In this episode, Martha and Grant discuss advertising slogans and product names supposedly botched in translation. They also recommend an eclectic mix of books for the word-lover on your holiday list, from military slang to Yiddish.
Biting the Wax Tadpole? It's the wacky title of a new book by language enthusiast Elizabeth Little which has Martha and Grant talking about whether Coca-Cola and Chevy ran into cultural translation problems when selling products abroad. Did the Chevy Nova really sell poorly in Latin America because “No va” means “don't go” in Spanish? You can find more information about it in Dave Wilton's book Word Myths.
A caller wants help understanding a phrase he saw in Sports Illustrated: enough money to burn a wet dog.
Other callers have weird words on their minds, including biffy (meaning “toilet”) and gedunk (meaning “ice cream” or “a snack bar” where you might buy sweets).
Greg Pliska has a quiz about chemical names that should exist but don't.
A caller asks about how lakes get named and we talk about a lake with a 45-letter Indian name that may or may not translate as, “You fish on your side, I fish on my side and nobody fishes in the middle.” It's Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. if you want to know how to pronounce that, here's the helpful song Martha mentions on the show. It was written by Stephen Willey of the band Shades of Grey.
A caller from Indiana wonders if the T9 text-messaging function has led to the term book being a new term for “cool.”
This week's slang contestant learns about the slang terms bluebird and corpsing.
A New York caller is incensed by the verb incent and a California listener is puzzled when his Southern relatives observe that his new baby is fixing to tune up whenever she's about to start crying.
Grant and Martha recommend books for the word lover on your holiday shopping list:
Grant's picks:
Fubar: Soldier Slang of World War II by Gordon L. Rottman
Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin by Nicholas Ostler
Martha's Picks:
Just Say Nu: Yiddish for Every Occasion by Michael Wex
I should have mentioned during the show that my pronunciation of "gedunk" as something like "guh-DUNK" is not the one used most often, especially in the Navy, where it is usually "GEE-dunk."
As I understand the translation of Chinese for Coca Cola -- it loosely means delicious happiness. (One of the words for delicious in Mandarin is: kekou -- the first word, Coca) Quite amazing for something so American to be able to have a phonetic translation into Chinese that actually means something --- AND something that relates to the product as well -- not an easy feat in Chinese!
I was surprised to hear Grant refer to "Fubar..." as a "beautiful little small book". Where does that speech pattern come from?
Its known as idea reinforcement, John, to use a series of similar but not perfectly synonymous adjectives to emphasize a point. It's quite common in spoken language, such as in story-telling and unscripted, off-the-cuff talk on the radio. 🙂