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If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

While it may be true that if you know Swedish, the world is funnier, I have to admit that my knowledge of German only served to create momentary confusion.

When I saw the headline that the head of BetonSports was arrested, I thought to myself, "Who the heck would have a web site devoted to sports in concrete?" That's because the German word Beton means "concrete" (the construction material) in English, and the German word Sport means the same as in English.

It took me a few moments to realize that the company's name is "Bet on Sports".

Published Tuesday, July 25, 2006 7:00 AM by oldnewthing
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Comments

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 10:27 AM by random german
As a kid when I was visiting the US first I found
all the gift shops there quite funny.

(gift = poison in German)

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 10:56 AM by Tomasz Tybulewicz
It's not only German word - 'beton' is also used in Poland and the meaning is also the same as is Germany...

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 10:59 AM by FelixTheCat
Raymond, you need to get out more.  Go to Vegas and make some sports bets or at least have lunch at the Crossroads.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 11:03 AM by Murad
'Beton' comes via French, from Latin "bitumen"...by the way.

http://thetechnophile.blogspot.com

[I sensed a French influence... I'm always tempted to nasalize the "o", at least now I know why. -Raymond]

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 11:12 AM by Confucius
Well, in German there is no "sports" but just "Sport". So by that little S at the end of sports, you could tell it's English. However, please also keep in mind that English is somehow derived from German.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 11:31 AM by ShyGuy
In Italian, "Betoniera" is the truck used to mix up cement.
"Bitume" is asphalt.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 11:44 AM by Random French
This reminds me of an American friend who met a French girl in California. He took her to the beach and the girl was very excited because she saw a seal. She started to scream: "Phoque", "Phoque", "Phoque". My friend was very embarassed because "phoque" (which means seal in French) sounds very much like f**k...

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 11:59 AM by Larry Lard
>> Well, in German there is no "sports" but just "Sport". So by that little S at the end of sports, you could tell it's English.

It's the same in English as it is in German; the little S at the end actually tells you it's *American*.

# If you know English, the world is, well, just as confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 12:52 PM by Schwallex
penisland.net (Pen Island)
whorepresents.com (Who Represents)
expertsexchange.com (Experts' Exchange)
therapistfinder.com (Therapist Finder)
molestationnursery.com (Mole Station, NZ)
cummingfirst.com (Methodist Church)
ipanywhere.com (IP Anywhere)
speedofart.com (Speed of Art)
classicalbum.com  (Classic Album)
gotahoe.com (Lake Tahoe)
powergenitalia.com (PowerGen Italy)

Those have been circulating through zillions of blogs as of lately. I am surprised I am the first one to mention them here.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 12:57 PM by Boris Zakharin
There is great confusion with pronouns in Hebrew as compared to Russian and English. The Hebrew "Me" means "who", "Who" means "he", "He" means "she". In addition "Ani" means "I" in hebrew, but means "They" in Russian. Of course, I am transliterating. The spellings are different in some of these cases.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 12:57 PM by Ken
Wow, I live just down the street from the "cummingfirst.com" church.  Who wouldn't think of that?  I already have to clarify my town is real when I put my address up online.  Is the webmaster for the church incompetent or merely not a Methodist?

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 12:59 PM by Will Rogers
>> However, please also keep in mind that English is somehow derived from German.

Modern English and Modern German are more cousins than the former derived from the latter.  They are both members of the Germanic language family, although English has been much more influenced by French and Latin (as a consequence of the Norman conquest) than German.  Old English, the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, was much closer to Old High German than the modern forms are today.  As someone who has studied Modern German, Old English, and Latin, I find the whole matter of linguistic history fascinating in a satisfyingly geeky way.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 1:29 PM by Lee Houghton
I heard the product known as the Mist Stick didn't do too well in Germany.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 2:44 PM by RADl0PASlV, Prague
I confirm, in Czech 'beton' = 'concrete' also

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 3:39 PM by Walter
Well, I'm Dutch, and I just did a double take too ;-) BetOnSports would have made more sense (I mean, if you're going to use StudlyCaps, you may as well be consistent).

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 4:26 PM by Maciej Rutkowski
Well, being a native Pole is not a piece of cake either. You can buy a hot dog in Poland and it's always a "hot dog" here. Dog in Polish is "pies". It's pretty confusing to see "hot pies" outside Poland only to discover that this is a "hot pie" in plural.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 5:39 PM by Random News
Two weeks ago, I read some teens filled soccor balls with concrete (cement?) and publically challenged people to kick them. A few people were hurt and the kids were arrested.

I don't remember which contry that was in, but I wasn't all that surprised to read Raymond's translation that Beton == concrete.

"Germany, sports, concrete, arrests... hmmm, sounds vaguely like what I read two weeks ago!"

Amazing what tricks the mind can play on you.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 6:04 PM by Michael Puff
It was Berlin, Germany. :(

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 9:06 PM by Puckdropper
Ken,

You run in to people who just don't think about how things sound before they're done.  It's not incompetence as much as it is simply not realizing the /other/ interpretation.

I wonder if a person is more likely to recognize a 4-7 letter word first in a block of uncapitolized and unspaced text like a URL.  When you look at the list of "misleading" URLs, how long are the words you usually recognize first?

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 12:20 AM by Cheong
[quote]That's because the German word Beton means "concrete" (the construction material) in English, and the German word Sport means the same as in English.[/quote]
When reading this, I remembered some people I seen in certain anime pulling large concreate "wheels" connected to a handle,that is supposed to be used to flatten the grounds(football pitch for example)...

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 2:57 AM by Boris
I'm surprised nobody mentioned Boba Fat and Darth Muzzle.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 3:04 AM by jochen
I'm a german native speaker, and I know English pretty well, so i could have guessed "bet on", but in the first place I was misunderstanding this exactly like you ;-).

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 4:34 AM by Andreas
I remember Americans visiting Germany and breaking out in laughter when they drove by a store which, in huge letters, advertised "BAD DESIGN".
The store offered bathroom furnitures ("Bad" = "bath"/"bathroom").

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 5:07 AM by John Webber
I always snicker silently driving along the Autobahn A9 between Munich and Nuremburg when I see the exit for the town "Titting". There's also a town called Tuntenhausen a ways south of Munich ("Tunte" is slang for a homosexual man).

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 5:16 AM by The SZ
But Microsoft is the best: WinQual.microsoft.com

Qual is Torture in german, and winqual is real torture!

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 9:09 AM by J. Edward Sanchez
And then there's the INITCOMMONCONTROLSEX structure:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/commctls/common/structures/initcommoncontrolsex.asp

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 10:36 AM by Binsky
Argl...It actually took your blog post for me to realise that what they meant was really Bet On Sports... :S (thanks?)

Being a Dutch native speaker, I made the same mistake, but did not find out I was wrong yet...

*goes back to hiding his shame*

# The name of the enum is KeysEx, dammit

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 11:37 AM by Sorting It All Out
When I read Geoffrey K. Pullum's PowerGenItalia and PenisLand, I was once again struck by how funny it...

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 11:57 AM by rolfhub
>> Well, in German there is no "sports" but just "Sport". So by that little S
>> at the end of sports, you could tell it's English.

> It's the same in English as it is in German; the little S at the end actually
> tells you it's *American*.

Well, you can't always tell, enough people don't seem to know (or care) about little details like this. Often enough, people (for example, here in germany) seem to think that one can simply get the plural for _every_ english word by appending an 's' (many also do it for non-english-words as well, for example one "Pizza", many "Pizzas" (only "Pizzen" is correct plural in german)).

What also never fails to amuse me (note that I don't want to ridicule anyone, foreign languages are hard, I know) is when german words are used in english, but with quite a funny pronounciation, for example "Stau" (traffic jam) is very popular among the AFN (american forces network (radio station)) speakers, with a pronounciation that's just plain funny.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Thursday, July 27, 2006 6:35 AM by Marcel
> many also do it for non-english-words as well, for example one "Pizza", many
> "Pizzas" (only "Pizzen" is correct plural in german)

Actually both are correct, all dictionaries I have including the Duden say so.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Thursday, July 27, 2006 8:35 AM by a visitor
> Actually both are correct, all dictionaries I have including the Duden say so.

you mean: the dudes say so

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Thursday, July 27, 2006 10:15 AM by Vishy
Will Rogers:

See http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/essential.html for a list of Essentialist Explanations of language.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Thursday, July 27, 2006 2:39 PM by Maciej Rutkowski
And of course there's the SHITEMID structure.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/reference/structures/shitemid.asp

# Badeinrichtungsdienstleistungsanbieter

Thursday, July 27, 2006 3:17 PM by Schwallex
> I remember Americans visiting Germany and
> breaking out in laughter when they drove by
> a store which, in huge letters, advertised
> "BAD DESIGN".

I have to add that in proper German, that should be either "BADDESIGN" or at least "BAD-DESIGN". (And in *really* proper German, that should be "Badeinrichtung" or "Badgestaltung".) So even if their design wasn't bad, their German certainly was.

P.S.: Most recently, many Americans in Germany found it quite disturbing to see Aldi advertise a sale of "Body bags". By which they actually meant rucksacks -- but you know, the German marketing people are somehow convinced that the English "Body bag" sounds so much cooler than the German "Rucksack". (Most ironically, noone seems to have told those marketing people that the latter one has been exported into English long time ago, so if they were looking for a cool English word they could have simply stayed with "Rucksack" (^_~).)

[Yeah, "body bag" always cracks me up. -Raymond]

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Wednesday, August 02, 2006 4:17 AM by Martin
Also quite nice in the Win INET API (I think) is HINTERNET, where HINTER means behind. It's not only the buttocks thing, German also has the nice word "Hinterwäldler" which comes to mind with this.

# re: If you know German, the world is, well, slightly more confusing

Thursday, August 03, 2006 5:50 PM by rolfhub
Another great example are the "power puff girls".
.....
"puff" interpreted as german would be "brothel" in english.
I sure looked a bit astonished upon first seeing the logo with some drawing of very young looking girls next to the word "puff", until it dawned to me that (of course) the word has quite a different meaning in enlish ...
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