Funny false friends

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I found an interesting wiki page, it has lists of country names in different languages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_names_in_various_languages

Another funny thing: Austria. The German name is Österreich which means Eastern Realm. Austria is the faux-Latinized form, but it means Southland (Latin auster means south, not east).

My mistake. I thought the "Nie" root was German as well. Now I realize that the "Nie" root was used as Slavic for "German."

Oh well.....

this? þeodisk, a proto-germanic root meaning 'popular' or 'of the people'. it became the word diutisc, an early form of deutsch which appeared in a middle high german poem, here it was an umbrella term to refer to different peoples, like saxons and bavarians.



i read somewhere that polish "Włochy" meant something similar, 'unintelligible' or outsider. or speaker of another language.

came from a proto-germanic root Walhaz, meanings ranging from 'foreigner' to 'celtic speaker'. it, or a variant or derivation was borrowed into proto-slavic sometime in the 7th century. the magyars got hold of the term, deriving from it, olasz, or 'italians'.

germanic walhaz also meant 'romance-speaker', it being borrowed into proto-slavic and then polish, possibly kept that meaning and became Włochy, or "italy".

lots of terms and place names we take for granted came from or have part of walhaz in them, welsh, walloon, gernam village names ending in -walchen...even walnut! from OE walhnutu (wealh=hnutu), roman nut.

interesting! we have something similar here for Romanians - aka "vlah", but sometimes it extends to Serbs and just about everyone who is living as a pastor/keeping sheep.

Not true. The word "Włochy" in Polish means "really long, bushy hair" but I seriously doubt it has anything to do with Italians.

We took the name from germans, which called romans "Walh". The word got adapted by slavic speakers as "Wołch" which eventually changed into Polish "Włochy".

This might seem really "out of left field". It probably is!

But: Does "Wallachia" have something to do with that term for "bushy hair?"

No. The word "Wallachia" sounds really foreign and nothing comes to my mind when I read it. I checked the meaning in wiki but I still have no idea how we call the region in Polish. I don't know geography that well.

The only reason "Włochy" sounds like bushy hair is because we have a word "włosy" meaning hair and we could create word "włochy" of it to get stronger, not pleasant word for long, bushy hair by following our new words creating rules. But the actual word "włochy" meaning bushy hair doesn't exist in Polish and if someone uses it this way it is considered incorrect. We would rather use "włosiska" for such hair which is just as unpleasant but at least considered a correct Polish word.

According to Google Translate the Polish name for Wallachia is Wołoszczyzny. According to Wikipedia it's Wołoszczyzna.

guess i shouldn't have trusted that source? thanks for the correction.

isn't there a section or neighborhood of Warsaw named "Włochy" or something similar? i could have sworn that a name for Italy was something along those lines but if you say it's not true, well you have more room to say that than i do.

I don't live near Warsaw so I don't really know it's surroundings but it sounds possible. I know for sure that a section of Warsaw is named "Warszawa-Praga" (Praga - capital of Czech Republic) so I wouldn't be surprised if there was "Warszawa-Włochy" as well. LOL

Edit. I checked and thats right, there is a Warsaw section named "Warszawa-Włochy" too. http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82ochy_%28Warszawa%29


It is first time I hear the name but it still doesn't sound like hair (more like "wół" - "ox", a land of oxes?). It does sound kinda like "włoszczyzna" though - a vegetable spice we commonly use for cooking. http://sklep-sys.pl/userdata/gfx/ee2ea5 ... 99553e.jpg
Come to think of it it "włoszczyzna" does sound a bit like hair but we know the spice has its name because it comes from Włochy(at least its what common knowledge says) not because it is "hairy" so none imagines it to be "hairy spice". xD

I’ve recently read it somewhere, perhaps even on these forums.

Latin meā culpā (‘through my fault’) and Spanish mea culpa (‘[he/she/it] pisses guilt’, or imperative ‘piss guilt’).

Thanks for the laugh.

I don't understand mea culpa In Spanish it's used like "my fault" "mi culpa" (more like apology, you take the responsability)

Because it’s a Latin phrase, but that doesn’t change the meaning mea culpa has if interpreted as two native Spanish words.

if you use the two word together they have the same meaning for people in spain that in Latin. we don't think in "piss guilt" the meassage to our brain is "my fault" this is a example of Latin words like lapsus o curriculum vitae than come from latin but we use in the actuality.

Reference of Dictionary Spanish lenguage.
Diccionario de la lengua española © 2005 Espasa-Calpe:
mea culpa

loc. lat. Se utiliza para admitir la culpa propia:
lo siento,mea culpa,trataré de solucionar el problema.

I’m well aware the Latin phrase is used and readily understood in Spanish. That wasn’t my point. It still doesn’t change the fact that mea culpa has a different meaning as two native Spanish words strung together according to Spanish grammar, clearly recognizable to Spanish speakers even if it’s not what they’d normally assume someone uttering them wants to convey. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a speaker uneducated enough did interpret it this way.

This is about the existence of false friends, not about which one you’re more likely to interpret what someone says as.