The most recent issue of the Reader’s Digest contains a short article “English (According to the World),” telling anecdotes about expressions that non-English speaking individuals have used that struck readers of reddit.com as funny. My German is pretty good, so the two anecdotes about German speakers made sense to me. In one case, a German complained about the expression “back and forth,” saying that it did not make sense. “Why would you go back first?” he is quoted as saying. “It’s forth and back.” Of course, he is correct, and the German expression mirrors that: “hin und zurück.” In the other case, the German called gloves “hand-shoes,” which also is understandable in terms of his linguistic background. The German word for a glove is “Handschuh.”
There were examples from other languages, however, that made me wonder. A Dutch person called a merry-go-round a “horse tornado,” which brought forth comments from reddit.com reads about the movie “Sharknado.” Does anyone out there know whether the Dutch expression for a merry-go-round or carousel is really something like “horse tornado”?
Another example given was a Frenchman who refers to his elbows as “arm-knees.” A French-English dictionary gives me no basis for that phrase. Is there an actual French word that is anything like that?
One last example was a Russian-speaker who calls a headset a “voice helmet.” Checking a Russian–English dictionary showed no phrase anything like that. Is there any the real Russian expression like that?
(By the way, for those of you not familiar with “Sharknado,” it is a horror movie made for a TV science fiction channel about a tornado that picked hundreds of sharks up out of the ocean and dumped them on people sheltering from the wind and rain on land. It was so ridiculous that it became a “cult classic,” and even led to a sequel, “Sharknado 2.”)
There were examples from other languages, however, that made me wonder. A Dutch person called a merry-go-round a “horse tornado,” which brought forth comments from reddit.com reads about the movie “Sharknado.” Does anyone out there know whether the Dutch expression for a merry-go-round or carousel is really something like “horse tornado”?
Another example given was a Frenchman who refers to his elbows as “arm-knees.” A French-English dictionary gives me no basis for that phrase. Is there an actual French word that is anything like that?
One last example was a Russian-speaker who calls a headset a “voice helmet.” Checking a Russian–English dictionary showed no phrase anything like that. Is there any the real Russian expression like that?
(By the way, for those of you not familiar with “Sharknado,” it is a horror movie made for a TV science fiction channel about a tornado that picked hundreds of sharks up out of the ocean and dumped them on people sheltering from the wind and rain on land. It was so ridiculous that it became a “cult classic,” and even led to a sequel, “Sharknado 2.”)
No idea.
