Showing posts with label English. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English. Show all posts

Monday, May 19, 2008

English words that cannot be translated into another language

I just finished watching a film where the cool, foreign guy causes the American chick to swoon simply by dropping a few words on her that cannot be translated into English. I then thought to myself, on my next trip overseas, what words can I use to charm the armpit-haired girls to get them in the sack?

Behold , a list of English words and phrases that have no translation overseas or in French Canada.

Misunderestimate
Thank goodness for the current administration’s eight years of adding seemingly American words to our dialect. I dare you to find “decider” in a French dictionary or the Hungarian word for “strategery.” Many a Mexican immigrant has gotten into fist fights with their second language teacher over the pronunciation of "nucular" that they heard on the televisión.

Blow Job
Sure, there are translations in every language for the greatest gift a woman can give a man, but nothing literal; after all, only Americans would say “blow” when they really mean "suck" and “job” when they mean “can I have this one for free?”

Pillow Talk
In France, guys leave after sex. In Slovakia, they pull up their britches and head outside to trim the hedge. Only in America will you find guys chit-chatting after sex. The funny part is trying to translate this concept into a foreign language: “The after-sex speak, during which time the man lies about love, and the woman lies about orgasm.”

Tidal Wave
I’ve run into way too many high-and-mighty people who frown upon the American word “Tidal Wave.” When Indonesia was decimated a few years back, I was chastised for saying “tidal wave.” When a high-and-mighty says, “A Tsunami struck!” ask them, “What is a tsunami?” and watch as they look around before whispering, “A tsunami is a tidal wave.”

Taint
No one but Americans would have a name for the area of the body that ain’t the balls and ain’t the ass.

Chode
No one, save the Americans, would have a second word for the word taint.

Redneck
Other countries are small, and so they can only make fun of other countries. The United States is too damn big, and we like to pick on the people in our sister states, or, as it were with this definition, our sister and wife states.

Pocketbook
Just what the hell is a pocketbook? You’ll never know if you speak another language. Turns out it’s a satchel for carrying around your most important woman stuff. It’s not a book and it’s not small enough to fit into anyone’s pocket. In other languages you can roughly translate it to, “Over the shoulder satchel used to hide everything you want, but nothing you need.”

Pocket Pussy
Staying with the theme, here… Have you ever seen one of these cure-alls for the lonely man? Well, it doesn’t look like pocket, it won’t fit in a pocket and it certainly won’t hold your car keys. As for the pussy… I’m not sure. If this were to translate literally, you’d have a wave of Japanese men ordering “dirtied” Levis off the internet and then banging them. Oh, I guess we already do.

Monday, August 06, 2007

All punctuation should be like the dollar .sign

The dollar sign comes before the number even though you say “twenty dollars” when it looks like this .$20 No one says dollars .twenty At first it seemed very .awkward

But then I realized that the percent sign comes after the number (20%) and so you don’t know what the number represents until you are finished saying it and then you’ve got to add the right .inflection That could lead to !embarrassment

Why not do the same as the dollar sign for all ?punctuation

As you can see, it works for punctuation at the end of the .sentence It gives you a second to finish up your sentence momentum and then come to an agreeable halt with the proper hint of .emotion

In *Spanish, they put the punctuation marks at the beginning and at the end of the sentence to give you a head start on your .inflection I think this leads to over enunciation and unneeded .inflection That’s why the Spanish speaking peoples always seem so dramatic when they .talk Our new rule for English will be one punctuation mark, but right before the last word of a .sentence I wonder if this will work for …?ellipses It !does

So here is a list of suggestions for new end of sentence :punctuation

%percentages
*asterisks
: colon
!!double exclamation
?! questioning exclamation
!? exclaiming a question

Please let me know if you need any assistance with any specific .punctuation

.P.S And all emoticons should be .banned !!Forever




*Both Mexican and Spanish as well as .Castilian