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I've always heard it translated as "It pleases me"

And to please someone in English usually means something sexual

Oh, I've never heard that translation of it before.

Mezzo wrote:And to please someone in English usually means something sexual

No it doesn't.

Whimemsz wrote:

Mezzo wrote:And to please someone in English usually means something sexual

No it doesn't.

It depends on how you say it

Mezzo wrote:

Whimemsz wrote:

Mezzo wrote:And to please someone in English usually means something sexual

No it doesn't.

It depends on how you say it

So you usually say the word 'please' like it means something sexual? That must be fun at the dinner table. 'Mom, could you please pass the potatoes? please...?'

Matt wrote:

Mezzo wrote:

Whimemsz wrote:

Mezzo wrote:And to please someone in English usually means something sexual

No it doesn't.

It depends on how you say it

So you usually say the word 'please' like it means something sexual? That must be fun at the dinner table. 'Mom, could you please pass the potatoes? please...?'

If one was happy with oneself and they said "I please myself" then that has sexual implications

No it wouldn't.

in certain contexts yes. When speaking formally no

Mezzo wrote:in certain contexts yes. When speaking formally no

No, "sex" connotes an activity involving two or more participants, preferably at least two belonging to one species. "I please myself" carries a defeasible implicature that nobody else is involved. So it could (defeasibly) connote autoeroticism, but not sex.
However, it does not denote anything sexual nor autoerotic. It's merely a connotation.

This is silly. To pleasure someone has a sexual meaning, to please someone just means to make them happy (like by giving them a present or something). There's no connotation of sexuality involved, though I'm sure there are cases where you could say it and it would have sexual implications. Tom, your post was needlessly complex and didn't address the main problem with Mezzo's claim. You fail.

I'm not sure this is in order here, as PL/I may not qualify as a 'real language', but I can't resist adding this one:

IF IF = THEN THEN THEN = ELSE ELSE ELSE = IF;

PL/I has no reserved words, so IF, THEN, and ELSE can be identifiers. Also, PL/I uses '=' for both assignment and equality. Thus, rewriting this with keywords in lower case, we would have:

if IF = THEN then THEN = ELSE else ELSE = IF;

Nadreck wrote:I'm not sure this is in order here, as PL/I may not qualify as a 'real language', but I can't resist adding this one:

IF IF = THEN THEN THEN = ELSE ELSE ELSE = IF;

PL/I has no reserved words, so IF, THEN, and ELSE can be identifiers. Also, PL/I uses '=' for both assignment and equality. Thus, rewriting this with keywords in lower case, we would have:

if IF = THEN then THEN = ELSE else ELSE = IF;

Replacing the assignment operator with := and the equality operator with ==, and bolding all the non-variablename words;

if (IF == THEN) then {THEN := ELSE} else {ELSE := IF};

which is very non-ambiguous-looking. The original may have been better.

An awesome one from Sicilian.

Sicilian: Sa si si susì sasà. Si si susì sasà a li se.
Italian: Chissà se si è alzato sasà. Si si è alzato sasà alle sei.
English: Who knows if Sasà has woken up. Yes, Sasà woke up at 6.

when ever this conversation comes up, i always have to bring out the Mandarin Chinese tongue-twister.

Chī pútao bù tǔ pútao pí, bù chī pútao dáo tǔ pútao pí

When eating grapes don't spit out the skin, when not eating grapes spit out the skin

A couple of tongue-twisters from polish language:

dziewięćsetdziewięćdziesięciodziewięciotysięcznik - nine-hundred-ninety-nine-thousand (peak, for example)

ma mama ma mamałygę - my mother has mamalyga (a type of dish)

pocztmistrz z Tczewa, rotmistrz z Czchowa - mailman from Tczew, rotamaster from Czchow.

przygwoździ Bździągwa gwoździem źdźbło, to pobździ źdźbłko - when a farter will have nailed down a straw with a nail, he will fart a bit.

Кубок у бука - бук у Баку - [кубокубука, букубаку]

The cup is near the beech, the beech is near Baku

gear wrote:And that language in my 1st posting would be Georgian. Oops.

Finnish has:

Kokoo kokoon koko kokko!
Koko kokkoko?
Koko kokko.

Kokko is a word for a pile of wood that is burnt during the midsummer "juhannus" celebrations. I'll use woodpile for it:

Gather together the whole woodpile!
The whole woodpile?
The whole woodpile!

Kokoo is "kokoa" in the standard language, but diphthongs and vowel clusters often simplify.

Then:

kalastajatartansahan

his/her fisherwoman (partitive case), after all (from -han suffix)

And:

Io-aie ei ui: EU ei aio, Ii Oy ei oio

The Io-plan is not swimming (not going ahead). EU is not going to [do something, Ii Oy (company called Ii) is not straightening things out.

EDIT: added some Finnish silliness

-Älä rääkkää sitä koiraa!
-Enhän minä rääkkääkkään!

Meaning:
-Don't torment/torture that dog!
-I'm not tormenting it!

Also, the longest word in Finnish is something like kyllästyttämättömyydelläänsäänkäänköhän. I don't remember the whole word, but it's like some 48 letters. Do you happen to know the whole word?

EDIT: Another fun thing I remembered. I was visiting my aunt and we were all sitting in the kitchen, eating. Then my aunt started to say "Älä pakahdu tuskaan, älä tukehdu..." She stopped herself because she realized that I had my mouth full of food which would fly all over table if I started laughing. But even though she didn't finish her expression I understood what the last word was. My God! Trying to keep yourself from laughing with a mouthful of food is painful!

The expression goes like this:
"Älä pakahdu tuskaan,
älä tukehdu paskaan."
meaning something like "don't choke on pain, don't drown in shit". Okay, this is a relly bad translation as English lacks equivalents of some of these words. But the interesting thing here is that the two lines are identical, except that the PA and TU switch places with eachother.

Ofeig wrote:Swedish:

ooologiskt - When something about eggs is not scientific, all the first vowels are pronounced individually.

"d e d d e" ("det er det det er" in bokm?l) means "that's what it is" or "it is what it is" (depending on intonation)

Same as Swedish then, but only in writing Fully pronounced the spelling should be somewhat like: "De?dede? Or why not:
A, de?udede?u, a = Yes, that is exactly what it is, yes.

This reminds me of when someone asked me where the E-house was in campus. I pointed at the building and said "Dé e dé huset", meaning "it's that house". The guy repeatedly asked me "Is that the E-house?", and I answered the same thing. Only later on I realised why he was so confused. The phrase I said could also mean "That is the D-house".

Hlewagastiz wrote:What about Swedish: sju sk?na sjuksk?terskor sk?tte sju sjuka sj?m?n (one hears eight times a peculiar Swedish sound, something between English "sh" and "h"; this sound can be written, depending on the word, as sj, sk, skj, stj, sch or ch)! Compare French: le chasseur sachant chasser sans chier sa chasse (here we have a constant interchange betweeh "sh" and "s")!

I know it as "sju sjösjuka sjuksköterskor sjöng på sjön" ("seven seasick nurses sang at the lake").
Then there's also "Kerstin kisade kyligt på kycklingen" ("Kerstin (a name) glanced chillfully at the chicken", I'm not sure if my English was good there ). It has four of the other special sound in Swedish.

Non mi piace parlare Italiano. Non mi piace il sassofono.

"Saisiksmä vähän häpi endingii?" is always a fun phrase. Not colloquial Finnish, but fun nonetheless.

I like the word häpi. Sounds cute!

אשה נעלה נעלה נעלה נעלה את הדלת בפני בעלה

"Ishsha na'ala na'ala na'alah na'ala et haddelet bifne ba'alah."
A high-classed woman wore her shoe, locked the door in front of her husband.
The words for "shoe" (and therefore "to wear a shoe") and "to lock" share a triconsonantal root (N-'-L), and the word for "high" or "above" is from the root '-L and carries in this sentence the N- passive prefix.

Strictly speaking, though, a more proper transliteration would be:
"Ishshá na'alá ná'alá na'aláh ná'alá et haddelet bifné ba'aláh."
As it were, though, the distinction between long and short vowels of all classes except E has dropped out in Modern Hebrew, and the final H is more often skipped than not.

I've always thought the Swahili phrase 'sili kuku' ( same in X-sampa) was weird. It translates to: I don't eat chicken.

French: Si ton ton-ton tond ton ton-ton, ton ton-ton sera tondu. Si ton ton-ton tond ta ta-ta, ta ta-ta sera tondue.

English: If your uncle shaves your uncle, your uncle will be shaved. If your uncle shaves your aunt, your aunt will be shaved.

Serbian: Gore gore gore gore nego dole.

English: Up there forests do burn better than down there.