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

From:Markus Miekk-oja <fam.miekk-oja@...>
Date:Wednesday, July 9, 2003, 16:33
>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".
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.

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Carlos Thompson <chlewey@...>