your favourite English/mothertongue word

W

wanneszinnig

God doesn't work 2day
Registered Senior Member
what is your favorite word:

* in English
* in your mothertongue and what does it mean?

My favourite selection:

* stocking: It's not a kinky thing..I just like the way it is pronounced
* goesting: (pronounce it as gusting with a soft 'g') it is hard to translate but it is dirrived from the spanish word 'me gusto'...let say it means 'desire'...You use it when after a hard day of working you realy want a glass of beer. that kind of feeling :)
 
wanneszinnig said:
goesting: (pronounce it as gusting with a soft 'g')
Click to expand...
I assume that's Dutch. Most Americans don't know what a "soft G" is in Dutch. It's the same as a soft G or a J in Spanish general or Juan, the CH in German bach, or the KH in Russian Mikhail. Dutch puts an H after a G to make it a "hard G." The correct pronunciation of the name Van Gogh is actually van khog.
It is derived from the Spanish word me gusto...let's say it means 'desire'.
Click to expand...
Not quite right. First off, a grammatical error, it's Me gusta. (More on that in a moment.) The phrase is simply translated as "I like." However, the subject and verb are reversed, since gustar means "to please." Me gusta esta canción literally means "this song pleases me," but since we don't speak that way in English we render it as "I like this song." Therefore, to put gustar in the first person and say (yo) me gusto is to say "I please myself," or in our English way of speaking, "I like myself." :)

"To like" is not an English verb that translates easily. The French say s'il vous plait, literally "if it pleases you." Germans say "ich habe es gern," which is really a difficult equivalent, with a literal meaning something like "I have it endeared."
You use it when after a hard day of working you really want a glass of beer.
Click to expand...
What a coincidence. Gusto is also a noun often heard in the ritual expression (con) mucho gusto, as in mucho gusto de conocerle a usted, "(It is a) great pleasure to meet you." We use the word in American English slang, anglicized with a short U sound. Many years ago a beer commercial admonished us, "You only go around once in life, so grab all the gusto you can."

Beer: the universal language. :)
 
Oh comon, it's gotta be fuck, that one will outlast all the rest. Frankly nothing compares to English swears.

I favor my mother's side - Norwegian. Favorite word - "Lagom". No English equivalent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom

I was told it was part of the general Danish/Norway philosophy of "Jante Law" - Do not think you are so special.
 
Fragle...I understand you wanna show you speak and understand a lot of languages...but Van Gogh is deffenatly not pronounced with a 'k' somewhere. it is even a softer sound than the 'j' in Juan'. To pronounce a Dutch 'g' you have to put the tip of your tongue to the tip of your 'underteeth' and puch a little air trough your mounth.

And when you say " s'il vous plait' in French you are asking something. If you wanna say you like something in French, to translate 'to like', then you better use the verb 'aimer'.

I agree with the beer though! :)
 
nietzschefan said:
Oh comon, it's gotta be fuck, that one will outlast all the rest. Frankly nothing compares to English swears.

I favor my mother's side - Norwegian. Favorite word - "Lagom". No English equivalent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom

I was told it was part of the general Danish/Norway philosophy of "Jante Law" - Do not think you are so special.
Click to expand...

I checked the link...cool word! I guess I am going to add it to my daily vocabulairy :)
 
nietzschefan said:
Oh comon, it's gotta be fuck, that one will outlast all the rest. Frankly nothing compares to English swears.
Click to expand...
I think most foreigners would disagree with that. We have a very small set of "cuss words." Listen to an angry American swear and you'll hear the same six or eight words over and over. I once heard a guy say, "I'm so fucking tired of all this fucking shitty... shit. And I'm really feeling limited by my vocabulary at the moment." Spanish has two perfectly obscene unprintable words for "fuck"; our alternatives like "ball" and "screw" are so mild that you can say them on TV. Spanish has two perfectly obscene unprintable words for "penis"; we don't have any. Every slang word for male genitalia has a respectable alternative meaning that allows it to get through every obscenity filter. Spanish even has an obscene unprintable word for "hell," derived roughly from the idea that it's the place where you go when you're really, really fucked.
wanneszinnig said:
Fragle...I understand you wanna show you speak and understand a lot of languages...but Van Gogh is definately not pronounced with a 'k' somewhere. It is even a softer sound than the 'j' in Juan'. To pronounce a Dutch 'g' you have to put the tip of your tongue to the tip of your 'underteeth' and puch a little air trough your mouth.
Click to expand...
Since we don't have that sound in English or in any other familiar language like German or Spanish, Dutch people generally tell us to use the KH sound. I can't pick out the phoneme on the rare occasions that I hear Dutch spoken by a native so I don't know what it sounds like. Is it perhaps the voiced fricative of Spanish G between two vowels, a voiced HK sound? That is a sound that anglophones simply don't hear. Everybody pronounces agua with the G of "gold," when in fact it's so soft that in colloquial speech it almost disappears. We know that intuitively, we pronounce the saguaro cactus as sa-wa-ro, but we don't think about it and realize that agua has the same consonant.

Anyway, I think the main thing Dutch people care about is that we stop pronouncing Van Gogh as "Van Go." :)
And when you say " s'il vous plait' in French you are asking something. If you wanna say you like something in French, to translate 'to like', then you better use the verb 'aimer'.
Click to expand...
So our verb "to like" is unusual. If I say I LIKE fried chicken, which I do more or less, it is a distinctly different opinion than to say I LOVE fried chicken, which I absolutely do not. It sounds like the French are not able to make that distinction. As usual, the Chinese can match us. To love is ai, to like is xi huan.
 
nietzschefan said:
Oh comon, it's gotta be fuck, that one will outlast all the rest. Frankly nothing compares to English swears.
Click to expand...

But here you need "credit" for a "fuck" because those that have "credit" get fucked all the time with high interest rates, 20%! .;)
 
Last edited:
Is not Van Gogh somethinhg like "fan gogh"? I know dutch soft 'g', but I think it does not sound so soft, actually it sounds like the person is trying to destroy his throat :)
 
temur said:
Is not Van Gogh somethinhg like "fan gogh"? I know dutch soft 'g', but I think it does not sound so soft, actually it sounds like the person is trying to destroy his throat :)
Click to expand...

I must inform you that there is a difference between Dutch and Flemish. Dutch is spoken in Holland and there they tend to destroy there troath when they pronounce a 'g'...let's say you could compare it to the 'g' in Juan'.
In Flanders, and that is where I live (in fact I prefer to say I live in Belgium...But that is a political fact), we soften the 'g'. And I have been thinking of a language that also uses such a soft 'g'. It is not the 'g' you hear in Guadeloupe nor in Juan. You just don't stress the 'g' in anyway. It is a very soft sound. I'll check the net for a pronounciation.
Same story with the 'v'. Don't make it sound like a sound between 'f' and 'v'. It is the 'v' you use when saying' vacation'. now make it 'Van' like in Van Morrisson.
 
Fragle, if you wanna make the difference between liking and loving in French...you could do it this way:
If you meant 'i like to have chicken' as in an ordering way, you say: je veux du poulet.
If you meant it in a way that expresses your feelings towards the dish you would say: J'aime bien du poulet. (I like chicken)...
If you would want to express your total love and devotion to the dish you say: J'adore du poulet.
So yes in French you can express the difference between liking and loving...
 
*English: life-form - it's kind of magical, scientific and misterious

*mothertongue: jūra - sea [ū as in fool]. It's a mystical word in Latvian mythology, there are daughters of the sea, then there is the sea itself as a personification, it's very frequently used daily, because everyone goes to relax by the sea. It's also historical, because we've been living by the Baltic sea for some thousands of years and there are many stories associated with it. And it's also personal, because I have lived by the sea and I love visiting it.
Basically it's a word where mythology, songs, history, everyday life and personal experiences come together.
 
Well this may sound a bit stupid, but my favorite word in English (eg the one i use the most) is 'cocksucker'. When pronounced with gusto it can convey so much. Look at the way Tony Soprano or Al Swearengen use it to understand what i mean. I'm a fan off oldskool cusswords

in my native tongue I must go with 'begankenis'. It is a word that is only used in my town and doesn't appear in any offical dictionary. Hell i don't even have a clue how to spell it properly.
When u say 'this place is a begankenis' it basically means that 'there is a hell of a lot of people coming and going in this place all being very busy doing stuff'
something like that
 
wanneszinnig said:
Fragle...I understand you wanna show you speak and understand a lot of languages...but Van Gogh is deffenatly not pronounced with a 'k' somewhere. it is even a softer sound than the 'j' in Juan'. To pronounce a Dutch 'g' you have to put the tip of your tongue to the tip of your 'underteeth' and puch a little air trough your mounth.
Click to expand...

that is if you want to pronounce it the correct way. Dutch people from above the big rivers give it a disgusting 'throaty coughing up mucus' sound with it.

NEVER A K THOUGH!!!!
 
spuriousmonkey said:
that is if you want to pronounce it the correct way. Dutch people from above the big rivers give it a disgusting 'throaty coughing up mucus' sound with it.

NEVER A K THOUGH!!!!
Click to expand...

hum..I don't see where I ever said it is with a K...I just denied that it is with a K and that people from above the Moerdijk are masters in fucking Dutch words up. Do we agree?
 
Avatar said:
*English: life-form - it's kind of magical, scientific and misterious

*mothertongue: jūra - sea [ū as in fool]. It's a mystical word in Latvian mythology, there are daughters of the sea, then there is the sea itself as a personification, it's very frequently used daily, because everyone goes to relax by the sea. It's also historical, because we've been living by the Baltic sea for some thousands of years and there are many stories associated with it. And it's also personal, because I have lived by the sea and I love visiting it.
Basically it's a word where mythology, songs, history, everyday life and personal experiences come together.
Click to expand...

In what sentence would you use it? the sound of the word is beautiful and soft I guess.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top