Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/03/15

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Subject: [Leica] A S2 blog entry - linguistic oddities
From: douglas.sharp at gmx.de (Douglas Sharp)
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:38:19 +0100
References: <201003151658765.SM00760@[206.123.82.210]>

Doug,

the funniest things in German, as you probably know, happen when 
splitting words at the end of lines whe typing, I've ofet thought of 
preparing something like that for a radio announcer ofr the like.

For instance, there's a rule that says that Sextanten (the plural of 
sextant) has to be split as Sext-anten to avoid it being read as 
Sex-tanten ( a colloquial word for whores).

The same applies to Urinsekten (premieval insects) which which suddenly 
turn into piss-worshippers when written like this Urin-sekten.

Quite amusing are things like "rasensprengen" for watering the lawn, 
which actually could means blowing up the lawn with explosives, or the 
butterfly known as a Zitronenfalter - a lemon folder - have you ever 
tried to fold a lemon?

In the meantime, the Germans have invented quite a few English words 
that don't really exist:

Handy = mobile phone or cellphone
Pullunder = a sleeveless pullover
Wellness = spa
Claim = slogan
Slip = knickers

Just to name a few

Cheers
Douglas


On 15.03.2010 21:58, dnygr wrote:
> In Germany, I'm always surprised to find a sentence (Satz) at the bottom 
> of my coffee cup. Trouble is I can never read it. Mark Twain certainly had 
> the German language's number, I'd say. There are times in Germany that 
> people speak of a train (Zug) being in the room with us, and there isn't.? 
> I'm sure Germans can speak of strange things in English as well.
> In humor,
> Doug
>
>
>
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Replies: Reply from hopsternew at gmail.com (Geoff Hopkinson) ([Leica] A S2 blog entry - linguistic oddities)
In reply to: Message from dnygr at cshore.com (dnygr) ([Leica] A S2 blog entry)