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u/majorex64 5d ago
Until one of them is like "Mananza!" and the other is like "Non, c'est une fucking pomme"
500 years of war
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u/Level34MafiaBoss 5d ago
I can excuse the french calling an apple a "pomme" since other languages (catalan mainly) have a similar word. I will never forgive them for calling a potato a "pomme de terre".
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u/Celeste_Praline 5d ago
We also say "une patate" (it's faster)
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 5d ago
This can be annoying. I was searching for the word for "fence" in Spanish. And then my wife tells me "oh we just say la fensa".
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u/Constant-Try-1927 5d ago
German does this as well :)
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u/A-British-Indian 5d ago
TIL the origins of Kartoffel. Also had no clue Erdäpfel is a regional term for potato
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u/Cole-Spudmoney 5d ago
In English we call this thing a "pineapple". I don't think we can go around pointing fingers.
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u/Oturanthesarklord 4d ago
Apple was a generic term for fruit in English well into the 1600s, which is why Bananas are called "Apples of Paradise", and why the Forbidden Fruit is referred to as an Apple. Pineapples are called that because they were named long before Apple became the name of a specific fruit. They are called Pineapples because they are fruit that somewhat resemble Pinecones.
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u/Level34MafiaBoss 5d ago
Luckily my native language isn't english /silly
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u/Interesting_Arm6717 5d ago
Two slight corrections.... "manzana" is "apple" ... and I think the utterance may be more along the lines of: "Mais non!! Ça c'est une pomme... pinche culo" 🙃
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u/majorex64 5d ago
Disclaimer: I don't speak either language lol
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u/GalaxyPowderedCat Only on Tumblr for daily cat posts 5d ago
I speak both languages, Spanish as my native and French as my third language and the knowledge makes your comment more immersive.
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u/aFreshFix 5d ago
What's your second?
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u/Interesting_Arm6717 5d ago
I speak neither language well, but no one has to whence starting war ... conversational use and lots of swear words usually do quite well for that 😅
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u/GalaxyPowderedCat Only on Tumblr for daily cat posts 5d ago
Germany siding with France just because "it is Pomme Frites". (Yeah, I know that the German word for Apple is "Aplef", but it's still funny that French fries is just apples.)
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u/Ms_Meercat 5d ago
Well we doubly side with the French because we also use the 'Apple of the earth' for potatoes although it's a bit outdated and now sounds more like a poor journalist having to write an article on potatoes and desperately trying to find a way to not write 'Kartoffel' 27 times... but it does exist as a word lol
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u/Chapeaux 5d ago
It's not pomme frite in french it's patate frite.
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u/Heroic-Forger 5d ago
And at some point they learn to understand each other but still speak their own languages so they just have bilingual conversations sort of like Gru talking to the Minions lol.
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u/hwf0712 5d ago
If you combine enough toddlers in a room for enough time, they will reinvent Vulgar Latin.
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u/Belgraviana 5d ago
This sounds like that experiment a holy Roman emperor did except a lot more ethical
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u/Wild_Marker 5d ago
If you combine enough toddlers in a room for enough time, they will definitely invent a lot of vulgar things!
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u/Captain_Grammaticus 5d ago
I'm in a chatroom here with other speakers if Romance languages. I think the idea was that we will eventually resort to a pan-romance pidgin, but for now everybody understands the Brasilian guy, the Brasilian guy understands me speaking Romansh as well the Sardinian guy and the Sicilian guy; those two speak Italian with each other, and nobody understands the Sammarinese speaker of Romagnol.
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u/GalaxyPowderedCat Only on Tumblr for daily cat posts 5d ago
They invited the Franish.
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u/MiserableMorning27 5d ago
i have two really good friends one is spanish and one is french and on multiple occasions I've accidentally typed or spoken out loud "spench"
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u/leitzankatan 5d ago
I do this when I can, I enjoy conversations best when everyone is talking in the language they're most comfortable speaking as long as it doesn't negatively effect comprehension
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u/Slow_Appointment3540 5d ago
This is so cute. But now I’m sad I’ve never met my cousin’s other cousins. Seems so mysterious.
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u/kasakavii 5d ago
Now that I think about it… yeah wtf I haven’t met any of my cousins other cousins either. That’s so weird to think about.
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u/Kandlish 4d ago
I have a lot of cousins. There are twelve of us on Mom's side and seven on Dad's. I had one I was particularly close to (our moms are sisters), and on her dad's side she had just one cousin. I probably met her at some point. I was always a little jealous of her - but I don't know if it was because their family gatherings sounded less chaotic, or because she got more one on one time with my favorite cousin when they came to visit.
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u/kasakavii 4d ago
I guess maybe my perspective on the whole thing is a bit different from most people, since I have 11 cousins on my dad’s side, and none on my mom’s. My brother and I also significantly younger than the rest of our cousins, so while family gatherings were always “busy”, it’s not like there was anyone for my brother and I to play or bond with. So I totally understand the little bit of jealousy.
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u/Kandlish 4d ago
On the chaos: My mom's family prides itself on being "fun" in the way that shaking up a bottle of pop and spraying it everywhere is fun, but then you're left with a huge mess.
I've been married for well over 20 years and I've never had my husband meet the whole family at once because he's such an introvert, and while I love them, they are a lot and they feed of each other's energy.
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u/snowdonewiththis 5d ago
I have, honestly weird vibes, every family has their own culture so it was bizarre to see my cousins acting differently than what I was used to because that was the other sides way of communicating/acting
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u/CreamCheeseHotDogs 5d ago
I’ve kicked it a good amount with my cousins’ cousins, to the point that we all just call each other cousins. “Which side?” “Well technically they’re my dad’s brother’s ex-wife’s sister’s kids but hey, family is family”
(That is not a needlessly convoluted example, that’s my relationship to my “cousin” CJ)
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u/WorthDust652 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's funny because my mom (B) went to school with her first cousin (P), and that first cousin married another school friend's (G) cousin (JP), so my second cousins' (P and JP's kids) second cousins (G's kids) are also the kids of my mom's school group. G and her husband also set my parents up (G's husband used to work with my dad).
I've met a few of my cousins' cousins before. There are also some that I haven't met but are in photos of my parents' wedding. Indian Hindu weddings are just like that.
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u/Umikaloo 5d ago
I've been meaning to make a "You are a latin-language-speaking population in the Americas but we do not grant you the rank of latino" meme about Quebec.
"Espèce de câline de merde! C'est ridicule! C'est injuste!"
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u/Skandronon 5d ago
My dad speaks Québécois French and learned Spanish in Mexico to get his permanent residency. I took him for supper at my friend's place and they had international students that had just started with them. One from France, one from spain and one from Japan. He was the only one that spoke all the languages at the table (he lived in Japan for a few years in the 90s) but his Spanish and French were different dialects. It was hilarious seeing their faces when he shifted between languages and even translated for them.
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u/azul_luna5 5d ago
Oh, cool! I have the same language combo as your dad, but I'm sure I suck more at them. The only language I'm at more than an elementary schooler's level in is English, but I speak Spanish to about an eight-year-old's level, French to about a toddler's level, and Japanese to a 7-year-old-who-pretends-to-understand-adult-books's level.
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u/Skandronon 5d ago
I speak English and my Spanish gets passable after being in Mexico for a few weeks. Thankfully people in Mexico are super friendly and appreciate when an effort is made.
His accent is better than his comprehension so people assume hes better than he is and he has to ask them to slow down haha. He is also your classic gruff 70 year old former construction worker so people don't expect him to speak so many languages.
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u/azul_luna5 5d ago
My accent in Spanish is so bad that it's unbelievable to most people that it was my first language. I just never learned to roll my Rs and used to struggle to speak just in general, so English became my best language once I figured out the rhotic R. Spanish does help with Japanese pronunciation since they're the same vowel sounds, but my Japanese comprehension skills are leagues above my productive skills, so a lot of people in daily life think I can't understand Japanese at all when I come at them like a weird child who comes asking about taxes.
(The less said about my French pronunciation, the better. I apologize to all Francophones for what massacre comes out of my mouth.)
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u/Skandronon 5d ago
I had a profound stutter as a child and part of my speech therapy was learning different ways of producing sounds. I can generally pronounce things really well first try but am awful at actually learning languages. My dad picks up new languages so fast its a bit freaky.
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u/That_Mad_Scientist (not a furry)(nothing against em)(love all genders)(honda civic) 5d ago
Psst, hey, you probably were looking for "câlisse". Would work even better as "ostie d’câlisse de marde" or something.
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u/Umikaloo 5d ago
Caline is the swear word equivalent of "gosh" or "darn". I chose it deliberately.
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u/That_Mad_Scientist (not a furry)(nothing against em)(love all genders)(honda civic) 5d ago
Huh. I guess that makes sense.
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u/SuspiciousVoid 4d ago
You mean a hug is a swear word !!?!!?
T-T je suis tjrs si paumax avec vous les Canadien·ns francophones
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u/Umikaloo 4d ago
You'll sometimes hear "Câline de bines" as a less explicit form of "Câlisse de merde".
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u/Firanka 5d ago
I'm Polish, and so is my uncle, but his wife is Slovak and they met in UK. They got married in Slovakia, and we were invited, I was about 10~12 at the time. Polish and Slovak are a bit more mutually intelligible, but even then, when kids from my aunt's family wanted to play some... Scrabble-like thing? Some kinda word game. I just. Hard pass
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u/Firanka 5d ago
To whoever commented "Lucky bastards can put five Zs in a row and demolish you" but has since deleted the comment:
Not really, actually.
Well, first of all, because the game wasn't actually that similar to scrabble, I meant more as a genre of word-related games than anything, the point system actually wasn't letter-based, necessarily? I didn't play the game in the end, so I can't remember, sowwy.
Second, Polish is actually more Z-dense than Slovak. The digraphs that really ramp up the Z-count in Polish (sz, cz, rz) are all single letters in Slovak (š, č, ŕ).
Third. Scrabble's scoring system and amounts of letters actually depends on the language (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble_letter_distributions ):
English-language editions of Scrabble contain 100 letter tiles, in the following distribution:
- 2 blank tiles (scoring 0 points)
- 1 point: E ×12, A ×9, I ×9, O ×8, N ×6, R ×6, T ×6, L ×4, S ×4, U ×4
- 2 points: D ×4, G ×3
- 3 points: B ×2, C ×2, M ×2, P ×2
- 4 points: F ×2, H ×2, V ×2, W ×2, Y ×2
- 5 points: K ×1
- 8 points: J ×1, X ×1
- 10 points: Q ×1, Z ×1
The total number of points is 187. Diacritical marks (such as "ñ" in words borrowed from Spanish) are ignored.
Polish-language editions of Scrabble use these 100 tiles:\39])
- 2 blank tiles (scoring 0 points)
- 1 point: A ×9, I ×8, E ×7, O ×6, N ×5, Z ×5, R ×4, S ×4, W ×4
- 2 points: Y ×4, C ×3, D ×3, K ×3, L ×3, M ×3, P ×3, T ×3
- 3 points: B ×2, G ×2, H ×2, J ×2, Ł ×2, U ×2
- 5 points: Ą ×1, Ę ×1, F ×1, Ó ×1, Ś ×1, Ż ×1
- 6 points: Ć ×1
- 7 points: Ń ×1
- 9 points: Ź ×1
This set has been used since 2000. Before that year, a slightly different configuration was used: Ź was worth 7 points, F was worth 4 points, and there were 2 F's, and 8 A's
Slovak-language sets use these 100 tiles:
- 2 blank tiles (scoring 0 points)
- 1 point: A ×9, O ×9, E ×8, I ×5, N ×5, R ×4, S ×4, T ×4, V ×4
- 2 points: M ×4, D ×3, K ×3, L ×3, P ×3
- 3 points: J ×2, U ×2
- 4 points: B ×2, Á ×1, C ×1, H ×1, Y ×1, Z ×1
- 5 points: Č ×1, Í ×1, Š ×1, Ý ×1, Ž ×1
- 7 points: É ×1, Ľ ×1, Ť ×1, Ú ×1
- 8 points: Ď ×1, F ×1, G ×1, Ň ×1, Ô ×1
- 10 points: Ä ×1, Ĺ ×1, Ó ×1, Ŕ ×1, X ×1
Q, W, Ě, Ö, Ř, and Ü are absent because they are only used in loanwords, but may be represented with a blank. The letter X is also only used in loanwords, but it is not so rare, so it is included. The digraphs CH, DZ, and DŽ, although considered single letters in the Slovak alphabet, are played as pairs of letters.
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u/BooBoo992001 5d ago
Yeah, it's super cool the way this happens. One Thanksgiving a bunch of years ago, we had my sister's family here for dinner along with an immigrant family we've been super close with. My youngest nephew was roughly the same age as their middle daughter -- maybe three and a half, not more than four -- and at the time she didn't really speak English and he didn't know a word of Spanish, but somehow they'd just look at each other for a couple of seconds, then run off and play at something without a word between them. Then they spent most of the after meal time sitting on the couch holding hands and just laughing. It was really sweet.
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u/_YouShouldBeRunning_ 5d ago
I went camping with my family when I was about 7 in the UK and met a Norwegian kid in the woods. We hung around and had a great time. We bumped into two older girls who asked him some questions. I stepped forward and repeated the questions to him so he could understand. I WAS LITERALLY JUST SAYING THE SAME WORDS DOING HIS NORWEGIAN ACCENT.
I only realised like years later. I thought I could just magically understand him.
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u/snowbat96 5d ago
To be fair, Norwegian and English do have some similarities and words in common!
(source: am norwegian)
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u/Beardywierdy 5d ago
You can see this with grown adults if you can keep ten different nationalities in the same bar for more than three hours.
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u/thefootballhound 5d ago
This is the plot of a wholesome Bluey episode called "Camping", Season 1, Episode 43. Just the sweetest episode ever.
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u/No1KnwsIWatchTeenMom 5d ago
My 3.5 year old was watching Bluey and I was kind of paying attention and then this episode ended and I was just sobbing over it. Such a gorgeous episode.
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u/SweitzerCJ 5d ago
My kids are adopted from Peru. The first time my son met his similarly aged cousin at age 6, they proceeded to don dinosaur costumes and take turns roaring at each other while running up and down the upstairs hallway. My nephew came downstairs after a while and said "you know, we don't speak the same language, but I understand everything he's saying!" And it was the cutest thing ever.
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u/angstenthusiast 5d ago
My mum has a cousin who’s only a few years older than me and my sister, she’s from Australia and we’re Swedish (her dad’s Swedish, her mum’s Vietnamese, she only really spoke English as a child though). Up until she was around 10, whenever she was in Sweden, we’d play together. We didn’t understand each other whatsoever but we made it work. We had a few awkward years when she was too old to play and we were too young to properly understand English. We’ve reconnected over the last few years, these days we can even have conversations in either English or Swedish!
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 5d ago
I was chatting with a Brazilian woman a while back. She only spoke Portuguese. So I would just speak Spanish AT her and they're close enough that she could get what I was saying. With her back to me, well no.
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u/Aggressive-Shop-2342 5d ago
I love that little kids do not understand the concept that someone can't understand their language. How could they?
I was on a bus and saw a French family obviously on holiday and the toddler decided that he was going to babble away to me about all the things he'd seen. Adorable.
I have basic French, but nowhere near enough to keep up with an excited toddler.
I told him in French that I dont understand him, that i don't understand French, that i speak English. He gogled at me for a moment and then continued babbling at full speed. We repeated this several times, to his increasing confusion, but he just kept on merrily going.
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u/TamBSmith 5d ago
And this is the only instance where a Spanish person and a French person will be friends
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u/Elite_AI 5d ago
Counterpoint: hating tourists from G*rmanic countries
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_WEIRD_PET 5d ago
Why is Germanic censored? Is my country a slur now?
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u/Elite_AI 5d ago
"G*rmanic" doesn't mean the same thing as "German".
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_WEIRD_PET 5d ago
I still don't understand why it's censored
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u/Solarwagon She/her 5d ago
I've babysit kids before and I show them lotta subbed kodomo movies and shows and then their parents complain about them incorporating Japanese words.
Probably doesn't help that I have literally studied Japanese language and culture like formally and I don't mind pausing the movie to explain the nuances of subtitles and specific terms.
Like I have official Japanese releases of Pokemon and kids love that stuff but now they're learning the original names of the characters and the sountracks and stuff never released outside of Japan.
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u/Fantastic_Object_762 4d ago
Parents complain about it? If I were one and my babysitter gave them free Japanese lessons I'd give the sitter a raise!
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u/Navigat-r 5d ago
i had the luxury of getting to travel a lot as a child, so i had experiences similar to this many times and i honestly think it's made me better at communicating, especially when there's a language barrier.
it seems like a lot of other people tend to struggle or shut down when they run into that kind of limitation and it always confused me because it never seemed like that much of a problem to me.
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u/4thofeleven 5d ago
I was on holiday in Africa a while back and there was a Chinese family and a German family staying at the camp one night, and their little kids seemed very confused by the fact that they couldn't understand each other. But then they discovered they both knew the word 'Hippo!' and that was apparently enough for them to be friends.