• daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    18 hours ago

    Spanish:

    “Me cago en la leche” I shit on the milk -> something bad happened, and I’m angry.

    “Eres la leche” You are the milk -> you are great.

    • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      Damn, in English we can say one “shit the bed,” but I might need to adapt this Spanish phrase and start saying I shit the milk.

      • Logical@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Not to be one of those people, but the poster you sent is actually not Swedish. The first sentence is either Danish or Norwegian. You’re still right about the word fart meaning something different in Swedish though.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    1 day ago

    I’ve learned a little bit of two other languages (Spanish and Japanese) and I’m pretty confident that most languages have a ton of nuance like this that you will never understand until you are actually totally immersed in that language and culture.

    I mean, everything I learned in Spanish and Japanese is all super formal. Nobody actually talks that way IRL. There’s words that from a translator or dictionary mean one thing, but are colloquially used totally differently. Like calling testicles eggs or nuts. “Chupa mi heuvos.” They’re not saying to suck their literal eggs.

    I know less Japanese than Spanish but I already notice that, like, “no” isn’t ever annunciated the way I’m being taught. Instead of “iie” I’ll often hear just “ya.” It teaches to end every statement with “desu,” but I have never heard a sentence end with a desu or desu ka in any Japanese media (which is more than just anime). It’s all way more casual. Questions are still understood to be questions if you use the right inflection; no need for extra syllables.

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      There are better cases for elision of sounds than iie and iya, as the latter is a different word, sort of like no and nope in English. For example in more formal contexts you’d use ~teiru at the end of verbs and pronounce the i vowel, but in casual speech it’s elided to sound like ~teru.

  • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The King’s English

    I take it you already know
    Of tough and bough and cough and dough?

    Others may stumble, but not you,
    On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.

    Beware of heard, a dreadful word, That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
    And dead: It’s said like bed, not bead – For goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!
    Watch out for meat and great and threat… They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

    A moth is not the moth in mother, Nor both in bother, nor broth in brother.
    And here is not a match for there, Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
    And then there’s dose and rose and lose – Just look them up – and goose and choose.

    And cork and work and card and ward, And font and front and word and sword.
    And do and go, then thwart and cart, Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
    A dreadful language? Why, sakes alive! I’d learned to speak it when I was five.
    And yet, to write it, the more I tried, I hadn’t learned it at fifty-five

      • spinnetrouble@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

        “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically correct sentence in English that is often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann’s Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought. The sentence employs three distinct meanings of the word buffalo:

        • As an attributive noun (acting as an adjective) to refer to a specific place named Buffalo, such as the city of Buffalo, New York;
        • As the verb to buffalo, meaning (in American English[1][2]) “to bully, harass, or intimidate” or “to baffle”; and
        • As a noun to refer to the animal (either the true buffalo or the bison). The plural is also buffalo.

        A semantically equivalent form preserving the original word order is: “Buffalonian bison that other Buffalonian bison bully also bully Buffalonian bison.”

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        It doesn’t, but that won’t stop pedants from pretending it does so they can feel smarter than you.

        • lugal@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          This isn’t pedantic, it’s just a fun playing with word. And don’t even bother to call me a pedant for pointing this out.

    • Tyfud@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Buffalonian bison that other Buffalonian bison bully also bully Buffalonian bison.

    • BossDj@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      In the title of the show, there are spaces between Tom and And and And and Jerry.