15 April 2013

"Buy a donkey"

A side benefit to my intermittent watching of the Masters this weekend is that I now can say "Thank you" in Afrikaans. 

"Buy a donkey" is a homophonic Anglicization (?is that the right phrase?) of "baie danke" = "many thanks."  I could have guessed the latter part from the German equivalent, but the baie would have escaped me.

You learn something every day.

3 comments:

  1. Reminds me of the story about Cordwainer Smith's psy-ops work during the Korean War.

    He worked out that the words for 'love', 'duty', 'humanity' and 'virtue' in Mandarin Chinese sound a lot like "I surrender" in English and created a propaganda leaflet to be dropped on Chinese lines explaining how to surrender to the UN forces by shouting in Chinese.

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  2. If you enjoy jokes popular among 14 year old boys, you will likely also enjoy "12 months" in estonian.

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    Replies
    1. Found it -

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j65dLyAu47s

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