the opposite is sometimes as daft as our literal translations – the french decided that ‘Le Corner Kick’ is too anglicised and officially call it ‘un coup de pied au coin’ – LIT – a hit with the foot in the corner.

There are no swear words in Gaelic.

Well Be-Jaysus you certainly make up for it when speaking English 😉

“Sitting on the Fence” in French translates to “Being both sides of the bridge”

With my French sailing friends we used the following (small minds I know). The “jib” is called a “foc”, so instead of “trim” and “ease” we used to say foc-on and foc-off 🙂

The French use food terms for many things, always amuses me that calling someone a cabbage is a term of endearment, “mon chou”. Also instead of a “stud” you may be called a “canard” – a duck isn’t quite so manly !

Well Be-Jaysus you certainly make up for it when speaking English

🙂 It’s a strange one isn’t it. We’re probably the sweariest speakers of english (on average). One assumes we were so delighted to have a language with taboo words, that we overdosed on it and never really stopped.

@dd my favourite Irish saying is “fierce idjiot” (I can’t work out how to write the way you say fierce)

Yeah, “fierce” is a popular qualifier…as in “I’m fierce **** hungry” etc. The second word you’re looking for is eejit. “You **** eejit” is actually quite a friendly way of saying “ah, I see you’ve done something rather silly there old chap.”

No Welsh speaker has ever used popty ping.

I can see how they might start though, it’s appealing 🙂

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/fun-stuff/24-welsh-words-phrases-just-6387661

deadlydarcy – Member

There are no swear words in Gaelic.

This is not exactly true. There are quite a few, certainly enough to get your point across should you have a disagreement in west Donegal, eg “Feisigh do thoin fein”.

What I think is true(ish) is that there is technically no word for hello as Gaeilge as every greeting is a variant of “god be with you”, “god bless you” or “god be upon you” etc etc

I see poppy ping has raised its head again.
No Welsh speaker has ever used popty ping.
We use an old Saxon word -“Microwave”

I’d like to know how you came to this conclusion!? There’s a girl in work that regularly uses the phrase to describe a microwave, and I think I may have even used it myself

In Spanish the word for Wife and Handcuffs is the same: Esposa/Esposas!

In a similar vein, the Spanish for pregnant is “embarazada”. Not “embarrased”!

The Spanish for “engagement” as in to be married is “el compromiso”.

This is not exactly true.

It is indeed true. What I should have said of course, was that there are no “taboo” words like the shedloads we have in English. There are a few phrases made up to tell someone to do one, but none that have words not used in everyday speaking anyway (even though it’s hardly an everyday language anymore.)

What I think is true(ish) is that there is technically no word for hello as Gaeilge as every greeting is a variant of “god be with you”, “god bless you” or “god be upon you” etc etc

True, although lots of other languages have similar cobbled together phrases which have come to mean “Hello”. The funniest thing with Irish is that in response to “Dia dhuit” (God be with you), you then have to say “Dia is Muire dhuit” (God and Mary be with you). If someone says “Dia is Muire dhuit” to you as an initial greeting, you then have to reply with “Dia is Muire is Pádraig dhuit” (God, Mary & Patrick be with you). Bloody minefield. 😀

german’s got good ones.

The word for nipple translates as “breast wart” (brust wart I think. Larverly.

Anyway I don’t know german but lived in turkey for a while. Can’t think of any funny ones. Oh yeah ‘beter’ means ‘worse’.

The turks use mi at the end of a word to denote a question.

The have a whole tense for third party info, ‘I hear that…’, ‘it is said that…’ putting mish or mush on the end of words.

There’s no gender, you can’t say ‘he’ or ‘she’, though stuff gets translated as ‘he’. So above the school door is the slogan ‘ne mutlu turkum diyene’ – which word for words is “how happy I am a turk the one who says” – “how happy is the one who says I’m a turk”. Translated as how happy is the man who say’s he’s a turk.

Enough turkish? I’ve loads where that came from…

deadlydarcy – Member

This is not exactly true.

It is indeed true. What I should have said of course, was that there are no “taboo” words like the shedloads we have in English. There are a few phrases made up to tell someone to do one, but none that have words not used in everyday speaking anyway (even though it’s hardly an everyday language anymore.)

Lets not get into it. What is, and isn’t a swear word is very subjective. Part of the reason it’s believed there are no swear words is that Irish was a banned language that all but died out. The people who attempted to revive it in the latter half of the 19th century were ultra consertive by todays standards and were more interested in romantic lyrical whimsy than the how to say **** or bugger.

Fair enough, but if you can find me a single taboo word, then I’m all yours. I’m not even sure there were any historically – it has nothing to do with the revival movement being ultra-conservative.

Bengali for winter is pronounced ‘Shiit” iirc

Fair enough, but if you can find me a single taboo word, then I’m all yours. I’m not even sure there were any historically

Apart from the C word and the F word, what others are genuinely rude? It’s all in the context. Until relatively recently Ireland was an extremely catholic country, any public talk about sex was extremely taboo in any language. If you walk up to an elderly lady and say “show me your vagina”, “eat my shit” or “suck my ****” that’s pretty rude.

The closest Irish equivalent to the F word is Feisigh. It’s not as wonderfully versatile as the english language version but said in context it gets the point across.

Apart from the gaeltacht most Irish people learn the language at school, not a place for reveling in mucky words unless you have a very liberal minded teacher, that doesn’t mean there are none.

You’re just listing various reasons why there aren’t any taboo words, but that’s fair enough. You’re making my point for me, thanks. I haven’t searched, but there would be plenty of records of words that were considered taboo at one time or another, but I don’t know of any. Do you?

what others are genuinely rude

There are plenty that say, might not get written in a broadsheet article or would mean a film might get a 12 or 15 rating for example. Not a single one (that I know of anyway) in Irish Gaelic. There’s hardly even slang, the gateway for taboo.

Hey, dd:

Dia is Muire is Pádraig dhuit

😉

(what happens now?)

(what happens now?)

**** knows. 😀

EDIT: Apparently, Bríd (St Bridget, our lady patron saint) can be added next.

ARAF!

I usually wheel this one out.

Kummerspeck is the German word for emotional over-eating.

Literally, grief bacon.

Microwave is Anglo-Saxon? I rather think not. The Austrian for a gentleman’s pride and joy translates as “shame”.

The Turkish for bastard sounds like peach.

What freshly pressed juice would you like today?

2 little girls jumping up and down yelling peach, peach, peach!

In German, if someone is being a bit wimpish or soft you might call them a Schattenparker or a Warmduscher, ie. someone who parks in the shadows or who takes warm showers.

eg,

And, much like the gaelic argument above, we have no record of any genuine Anglo Saxon (ie. Old English)taboo swear words.

It was all written down by monks.

we have no record of any genuine Anglo Saxon (ie. Old English)taboo swear words

the Old English language is the root of many swear words due to the Norman invasion and the promotion of French & Latin as the language of our superiors – so yes it was written by monks but they didn’t bowdlerize/remove swear words due to prudishness.
So for 300 years or so there were 2 languages – the rich speaking French/Latin and the commoners speaking English. The first English speaking kings was Henry V

MTB related word info…

SRAM in Russian means “shame”.

Apparently, the Russian for “pineapple” sounds similar to the Russian for “****”.

My wife caused a great deal of amusement when she asked for a glass of **** juice…

(The asterisks are a colloquial expression for self-manipulation, rhyming with banker).

In Gaelic, ‘s math sin means good. You pronounce it smashin

For a while, Marks and Spencers had a line of ‘mature’ women’s clothes called Per Una – presumably equating to ‘for her’ in Italian, land of designer clothes. Peruna is also Finnish for potato.

mushy (as in mushy peas) is an interesting word to say in Germany

‘Handy’ is a slang word for a Mobile phone in germany.

^ Not really slang as it is an everyday word. Still, always sounds cute when someone offers their handy nummer 🙂 Not sure what else they would call a mobile in fact, mobiltelefon? Not a common word in everyday German

If “handy” is the word that they use all over the websites of the operators, then that must be the word, not “slang”.
but now the word “Smartphone” seems to be used (but everyone calls them a “handy”).

Mushy peas :-S

I love the practicality of some german – a penalty kick is ‘elfmeterschuss’. Or eleven meter shot.

Art is Kunst, fox is Fuchs. I love fox art.

In Cantonese – bicycle is uni + cycle

Pronounced ‘hendy’

Here’s a weird one. Maybe a linguist (cunning or otherrwise) can shed some light on it for me.

There’s a hill in the NW of Scotland called A’Mhaighdean. It translates as The Maiden in English and if I write it highlighting some letters (A’Mhaighdean) you’ll conclude that it’s another made-up Gaelic word like telebhisean.

However, when I explain the pronunciation, it takes on a different form;

Mh at the beginning is a v sound.
The ai is more of an a (as in apple).
gh is a j (as in juice).

Put together, you’d say A vagin, which is scarily close to the english word virgin, another word for maiden.

Possibly coincidence, but there are lots of examples of words being absorbed into two different languages from a third source and being heavily altered over the years. However in that case the word should be one of those really old ones that derive from ancient common roots.

you’d say A vagin, which is scarily close to the english word virgin

That wasn’t where I thought you were going with that…