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In WWII in the Netherlands, when encountering a stranger, they'd have them pronounce 'Scheveningen' as a check-phrase to distinguish if they were dealing with a
by AriedK 3y ago
In WWII in the Netherlands, when encountering a stranger, they'd have them pronounce 'Scheveningen' as a check-phrase to distinguish if they were dealing with a Dutch or German person.
Now, we can ask random strangers on the internet to spell out some glitch tokens to determine if you're dealing with a LLM bot.
- lifthrasiir 3y agoIncidentally, that place name is pronounced similarly to sukebe ningen スケベ人間 (lit. a perverted person) in Japanese and that would make an excellent way to distinguish Japaneses as well.
- polygamous_bat 3y agoNot to be pedantic, but I imagine there would be easier ways to telling a Japanese soldier apart from British/American soldiers during WWII /s
- manquer 3y agoLoads of other people fought the japenese: Korean, chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese to name a few. Americans won against the japenese yes,many fought though
- falcor84 3y agoNice! I wasn't familiar with that one, but I suppose it's a great example of a Shibboleth [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
- AriedK 3y agoWasn't aware there's a term for it. Thanks for that one!
- retrac 3y agoThat's known as a "shibboleth", after a story in the Bible about the Ephraimites who pronounced the Hebrew "sh" as "s" and so were identified by (and slain for) saying "sibboleth" rather than "shibboleth": > The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,” 6 they said, “All right, say ‘Shibboleth.’” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. - Judges 12:5 In WW II, a well-known challenge/password/countersign set used by American and British soldiers during the D-Day landings in France was "flash"/"thunder"/"welcome". "Thunder" and "welcome", of course, are words that a German is likely to mangle.
- stormfather 3y agoAnd challenge words in the Pacific were things like "lollipop", "lilliputian", and "lollapalooza"
- mkmk 3y agoThis lives on today in the questionable origins of the brand name Lululemon: > It was thought that a Japanese marketing firm would not try to create a North American sounding brand with the letter “L” because the sound does not exist in Japanese phonetics. By including an “L” in the name it was thought the Japanese consumer would find the name innately North American and authentic. Chip felt that the distributor had paid a premium for the “L” so he challenged himself to come up with a name that had 3 “L’s” for his new company. https://www.facebook.com/notes/10158217650462732/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/10158217650462732/ (an old blog post posted to Lululemon's brand page)
- sebzim4500 3y agoShould have used "squirrel", Germans trying to say that is hilarious.
- pge 3y agoso are Americans trying to say Eichhörnchen (the German word for squirrel). I’ve used that as an icebreaker for kids in a German-American exchange program - both groups trying to say the word in the other’s language.
- yencabulator 3y agoSame in Finland around that era, Russians cannot pronounce the Finnish R sound, so all sign-countersign pairs were chosen to include a prominent R. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7_pVrIshxA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7_pVrIshxA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countersign_(military) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countersign_(military)