Language Trainers Blog

An urgent need to communicate can create a language without native speakers.

Pidgin, for example, has developed from English among people with their own native tongues. Fine examples of pidgin expressions in the Tok Pisin language of Papua New Guinea are: liklik box you pull him he cry you push him he cry (an accordion) and bigfella iron walking stick him go bang along topside (a rifle).

When the Duke of Edinburgh visits Vanuatu, in the Pacific, he is addressed as oldfella Pili-Pili him b’long Missy Kween, while Prince Charles is Pikinini b’long Kween.

George Bernard Shaw said “England and America are two countries separated by a common language”. It may be an awkward situation borrowing a cigarette in the US if you are an English tourist there. The word ‘tramp’ describes different people in each country, and ‘spunk’ could not only mean ‘to get up and go’ if you are an American in the UK. You don’t even need to love your mistress.

Eddie Izzard talks about these two confusing languages with a great sense of humor. Enjoy!

Some people need to travel to a foreign country whose language is completely unknown by them. In those cases a phrasebook seems like a handy temporary solution… or maybe not… Have a look at this poor Hungarian immigrant by the Monty Python:

It is a fact that the English country has spread all over the world. No matter where you are you can read all kind of signs in this language. It is particularly interesting the case of pop music. Many times people understand the signs even though they can’t read them directly. The same thing happens with music. Not the majority of people understand the lyrics, but they do enjoy the music. This video pictures the situation.

When it comes to personality, some people seem to have been put on the planet to make life easier for everyone else:

 
Cooperar: (Spansih, Central America) to go along willingly with someone else to one’s own disadvantage. 

Abozzare: (Italian) to accept meekly a far from satisfactory situation. 

Ilunga: (Tshiluba, Congo) someone who is ready to forgive any abuse the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time 

Flattering
 
Vaseliner: (French) to flatter (literally, to apply Vaseline) 

Happobijin: (Japanese) a beauty to all eight directions (a sycophant) 

Radfahrer: (German) one who flatters superiors and browbeats subordinates (literally, a cyclist) 

Fawning 

The Japanese have the most vivid description for hangers-on: kingyo no funi. It literally means ‘goldfish crap’ –a reference to the way that a fish that has defecated often trails excrement behind it for some time.

Here’s an interesting quote about Roosevelt’s reaction to a caricature once drawn of him that was being passed around the office. Sounds like rather a nice chap.

When he was Police Commisioner in New York… he came to dine one evening in great glee. He had gone to his office that morning and found the personnel at Police Headquarters gathered around a letter delivered by the postman; clerks and stenographers were tittering nervously, and hesitated to show it. “And here it is,” he said, pulling it out of his pocket. It bore no other address than a pair of glasses over a double row of clenched teeth. He was enchanted. “Few men, “ he said, “live to see their own hieroglyph.”

Marjorie Terry Chandler, Roman Spring: Memoirs, 1934

The last words in a lifetime are significant just for that fact. Many important people have carefully selected them; in some other cases death took them a little by surprise. Some last words sum up a life’s path, some… well, some are just silly. Some are totally true, the rest, perhaps a little suspicious. Let’s take a look:

“Je vais ou je vas mourir, l’un et l’autre se dit ou se disent”
(Translation: “I am about to — or I am going to — die: either expression is correct”)

- Dominique Bouhours
(a French grammarian)

“LSD, 100 micrograms I.M.”

- Aldous Huxley
(in a note to his wife - she obliged and he was injected twice before his death)

“Put out the bloody cigarette!”

- Saki, AKA Hector Hugh Munro
(spoken to a fellow officer while in a trench during World War One, for fear the smoke would give away their positions. He was then shot by a German sniper who had heard the remark)

“¡Carajo, un balazo!”
(Translation: “Damn! A bullet!”)

- Antonio José de Sucre
(after being shot while riding his horse in the Colombian jungle on his way home. He was said to have been a fine gentleman who had never cursed until that day, according to Ricardo Palma’s “Tradiciones en Salsa Verde”)

“That was the best ice-cream soda I ever tasted”

- Lou Costello

While researching palindromes for another post, I managed to find a variant of them. This kind of word or phrase makes sense when reversed, but unlike palindromes do not read exactly the same forwards as they do backwards. The more astute among you might have noticed that semordnilap is actually the word palindromes spelled in reverse.

Take a look at some examples of semordnilaps, also known as heteropalindromes, semi- or half-palindromes, reversgrams, mynoretehs, word reversals, or anadromes:

Can you think of any more?

A while ago I met two Irish students of Spanish. I thought it might be amusing to ask them about typical Irish greetings, and the one they told me was ‘How is she cutting?’, with the supposed answer ‘Top of the bog’.

Of course I simply accepted this strange idiomatic exchange without even trying to analyse it. But later I decided to try it with other English speakers, who weren’t of Irish origin. To my surprise, no matter where in England they were from, they just stared at me in a funny way. I tried to explain what I meant and they confessed it was the first time they heard the phrase - it is very interesting how the ‘same language’ can be so different that it can actually hinder communication among their speakers.

Another seemingly strange method of greeting between Irishmen and women is asking the question “What’s the craic?”; “craic” (pronounced ‘crack’) being an originally Gaelic word for debauchery of any kind. The standard response to this question is “The craic’s 90″.

Perhaps the most famous Irish greeting of all is ‘Top of the morning to you’. Any Irish out there care to fill us in with the correct response? That’d be grand.

When an advertising slogan becomes part of daily speech, it means their creators have succeeded.

The Dutch use the following phrase when a problem occurs: ‘Even Apeldoorn Bellen’, which, according to what I was told, can be translated as ‘Let’s call Apeldoorn’. Apeldoorn is a place famous for its insurance companies, and there have been some advertising campaigns for a company which used this slogan. Here’s one of them.

I think a good, functional translation to English could be ‘Houston, we have a problem’; both have been taken by people to mean the same thing; the former from a TV advert, the latter from a movie.