Re: OT: baloney and cheese

Carlos escribió:

>Andreas wrote:
>
>>  I used to believe that the jokes about Americans whose only knowledge of
>>  Sweden is that Switzerland is the capital of Stockholm were quite unfair,
>but
>>  life has tought me otherwise. Is there any particular explanation for this
>in
>>  my eyes very strange confusion? Are there similar confusions about, say,
>>  Portugal and Poland?
>
>I can understand how people, in my Spanish-speaking environment, would
>counfuse Suecia with Suiza (Peninsular /"sweTja/ vs. /"swiTa/, change /T/
>into /s/ for American dialects), but "Sweden" and "Switzerland" look and
>sound quite different to me.
Chinese speakers seemed equally confuddled when I was there; Sweden
was "Rui4dian3" and Switzerland was "Rui4shi4" with the "rui4" being
the same character. I figured these loans came by way of Hokkien,
since the former would be "Sui7den2" (sweeden) and the latter
"Sui7su3" (swees => Suisse), but was never able to confirm it. At
least it was a good mnemonic.

Kou