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Re: CHAT: False friends - echos from the mother tounge

From:Carlos Thompson <chlewey@...>
Date:Wednesday, July 9, 2003, 17:52
----- Original Message -----
From: "Markus Miekk-oja" <fam.miekk-oja@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: CHAT: False friends - echos from the mother tounge


> >Of course, there are sometimes unexpected ramifications. Chevrolet's > >puzzlement of why their "Nova" didn't sell well in Latin countries.
"Nova"
> >-> "no va" -> "(it) doesn't go".
As John said, this is bogus. BTW: "no va" would sound as [no"Ba] or [no."ba], while "Nova" is ["noBa]; if you do not pronounce the words separately, the accentuation is different enough to take the concepts appart.
> Iirc, Honda had a car model named "fitta" recently. In Swedish that's a(n > offensive) word for the female genitalia. > > Also, a Swedish carbonated spring water, "Loka" was sold in Finland as > "Lokavettä". That's more or less the finnish catch-all word for any dirty > water... > > I bet there's hundreds and hundreds of these.
Well, apparently Mitsubishi named his 4WD as "Pajero" from a Spanish word that mean a man that works with strow (paja). Unfortunately paja has two other (slangish) meanings in Spanish: bullshit and mansturbation. The vehicle is sold in Spanish speaking countries as Mitsubishi "Montero". -- Carlos Th

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Amanda Babcock <langs@...>