Random Thread

[Raphael]

My landlady and a few of her family members are doing repair/construction work on our balcony involving a tool that looks suspiciously like a flamethrower.

Well, it probably is a flamethrower. Balconies have an asphalt layer to make them waterproof, and that must be heated to work it - with a flamethrower.

Thank you, I didn't know that.

[Ares Land]

In German, "Spaghetti" is the standard word photographers tell you to pronounce when they take your photo, like "cheese" in English.

Obvious questions: What words do other languages use? and Are they all foodstuffs?.

In French you can use ouistiti (marmoset).
But more typically it's cheese. When I was in elementary school, the pinnacle of wit was to say fromage instead. Sometime I'll have to ask my kids if they still have that joke.

[Linguoboy]

But more typically it's cheese. When I was in elementary school, the pinnacle of wit was to say fromage instead.

Same here, amusingly enough. I've seen photographers use other, less-expected terms in order to elicit a genuine laugh and get more natural-looking smiles.

[doctor shark]

In German, "Spaghetti" is the standard word photographers tell you to pronounce when they take your photo, like "cheese" in English.

Obvious questions: What words do other languages use? and Are they all foodstuffs?.

In French you can use ouistiti (marmoset).
But more typically it's cheese. When I was in elementary school, the pinnacle of wit was to say fromage instead. Sometime I'll have to ask my kids if they still have that joke.

I remember in South Korea it was "kimchi".

[Creyeditor]

In primary school, we used to say 'Ameisenscheiße' (ant shit).

[Raphael]

Mini-rant coming up. It's about a pretty obscure topic - the habits of people writing dialogue for German-dubbed versions of US movies and TV shows - but it's a topic that's at least related to language. And it's kind of random, too.

I don't know how common the habits I'm complaining about still are today, because I haven't watched dubbed versions of shows and movies in a while. Both of the two concrete examples I can think of right now deal with sex, but sex is not the main issue here - stilted language is.

So. Back when I did usually watch dubbed versions of US movies and TV shows, the writers of the dubbing scripts usually used literal translations for almost everything, often resulting in fairly artificial and stilted sounding language. For instance, they would translate "to be sexually active" as "sexuell aktiv sein", which is fine as a literal translation, but, at least in my experience, not the way anyone here actually talks. What people would usually say is something like "Sex haben" - "to have sex". Or, the writers would translate "making love" as "Liebe machen", which, frankly, sounds like baby talk to me; at any rate not like something any adult, or most children, would ever say for real.

The overall effect of this is, or was, to make characters in US movies and TV shows sound like pretty weird people who talk in an overly stilted, unnatural, artificial language.

[Man in Space]

If Travis B. bought a section of the Scottish coast, would it be the Firth of Zeptoforth?

[alice]

If Travis B. bought a section of the Scottish coast, would it be the Firth of Zeptoforth?

It would depend which section. He might end up with the Firth of Zeptoclyde by mistake.

[Travis B.]

Someone actually made a Forth-inspired language named Firth but I for the life of me can't really tell how this isn't really just a Forth, especially since actual languages that are called Forths vary from standard ANS Forth more than this language does.

[alice]

I can remember, when I was little, looking at the local OS map and thinking that it was really the "Fifth of Forth".