Weird phrases from real languages
I came up with one in Chinese (a friend helped me finish it):
一只蜘蛛一直注意这只猪
yì zhī zhīzhū yìzhí zhùyì zhè zhī zhū
one - measure word - spider - always/continually - pay attention to - this - measure word - pig
"A spider always paid attention to this pig"
一只蜘蛛一直注意这只猪
yì zhī zhīzhū yìzhí zhùyì zhè zhī zhū
one - measure word - spider - always/continually - pay attention to - this - measure word - pig
"A spider always paid attention to this pig"
- "But this can be stopped."
- "No, I came all this way to show you this because nothing can be done. Because I like the way your pupils dilate in the presence of total planetary Armageddon.
Yes, it can be stopped."
- "No, I came all this way to show you this because nothing can be done. Because I like the way your pupils dilate in the presence of total planetary Armageddon.
Yes, it can be stopped."
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I assume you were discussing "Charlotte's Web".Tengado wrote:I came up with one in Chinese (a friend helped me finish it):
一只蜘蛛一直注意这只猪
yì zhī zhīzhū yìzhí zhùyì zhè zhī zhū
one - measure word - spider - always/continually - pay attention to - this - measure word - pig
"A spider always paid attention to this pig"
Oooh, that never dawned on me. I made it up just based on the phonetics. I was asking my friend about what measure word should be used for small animals like spiders - turns out it's the same one as for medium sized animals like cats and chickens (there's a different one for larger animals like cattle). It sounds funny - yì zhī zhīzhū. Then there's the two words yìzhí zhùyì - always pays attention to - which sounds similar. A pig is yì zhī zhū, similar again, but the object of zhùyì must be definite, so hey presto, zhè zhī zhū, this pig. Hadn't realised the Charlotte's Web connection.
- "But this can be stopped."
- "No, I came all this way to show you this because nothing can be done. Because I like the way your pupils dilate in the presence of total planetary Armageddon.
Yes, it can be stopped."
- "No, I came all this way to show you this because nothing can be done. Because I like the way your pupils dilate in the presence of total planetary Armageddon.
Yes, it can be stopped."
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Re: Weird phrases from real languages
How is it spelled in Scottish Gaelic?bricka wrote:Please contribute! By "weird" I mean things which look particularly strange, silly, or peculiar.
To start off with, "she will eat" in Manx is written "eeee ee".
It's pronounced the same in Scottish Gaelic, but is written differently, so this doesn't qualify as weird enough.
Also, Irish, Welsh and Cornish, if you know.
I'd love to see.
Very similar to my idiolect, but I have a few diphthongs there, and I usually pronounce the consonant of the copula:Soap wrote:Dialectal Swedish:
"I åa ä e ö å å öa ä e å" = "In the river there is an island, and on the island there is a river". Standard Swedish would insert a couple of consonants here and there. The words for island (?) and river (?) were present in Old English, and if they had survived to modern English, I think both of them would have merged as /i:/.
Written with my made up orthography:
I åa er ei øy, og å øya er ei å.
[i: "o:A: E:r EI 2I o: o: 2IA: E:r EI o:]
Seriously, I can't stop laughing at that "translation". It sounds so very, very awesome.Noriega wrote:Swedish syllable of the day: Ernstskts = ”of an Ernst-ian one”
"She will eat" is íosfaidh sí, in Irish, pronounced /iːsˠə ʃiː/. Probably the closest you could get to "eeee ee" is the imperative "eat her!", ith í, which is pronounced /ɪ iː/.
I'm not as familiar with Welsh, but I think it would be bydd hi'n bwyta, using a verbal noun, and the inflected version would probably be bwytith hi, so I suppose the Brythonic languages use a different root for "eat". Take the Welsh with a grain of salt, though, and I'd appreciate correction from someone with more experience.
I'm not as familiar with Welsh, but I think it would be bydd hi'n bwyta, using a verbal noun, and the inflected version would probably be bwytith hi, so I suppose the Brythonic languages use a different root for "eat". Take the Welsh with a grain of salt, though, and I'd appreciate correction from someone with more experience.
Last edited by Nosys on Sun Apr 25, 2010 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I'm sure I have referenced to this particular morpheme before, but what the hell; here's a real phrase from a friend of mine, he really said it, and everyone around him understood perfectly.
preguntale la wea al weon de la wea weon.
ask-2ND.IMPERATIVE ARTICLE [wea] TO.THE [wea-PERSONALIZER] of ARTICLE [wea] [wea-VOCATIVE]
I love the 'we' morpheme
preguntale la wea al weon de la wea weon.
ask-2ND.IMPERATIVE ARTICLE [wea] TO.THE [wea-PERSONALIZER] of ARTICLE [wea] [wea-VOCATIVE]
I love the 'we' morpheme
An example that's sometimes quoted for the original dialect of Kassel, Germany: Get de Redde dä? --- Nä, ne mä. [ˈɡɛdɛ ˈrɛdə ˈdɛː || ˈnɛː nɛ ˈmɛː]. In a more standard German that would read Gehört der Rüde dir? --- Nein, nicht mir. Note that Rüde has become the word for "dog" in general, as opposed to Standard German Hund. In English the sentence is "Is that your dog? --- No, not mine."
A completely nonsensical, but grammatically correct Lakota dialogue I made up:
--Hiŋháŋ hé hihí... Híŋ!
--Hehá "Hiŋháŋ hé hihí" ehá he?
--Háŋ.
--"Híŋ" ée he?
--Háŋ, hiŋháŋ hí hihí.
--Hehehé! "Hiŋháŋ hí" ehé!
--Hiŋháŋ híŋ hihí.
--Oháŋ. Hohí.
--Hahó hahó!
--Háŋ.
--Owl horn is soft... Oops!
--Did you say: "Owl horn is soft"?
--Yes.
--Instead of "feathers"?
--Yes, owl teeth are soft.
--Oh no! You said "owl teeth"!
--Owl feathers are soft.
--OK. Take the pipe.
--Thank you!
--You're welcome.
There are lots more words with only 'h' and vowels in them, but the dialogue would hve been far too lengthy and disorganized, and I couldn't have made it grammatically correct without adding in words that don't have an 'h'. It would also have made far less sense semantically.
--Hiŋháŋ hé hihí... Híŋ!
--Hehá "Hiŋháŋ hé hihí" ehá he?
--Háŋ.
--"Híŋ" ée he?
--Háŋ, hiŋháŋ hí hihí.
--Hehehé! "Hiŋháŋ hí" ehé!
--Hiŋháŋ híŋ hihí.
--Oháŋ. Hohí.
--Hahó hahó!
--Háŋ.
--Owl horn is soft... Oops!
--Did you say: "Owl horn is soft"?
--Yes.
--Instead of "feathers"?
--Yes, owl teeth are soft.
--Oh no! You said "owl teeth"!
--Owl feathers are soft.
--OK. Take the pipe.
--Thank you!
--You're welcome.
There are lots more words with only 'h' and vowels in them, but the dialogue would hve been far too lengthy and disorganized, and I couldn't have made it grammatically correct without adding in words that don't have an 'h'. It would also have made far less sense semantically.
Ask the shit to the guy of the shit, guy is the literal translationWhimemsz wrote:What on earth is that even supposed to mean? Something along the lines of "ask the dude about the thing, man"? Except I've missed at least one wea there I think...
he meant "ask the man inside the taxi for the directions we need"
But see we have such economy of meaning here that he just dropped all information, letting it to be interpreted from context, save for the verb in question. Funny thing is, if he had just uttered without the context-sensitive markers [saying, for instance, "ask"] it would have been a COMPLETELY different speech-act.
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"From 1904 to 1907, the Namaqua, a Khoikhoi group living in present-day Namibia, along with the Herero took up arms against the Germans, who had colonized Namibia. 10,000 Nama, 50% of the total Nama population, perished."Pthug wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hottentots
Dumb shits.
dieJacqui wrote:"From 1904 to 1907, the Namaqua, a Khoikhoi group living in present-day Namibia, along with the Herero took up arms against the Germans, who had colonized Namibia. 10,000 Nama, 50% of the total Nama population, perished."Pthug wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hottentots
Dumb shits.
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Swedish:
I och med att en annan till och med efterlyste grönsaker och dammsugare, vart en annan dum i huvudet.
Translation:
Since I even wanted to find vegetables and hoovers, I became stupid.
Literal translation:
In and with that another to and with afterlit greenthings and dustsuckers, became another dumb in the head.
I thought it sounded funny when literally translated, at least~
I och med att en annan till och med efterlyste grönsaker och dammsugare, vart en annan dum i huvudet.
Translation:
Since I even wanted to find vegetables and hoovers, I became stupid.
Literal translation:
In and with that another to and with afterlit greenthings and dustsuckers, became another dumb in the head.
I thought it sounded funny when literally translated, at least~
Jacqui wrote:It's a wierd little thing about eating a prostitute's liver.Fanu wrote:?Jacqui wrote:Dove posso seppellire il cadavere della prostituta?
Mangiare il fegato, al momento della cena.
I don't get it.
Eating a prostitute's liver in Italian doesn't look strange at all. It just looks like any other Italian sentence. The point is that the phrase looks unusual when written out, or sounds unusual when spoken, like all the words having the same vowel or being entirely consonantal. Not that what it means is unusual.The OP wrote:things which look particularly strange, silly, or peculiar
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- Lebom
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Well, I do understand it, I'm a native speaker, but that italian sounds quite odd. oO Where do you came across with it?Jacqui wrote:It's a wierd little thing about eating a prostitute's liver.Fanu wrote:?Jacqui wrote:Dove posso seppellire il cadavere della prostituta?
Mangiare il fegato, al momento della cena.
I don't get it.
Lazio.Fanu wrote:Well, I do understand it, I'm a native speaker, but that italian sounds quite odd. oO Where do you came across with it?Jacqui wrote:It's a wierd little thing about eating a prostitute's liver.Fanu wrote:?Jacqui wrote:Dove posso seppellire il cadavere della prostituta?
Mangiare il fegato, al momento della cena.
I don't get it.
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Just to show to Nortaneous that these are in fact very common sets of words that we use several times just about every day:
MSN conversation from minutes ago.
I och för sig would be something like in and for oneself (sig has no exact translation; it's a reflexive third person version if me and thee; same as Spanish se in most contexts), and actually means something along the lines of that's true, and it's understood that one had to think about it first and then realised that was the case (... it's really hard to exactly translate it; care to give me a hand here, Richard?).
MSN conversation from minutes ago.
I och för sig would be something like in and for oneself (sig has no exact translation; it's a reflexive third person version if me and thee; same as Spanish se in most contexts), and actually means something along the lines of that's true, and it's understood that one had to think about it first and then realised that was the case (... it's really hard to exactly translate it; care to give me a hand here, Richard?).
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