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I Can Eat Glass
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoJag kan äta glass, den skadar inte mig.
- Agentlien 7y agoThat definitely seems like the obvious origin. I'm surprised it isn't mentioned in the article. For those who don't speak Swedish, the pun is in that "glass" is the Swedish word for ice cream. edit: I can't resist pointing out that for the Swedish word "it" I'd rather say "det", hence referring to the action of eating ice cream rather than "den", referring to the ice cream itself.
- Steer 7y agoNot sure if this is a joke or a mistake since the English "glass" is "glas" in Swedish, but the Swedish "glass" is "ice cream" in English. The correct translation in Swedish would be "Jag kan äta glas, det skadar inte mig".
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoI know what I'm doing :)
- Agentlien 7y agoThis is one of many silly sentences I heard while growing up, mainly from other Swedish kids who were learning English and finding silly similarities in words. So it's definitely deliberate.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoWhy is this a joke for Swedish speakers learning English? Does it not work just as well purely within Swedish?
- Nullabillity 7y agoGlas (glass) and glass (ice cream) have very different pronounciations that you don't really mix up. Glas has an extended a, glass sounds just about the same as in english.
- LIV2 7y agoUS English? To an Aussie bogan like me I'd pronounce the two the same usually, I have to think of the difference as how an American says glass vs how an Englishman/Aussie might say glass I haven't had the balls to try speaking Swedish yet so haven't asked to eat some glass yet
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> the English "glass" is "glas" in Swedish, but the Swedish "glass" is "ice cream" in English I feel the urge to speculate that Swedish "glas" comes down from proto-Germanic, while "glass" is a loan from French "glace".
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoYou are exactly right.
- hashmush 7y agoWhich makes isglass such a great word.
- pipingdog 7y agoI scream when I eat glass
- dr_dshiv 7y agoThat's funny. Mine is "mi hermano esta infirmo, pero mi pantalones son rojo". I'm so glad others share the urge to say something insane in other languages they don't know!
- erik_seaberg 7y agoI never thought I would see a rival for the 112 translations of “Oh my god! There's an axe in my head”: http://www.yamara.com/axe/ http://www.yamara.com/axe/ I guess the novelty of unfettered access to people around the world hadn't worn off …
- zem 7y agoaxe was my first thought too k:O a friend also started a similar project to translate goethe's observation that "Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own." but i don't think they ever put it online.
- jake-low 7y agoThe sentence only has a few translations on Tatoeba [0], if anyone would like to contribute. [0]: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/6943964 https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/6943964
- Cub3 7y agoHave travelled to several countries and though it doesn't fit the format of 'something others will remember' I found the most useful phrase is 'all good' or the Australian 'no worries', can be used as an answer for most questions.
- debatem1 7y ago"no worries" has proven surprisingly reliable for me. So far, as an American, I've used it on 5 continents in probably three dozen languages (only one of which I know well) and nobody yet has misunderstood it.
- LoSboccacc 7y agoI wonder how much of that is because the lion king's "hakuna matata" being ingrained into every 80s child. even if slavic languages got it translated as "no problem" in the song, the song's lead up dialogue makes clear it's more of a "no worries"
- dominicr 7y agoBest version I've heard of this was "This music is great. Would you like to dance?" Most questionable was "Trust me, I'm a gynaecologist".
- smcl 7y agoHere's the Czech, have fun: Můžu jíst sklo, nebolí mě to. Edit: Oooh I should've looked around more on that archived page for the actual list (https://web.archive.org/web/20040204003447/http://hcs.harvard.edu/~igp/oldglass.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040204003447/http://hcs.harvar...), there are two Czech ones there! "Můžu jíst sklo; to mi neškodí" (I can eat glass, it doesn't harm me - TIL the verb "škodit") and "Můžu jíst sklo, to mi nic neudelá" (I can eat glass, it does nothing to me).
- mdre 7y agoHere’s the Polish, have fun: Mogę jeść szkło, nie boli mnie to
- smcl 7y agoLove it! Polish diacritics are amazing :D
- NPC32419419 7y agoJem szkło, nie szkodzi mi.
- hoseja 7y agoNone of these are quite right and it frustrates me because I can't seem to come up with a better translation.
- Onyros 7y agoMy hovercraft is full of eels.
- krick 7y agoThis is a much safer claim too, since nobody will dare you to prove it.
- jaclaz 7y agoThat is a classic Monty Python (only for the record): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Hungarian_Phrasebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Hungarian_Phrasebook
- nonamenoslogan 7y agoOh! My nipples explode with delight!
- DoreenMichele 7y agoPart of the reason people say crazy-sounding things in foreign languages is because it makes sense in their language. If you've ever eaten gummy bears, gummy just means rubber in German. They use the same word for elastic used in clothing, for example elastic waistband pants. In my teens, me, my mother and a friend of the family went shopping together to pick up sewing supplies. The family friend walked through the store loudly asking "Where are the rubbers?" because she needed elastic for a sewing project of hers. My mother made herself very busy elsewhere in the store and did her best to pretend she didn't know the woman. A different family friend had a vaginal yeast infection. Her doctor recommended a vinegar and water douche. Confused, she asked "How will that help? And how do I get the vinegar in the showerhead?" because it sounds like the German word for shower. My high school French teacher was a tiny lady who spent a year of college abroad in Paris. At a fancy meal where they passed one course of food after another, she soon was too full to eat another bite. So she turned down the next course telling them "I'm full" in French (Je suis pleine.) You could hear a pin drop and everyone was mortified because it roughly translated as "I'm knocked up!" Then they realized it was some weird Americanism and got on with dinner conversation. A friend who lived in Spain or something for some years and was fluent in Spanish told me that the written word for year is the same as the written word for ass in Spanish, except year has a tilde over it. Since most English language keyboards don't let you put a tilde over a letter, "Happy New Year" fairly often becomes "Happy New Ass" on the internet, especially from people who aren't really fluent. This sort of thing is incredibly common.
- igammarays 7y agoThis is known as "negative transfer" in language acquisition theory. Interestingly, it can also work the other way. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_transfer#Positive_and_negative_transfer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_transfer#Positive_and...
- ramchip 7y agoAnd of course, «je suis pleine» is a perfectly fine way of saying you’re full in Québec French...
- 7y ago
- jaclaz 7y agoIn my experience "My postillion has been struck by a lighting" works miracles in an English speaking audience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_postillion_has_been_struck_by_lightning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_postillion_has_been_struck_... A few good ideas in "English as she is spoke": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_As_She_Is_Spoke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_As_She_Is_Spoke
- wallflower 7y agoLinguee (https://linguee.com https://linguee.com) does a pretty good job of translating idioms from and to different languages. It is not perfect, of course. No pasa nada. I’ve lately found in my Spanish learning that I can “see” idioms without knowing their meaning by using subtitles in Spanish with Spanish audio. They usually come up as sequences of words that make no sense to me.
- psychoslave 7y agoOriginal message: Now on Tatoeba, enjoy expanding it in languages you know: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/8223257 I made a search before, but missed this already existing one: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/6943964 https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/6943964
- glandium 7y agoYou can fill with https://web.archive.org/web/20040204003447/http://hcs.harvard.edu/~igp/oldglass.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040204003447/http://hcs.harvar...
- psychoslave 7y agoNo, probably not, there is no license on the website, and Tatoeba seems CC-0 now.
- psychoslave 7y agoAll your base are belong to us.
- veezbo 7y agoin casual japanese: ガラスは食える。俺に傷つけないから
- wnscooke 7y agoI once order 100 coffees at a fast food place in China. When the girl went wide-eyed and was looking around and past me (for the crowd I was presumably ordering for), I figured I mispronounced something. A few tries later I ordered my one cup of coffee. Yibai coffee vs yibei coffee.