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noonespecial on April 18, 2011 | parent | context | favorite | on: Fukushima: Radiation Detection Using Artifacts in ...

Yes, thanks for that. I should know better by now. Once while living in Germany I asked someone in my German-peppered-with-english-words-for-german-words-I-didn't-know if they were concerned about the amount of preservatives in some sort of shelf stable cheese food.

They heard Präservativ when I probably meant Konservierungsmittel. Hilarity ensued.

kyleslattery on April 18, 2011 [–]

If anyone's wondering, Präservativ means "condom" in German. My favorite false cognate in German is "das Gift", which in English is in fact "poison".

eru on April 18, 2011 | [–]

It also bugs me that there's no clear and simple equivalent of "schenken". (There are words like `bestow', but they don't quite cut it.)

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