Hi, Saturday, February 12, 2005, 2:01:49 PM, DagT wrote:
> This is a dangerous way to understand another language :-) > All related languages have some similar words with similar meaning, but > sometimes they have different meanings. > Gate = "port", not "gate" which is "street" in English > and > Sky = "Himmel", not "sky" which is "cloud" in English (some say that > with the weather in Britain this is an understandable misunderstanding > :-) > Some other common mistakes: "eventually" is not "eventuelt", and > "actually" is not "aktuelt". > Using the word "travel" will get different misunderstandings in > English, French and Norwegian... in many cases the words are similar in different languages because they have a common ancestor. In the case of 'travel', which shares an ancestor with 'travail', 'trabajo' etc., it has come to mean 'journey' (there's another one!) because travel was considered such hard work. We still have the word travail, meaning to work hard, although it is now rather archaic. It is perhaps most commonly known from the biblical phrase 'come unto me all you who travail and are heavily laden', attributed to Jesus. It always make me think of a railway porter. -- Cheers, Bob
