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| Funny Company Names.... |
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| chickenHeadKnob:
One of these just opened a location near me. They have lasers. They shoot the lasers at your privates. pew .. pew .. pew. Are you ready for a visit? Schedule with your friendly neighbourhood vagicians. I don't know, but when I was growing up if someone said they were visiting their friendly neighbourhood vagician I would have an entirely different service in mind. |
| harerod:
--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 05, 2021, 09:57:57 pm ---Every time I write "per se", I cannot help but giggle a bit. You see, Finnish "perse" = "arse" (in English). I've hidden several dad jokes in my posts for those who know that to discover. No laughs yet, though. --- End quote --- Err, I enjoy reading your posts because of the insights they contain. So, to get those jokes - would one have to know Finnish? |
| Nominal Animal:
--- Quote from: harerod on July 06, 2021, 05:59:36 am ---So, to get those jokes - would one have to know Finnish? --- End quote --- No, just that sometimes replacing the term "per se" (by itself/in itself) with "arse" may make sense, in the dad joke style. (Including, it is never used offensively, and any deprecation hidden in there is self-deprecation and shared misery. Dads don't belittle kids, they help them grow into dads too.) You do realize that having to explain ones jokes that nobody laughs at, is per se a dad joke? The only immediately helpful Finnish term that anyone might care to know that pops into my mind is the word perkele [ˈperkele]. The next time you stub your toe or something, let those hard r's roll with that sharp k immediately following – [ˈperrrr kele], and you'll find it helps deal with the sudden sharp pain. Tests do indicate that pain threshold is higher when you get to use such 'words of power', compared to when you stay silent or just yell non-words, and among my admittedly small international sample, that word has particularly good characteristics for exactly that use. [Lots of edits, because me fail English, and getting the wording even in the correct ballpark is hard. Finnish is so much easier...] |
| harerod:
Out of context, I would have bet that "perkele" was Greek. Thanks, again what learned. Finnish being easier than English? "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" I'll put Finnish is on my bucket list, right after Japanese, Hebrew and Oromo. |
| Nominal Animal:
Forgot to mention: part of the funnyness to me is that the Finnish word for family, "perhe", is only very slightly different: replace the sibilant with an exhalation, and that's it. Also works for a kid-friendly expletive, you see. --- Quote from: harerod on July 06, 2021, 07:27:16 am ---Finnish being easier than English? "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" --- End quote --- Only because I grew up with it, of course. It has its beautiful features like all languages have.. Tolkien for example liked the phonotactics, and used those to create Quenya. I myself don't often speak English aloud at all. I read a lot, and use it in very narrow technical contexts, but outside of entertainment (mostly Youtube, old comedies et cetera), nothing "social". About the opposite to majority of English speakers, I guess. Some of the issues and errors I make are just :o to native speakers. Although I almost never confuse then/than or they/their/they're (except as typos), so it is not that I make fewer errors, mine are just different. For example, at one point I realized my pronounciation had degraded so much (due to lack of use) that people had trouble telling whether I said "can" or "can't". I switched to letting my Finnish Rally English Accent come clear through, and that made my speech much easier to understand, it seems. (At school, we are taught that That Accent Is The Worst Sin, and should emulate British/American/etc. pronunciation, because Rally English, although clear and understandable, being instantly recognizable, immediately marks us as Finnish and that is Shameful. Don't get self-hating xenophiles teach you foreign languages; the results are just too odd. Many, many Finns, especially the older folk, won't talk to you in English because they fear you laugh at their accent. Get them drunk, and suddenly they talk like five languages. Usually all mixed together, though. The tales I could tell, for example of that one discussion where the Finn used 'swamps' instead of 'mushrooms', because of Swedish influence. Was hilarious, what with the mental imagery of someone eating peat and whatnot.) Wrt. the language issues all over this thread, my point here is that it is not just language, nor just culture. Some of us just use non-native languages in weird ways that make for odd (and hopefully entertaining) errors and mistakes. Speaking a language well does not mean you know all the idioms used, and that explains many of the funny company names. It is not just a matter of picking up a thesaurus or automatic translator, although the company and product names generated that way are definitely in their own hilarious class. Sometimes it is just, whatstheword, context or social circles or such. I happened to stumble on certain videos and stuff that used the pressurized air analogs for certain electrical circuits recently. You can talk about whether the analog is apt or not, but fact is, very few kids nowadays know anything about pressurized air (except that you either have to pump it, or you get it from a hose at the gas station). Which makes that approach, well, hilarious: it's like trying to teach city kids computer repair by using livestock rearing similes and analogs. |
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