The word 'Vrede' jumped out at me from this 'Peace' installation.

[ciarani@mastodon.green]

Well now I'm sitting here staring at my new realisation that Vrede is Dutch for Peace and Vrede is Danish for Wrath and Fred is Danish for Peace. Depending on your accent and how tired you are and how much you mumble, Vrede and Fred sound the same. Vrede and Fred. Wrath and Peace.

[jwcph@helvede.net]

@CiaraNi Another example would be "rar", which means nice / friendly in Danish & scary / terrible in Norwegian. Yes, we need a word for this

[janeishly@beige.party]

@jwcph @CiaraNi They're called contronyms

[camlarsch@helvede.net]

@CiaraNi @jwcph På norsk betyder “grine” at “græde” …

[cassana@the-crossroads-inn.com]

@HenkvanderEijk @CiaraNi I know the concept as false cognates, which are usually only considered such within a language family, like in this case, Germanic. I quite like “eng; German: narrow, Dutch: scary, Danish/Norwegian: meadow, Luxemburgish:one. Perhaps there’s a Multilingualese phrase like: Eng eng eng eng = a narrow scary meadow?

[rubbel@snabelen.no]

@jwcph @CiaraNi "Rar" means weird/strange in Norwegian, not scary.

[ciarani@mastodon.green]

@jwcph A fine example! I once saw this one create a tense atmosphere at a meeting for a few minutes until somebody copped that the Norwegian delegation and the Danish delegation were speaking at cross-purposes.

[iamdavidobrien@mastodon.social]

There’s contronym which is nearly right but I think not quite.

@CiaraNi @jwcph

[ciarani@mastodon.green]

@rubbel @jwcph Correct! It's still a nice opposite - 'nice' to Danes, 'peculiar' to Norwegians.

[mthaastrup@helvede.net]

@HenkvanderEijk @CiaraNi I would call it false friends as well.

[ciarani@mastodon.green]

@cassana @HenkvanderEijk Eng eng eng eng - deilightful. I didn't know 'eng' meant 'scary' in Dutch. That has an opposite feeling too, compared to the calm of the word 'meadow'. Now I'm reminded of this descriptive dissonance from Douglas Adams. I've been using the phrase 'like getting mugged in a meadow' for relevant situations ever since I first read this.

'The Galaxy, which had been enjoying a period of unusual peace and prosperity at the time, reeled like a man getting mugged in a meadow.'

[henkvandereijk@mastodon.green]

@CiaraNi 'eng' can mean scary in Dutch, but in (old) landscape typology it can also stand for a (common) field for crops, usually on higher ground with one or more villages at its edge (also called 'enk', by the way). @cassana

[fgraver@hcommons.social]

@CiaraNi @rubbel @jwcph The one that always gets me is «frokost», which means breakfast to Norwegians and, apparently for some strange reason, lunch to Danes…

[faduda@mastodon.ie]

@HenkvanderEijk @CiaraNi @cassana

Sometimes, you don't even need a full language shift.
'Cute' has very different meanings in British English and Hiberno-English

[ciarani@mastodon.green]

@faduda It does indeed. That's a great example of another linguistic variety - the same word meaning the opposite (or close to the opposite) in the same language, depending on which regional variation you speak.

@HenkvanderEijk @cassana

[bojanland@mastodon.social]

@CiaraNi vrede in Serbian means "they are worth it" or "they have worth". Ti ljudi vrede, those people are worth it, worth fighting for.

[ciarani@mastodon.green]

The Fediverse is lovely. I saw a nice photo on my timeline and threw out a random remark about something that struck me. And now my timeline is a delight of funny, learned, cheeky, fascinating anecdotes & knowledge. Much of it steeped in your experience from all the languages you all speak.

I haven't been able to catch up on all the replies yet. I look forward to catching up when I log back on later. Meanwhile: thanks to my neighbours here in the Fediverse for great information & entertainment.

[jwcph@helvede.net]

@fgraver @CiaraNi @rubbel Well, the word, fro-kost, literally means "early food" - as I understand it, in Denmark it did in fact also mean the first meal of the day, but at a time when most people just ate twice; early & late. Farmers, however, would start their day really early & therefore would eat another meal before the usual "frokost" time, which made "frokost" the mid-day meal, i.e. lunch, for them.

To add confusion, dinner is often called "Middag" in Danish. Which means mid-day.

[bluejay@ohai.social]

@CiaraNi @faduda @HenkvanderEijk @cassana

Lots of examples of these in English — dependent on context, not even regional variations. “Cleave” means “join together” and “split apart.” “Sanction” means both “allow” and “punish.” “Oversight” means both “close scrutiny” and “mistaken omission.” And so on.

[bluejay@ohai.social]

@CiaraNi @faduda @HenkvanderEijk @cassana Also interesting to see how shifts in word meanings can give a glimpse into geopolitical history. “Seguro” means “certain” in Spanish but “uncertain” or “maybe” in Tagalog (in the Philippines, a former Spanish colony). And the Spanish “mañana” (“tomorrow”) became “mamaya na” (“later,” in some undefined future) in Tagalog. It’s a fascinating window into a colonial history of broken promises.