Earlier today I was reading a textbook on Management, and in one of the example cases, it read,

...Although he's based out of Monterrey, Mexico, Gonzalez will be working frequently in Cemex's Asian operations, primarily in Indonesia. Cemex has a 25 percent stake in Indonesian cement maker, Semen Gresik. This manufacturing operation is the largest for Cemex outside Mexico. Before formally joining with Gresik, Cemex had done a great deal of cement in Asia...

...Semen.
What. the. fuck.
Granted, it was probably a name in Indonesian, and meant something else in their language, but I couldn't help but wonder who chose that name...no wonder the next sentence read 'Before formally joining with Gresik', and not 'Before formally joining with Semen'. >_>;

So, fellow Menewshans, are there any instances where you encountered something that caused you do to do a double take? Or have you ever saw a name that was in another language that meant something, but at the same time had a totally different meaning when read in English? (or vice versa?)

In my own language actually.
They spell it fuk in dictionaries but it's pronounced fuck not fook.
It's a name a friend of mine has. It derives from the word 'pumpkin' - fuk tong'

Ah, yeah, I think I remember hearing about the fuk word before. :lol:

Kind of like a joke we had around here about 'the confused foreigner', where they asked why everyone around here were constantly saying 'shit'. Turns out they were saying 'thank you'. :lol: ('xie-xie', but pronounced very similar to shit without the t).

but....XieXie doesn't sound anything like shit...

I will mention at the very begining of our Taiwan trip, we had to sit in an assembly and listen to some speeches in full Mandarin we couldn't understand and most of the group hadn't had Chinese before and kept commenting on the the fact that (Nei ge/na ge) sounded like 'nigger'

they were so silly XD

:rofl:

I had to read the conclusion
for my science project which
my partner wrote in front of
the class, I don't really remember
what word it was that he confused
it with but it was something along
the lines of ..

And in the end we found that those specific orgasms were most
productive during the daylight.

..I think it was organisms. :gonk:
I almost died.

In my elementry years a bunch of the
boys would say nipple instead of nickles..but it
was probably them being silly.

@Wingless: It's pronounced 'shieh-shieh', in a forceful way like you would when you stub your toe and exclaim "Shit!!", just without the 't' sound. :P

那個...lmao! :XD It does! Never noticed that before. :rofl:


@Elluh: Bahaha! I hope you didn't read the wrong word in class...:XD

@Ell: Lmfao! That reminds me of my own science class.

The teaching part of class was pretty much over; so everyone was just kind of chatting and doing their own thing. The teacher came over to a friend and I while we were reading some little astrology activity book or something. We gave it to her and she started reading it. We just kind of faced forward and listened to her read aloud and then she said, "Now, close your ass.." She stopped and we looked at her. Then looked away, and then back at her and just kind of stared like "Did you just say that?!" We laughed a little bit and then she gave the book back and walked away. :XD

lol! Was she going to say 'mouth' but misfired? :rofl:

Eyes. They are so close! :XD

I never thought it sounded like shit. O.O I use it myself. XD

Yeah. I never realized it either until someone told me the joke. :XD And now I have another one...'那個'. :lol:

I do a lot of double takes, because the way my eyes work, I read things wrong a lot.

Like I saw this church sign once that said "When you get to heaven, Jesus will kiss you!" but I read it as "When you get to heaven, Jesus will kick you!" and I was like, WHY?? :gonk:

And this other time, there was a flashing sign at a restaurant, and I still don't know what it actually said, but what I read was "COME EAT OUR NEW WALLEYE NAKED!"

><

There was a church sign around here that said "backdoor worship service". My friend and I were like :did that sign just say that?". My friend turned the car around and we had to take a picture of the sign. XD

The word "sick" is pronounced like the Turkish word for "penis". Are you asking for such stuff?

I suppose it depends on what you find "funny."

I wouldn't look twice at it :S.

Originally Posted by Pa-chinko

In my own language actually.
They spell it fuk in dictionaries but it's pronounced fuck not fook.
It's a name a friend of mine has. It derives from the word 'pumpkin' - fuk tong'

This reminds me of Whakatane. It's a town with a Maori name in New Zealand, but "Whak" is pronounced "fuck".

@Kita: lmao! :XD I remember reading a lot of signs like that too, unfortunately I can't remember any of them that were in English...:sweat: There was a road sign that was supposed to be 'steep rising slope', but I kept reading it as 'underworld hill'. :sweat:

@Mystic: lol! Do you still have the picture? :XD

@Kalium: Yep! :XD Not necessarily things that have to do with genitals, just words that have 'double meanings' in another language. Nice one. :P

@Flaw: I didn't find it funny, I just stared at it wondering who the hell would name their company Semen, until I read back and saw the part where it mentioned it was an Indonesian company. :sweat:

During my 4th year in German class in highschool, we had a fairly new book, that still had a good number of years on it. The book had been used since the school had opened 6 years before hand, and it caused great laughs at times with the preset characters in to the video track included.
On the fourth month in, my german teacher told us we need to switch out to a newer, cleaner version of the book. Most of my class and I couldn't quite understood what she ment. If anything, the book was so clean it made the two guys trying to pick up two sisters look like they were mentally challenged. Then the teacher proceeded to explain, how apparently a mother had gone looking through the book an found a photograph of a news stand. The mother apparently had a really big magnify glass with her, bcecause she proceeded to look at every magizine on the newstand-- and found a pronographic one.
Seeing as how the idea of someone really doing that confused us, we went ahead and opened our books to find the picture. It was only one picture of a newstand, and no one in my class could tell which magizine was the pronographic one. So my teacher decided to help out and pulled up the online book and turned to the picture, proceeding to magnify the image on the magizines. We had it all the way at 800% before we saw a very vague outline of a pronographic pose---- but it was so blurred we could not see anything other than a vague outline.
Makes me wonder, how dirty was the mind of the mother who reported it?

I was typing a paper once and accidentally ran two words together. The result was that it ended up saying "get sexercise" instead of "gets exercise."

I was so thankful that I proofread that paper before I turned it in...

We had those moments constantly in my Latin class. There was a certain story in one of our books about a merchant asking customers to feel his "big, shiny gems." I don't know that anyone actually took that the wrong way until one of my friends happened to be in the class and burst out laughing when we got to that line. Fortunately, our Latin teacher had a great sense of humor and actually makes fun of that story herself quite often now.

Another one that comes to mind is that the Latin verb for "to make" or "to do" is "facere." In its imperative form it changes to, simply, "fac," which always sounds rather awkward when spoken out loud. I wasn't in the class when this happened, but a few years ago there was a student at my school who had taken Latin who actually stood up in class and shouted, "Fac me!" when his teacher told him to do his homework... and then, of course, he had to explain to her that he had actually just said "Make me" in Latin.

@MisfitDoubt: o_O Also makes me wonder just what the mother had been doing to have magnified that image to such a size...>_>;

@Half-Blood Princess: lmao! Yeah, proof-reading is a good thing. xDD;; I know I found a lot of mistakes that I'd overlooked the first time when I was typing the papers out, though none quite as funny as yours...

And lol, nice way to make a pun. xD

Well, I am always slightly amused by 'lul/lulz' as alternative spelling of 'lol', since 'lul' is Dutch for penis, though more like 'cock' or 'dick', dirty/slang-like.
And lol itself is Dutch for fun, but that's at least closer to what it's supposed to mean. xD

ahh, wel I don't say 'shit' often, so I guess they've never sounded the same to me really XD

yeah XD
it became the running joke of the trip XD

Originally Posted by `Kitami

Like I saw this church sign once that said "When you get to heaven, Jesus will kiss you!" but I read it as "When you get to heaven, Jesus will kick you!" and I was like, WHY?? :gonk:

Well that just made my day.

Originally Posted by Pa-chinko

In my own language actually.
They spell it fuk in dictionaries but it's pronounced fuck not fook.
It's a name a friend of mine has. It derives from the word 'pumpkin' - fuk tong'

Hahahah OMG!!! My Dr's name is Dr. Ming-Fuk and I asked him (I thought it was fook) and he told me with a straight face that it's "Dr.Ming-(Fuck)"

He's first generation Japanese in Canada for his family.

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Well, not much makes me do a double take but the other night, I locked myself out. I called my landlord at about 4 am because no one would wake up to me pounding on the door as hard as I can (and even with my tv at a decent level, I can hear the door OPENING where I live). As soon as she came and I opened the door, she told me that there's a $25 charge... It's not written in my lease, so I'm not paying it, but I almost just stood there and was dumbfounded. I got a friend who knows the legal system really well, he went over my lease and told me I don't have to pay it (thankfully, I don't have any money to pay bogus charges any month because I barely have enough to eat each month).

@飛段: Yep, I still have the picture. I still find it pretty funny too. XD