Re: Multilingual conversion - Ideas ?

On Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:29:50 GMT, "Oliver Wong" <owong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> I learned France's French, but live in Quebec. AFAIK, there aren't
>really any terms that mean something in one dialect and something else in
>the other (e.g. Nothing like "***" which means cigarette in British English
>and homosexual in American English). Usually, they'll be terms that exist in
>one dialect and "don't exist" in the other, though usually people will be
>able to guess what you meant. Quebec French, for example, borrows a lot of
>English terms like "Weekend", which the France French call "Fin de Semain"
>(literally "end of the week").


Most of the stories we have about terms translating funny (Chevy
Nova), are non-stories. In this case Spanish speakers are just as
aware of the Latin "nova" as English speakers. Sure we have the
Beavis and Butthead's of the world that can find hidden meanings in
what we say - but most of us don't even think about these - we just
use the language we have.

The other day I listened to a couple of minutes of a Navaho language
broadcast of a NFL game. It was fun to hear the English language
terms being used. Or hang around a bi-lingual family talking in
bi-lingual sentences. Heck, languages such as English and Yiddish
are obviously mixtures of other known languages.
.