As for simplified Chinese 机 (which, as has been conceded, usually occurs in compounds), how could one possibly misinterpret that as desk or vice versa?

Perhaps it would be easier to imagine the other way around; since there are many characters that can be used on their own in Japanese but only occur in compounds in Mandarin (e.g. 足, 今, 体), it's possible that someone only familiar with the Chinese meaning of 机 might see 机 used in Japanese and assume it means "machine" or "opportunity".

DesEsseintes wrote:

Lao Kou wrote:fanny

*giggles childishly

I'm a caution.

Another Chinese/Japanese orthographical false friend:

走 zǒu "to walk" - 走る hashiru "to run"

GrandPiano wrote:Another Chinese/Japanese orthographical false friend: 走 zǒu "to walk" - 走る hashiru "to run"

In that vein, Mandarin's 我先走 (wǒ xiān zǒu）(Japanese's お先に(失礼します)) (osaki ni (shitsurei shimasu)) (Pardon me for leaving (first). (used when leaving, while others remain) is in Shanghainese 我先跑 (ngu xi bo - an on-the-fly romanization as I'm too lazy to spend time on this).

As with the 机 discussion earlier, you need only go back in time to see Chinese 走 in the sense of "run" (cf. 奔走).

DesEsseintes wrote:

Lao Kou wrote:fanny

*giggles childishly

Wait... Does that mean something other than "butt"?

Thrice Xandvii wrote:

DesEsseintes wrote:

Lao Kou wrote:fanny

*giggles childishly

Wait... Does Tha mean something other than "butt"?

It does: Definition 2. Tee hee.

This is why Commonwealthians find it so hilarious that Americans say "fanny pack" ... mind you, we call them "bum bags" (at least in Australia) and "fanny pack" would make a lot more sense considering they're worn on the front, not the back.

Imralu wrote:This is why Commonwealthians find it so hilarious that Americans say "fanny pack" ... mind you, we call them "bum bags" (at least in Australia) and "fanny pack" would make a lot more sense considering they're worn on the front, not the back.

Indeed, no matter the dialect, getting it on the expected side of the human body seems elusive in terminology. But what are the options? "Fanny" in American English is a childish word for "bottom" (as is "bum"). A "muff pack"(rather crude)? References to the abdomen hardly capture the imagination... Belly bag?

Mandarin 一 yī [ji˥] "one" - Cantonese 二 ji6 [ji˨] "two"

八 baat3 "eight" - 百 baak3 "hundred"

Lao Kou wrote: But what are the options? "Fanny" in American English is a childish word for "bottom" (as is "bum"). A "muff pack"(rather crude)? References to the abdomen hardly capture the imagination... Belly bag?

Cuntpack? Ballsack? Dick bag? Crotch pocket?

I like the last one the most. It sounds like crotch rocket, which is what we call miniature motorbikes in Australia ...

metallic /məˈtæ.lɪk/
метелик /mɛˈtɛ.lɪk/ - butterfly

Stumbled upon this Ukrainian word while creating vocabulary and I knew the word had a familiar sound!

ixals wrote: метелик /mɛˈtɛ.lɪk/ - butterfly

Also reminds me of Schmetterling

マグロ maguro "tuna" - mackerel

In the local language spoken around the area of Pesaro, in central Italy, "I don't want" is translated as "en voi".
In Finnish, "en voi" means "I can not, I am not able to".
I've always found it funny, because you know, "I can't/don't know how to do that" is often an excuse to avoid doing something you don't want to do.

제일 tɕ͡e.il "First; The most; Best" Jail

English promise and promiscuous

they look similar but the meanings are virtually unrelated