´óÏó´«Ã½

Safer jam (English/French)

When I first arrived in France I was living with a French family. One of our dinner conversations was about the differences between French food and American food. I wanted to express just how fresh French food was compared to American food which contains lots of preservatives. Not knowing the correct translation for 'preservatives', I just said the English word with a French accent. Well I was very pleased with my comment but I didn't quite understand the dead silence that followed ... that is until later when I found out that ±è°ùé²õ±ð°ù±¹²¹³Ù¾±´Ú means 'condom' in French! So, basically I was saying that Americans eat jams, sandwich spreads and other foodstuffs with tasty condoms in them! What a lovely impression I must have made!

Sent by: Stephanie

Comments

Irina, Moscow/Russia 2010-08-12

The same problem applies to Russian too :)

Flag this comment

Jose 2010-07-16

In Spain, it's also like that!

Flag this comment

Chris 2010-01-03

The same problem applies to German so be warned!!

Flag this comment

Judith, NY 2009-11-30

This exact situation happened to a friend of mine in our language immersion class in Italy. He was trying to describe the delicious freshness of the Italian pizza... From then on, we had many jokes about pizzas!

Flag this comment

G. Taylor, Atlanta, USA 2009-09-05

Wow! It is very odd that you have never encountered that in America, Mandy.

Flag this comment

Graham, Brussels 2009-08-18

Yes - always a tricky one. I well remember the blank incomprehension then gales of laughter of my French-speaking colleagues when they encountered a document calling for research into more environmentally-friendly wood preservatives (ouch). Best to avoid using words like this in quite a lot of European languages.

Flag this comment

Mandy, USA 2009-07-12

I also read this in a site about learning Polish that a word in Polish sounding very similar to preservatives also means a condom. And, I also recently learned that "rubber" in British English (what we call an eraser) means a condom in American slang, which for some reason I am unfamiliar with, being born and raised in the States.

Flag this comment

Alice, York 2009-05-13

Not exactly a false friend - but a good way to make new ones ...
I spent a few weeks on work experience in France, and at the end I was expected to type up the inevitable report. I knew that French for to type was 'taper', so I couldn't understand the red faces when I announced I was going to spend the weekend doing 'tapinage'. It took a very embarassed colleague to explain afterwards that this was in fact prostitution!

Flag this comment

´óÏó´«Ã½ iD

´óÏó´«Ã½ navigation

´óÏó´«Ã½ © 2014 The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.