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

----- 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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