Martha shares listener email about linguistic “false friends,” those perplexing words in other languages that look like English words, but mean something completely different. A case in point is the detergent popular in the Middle East called “Barf,” the name of which happens to be the Farsi word for “snow.” Skeptical? Behold! This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Detergent False Friend”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
A while back we had a call about false friends, you know, those words and phrases in other languages that look like English words, but they aren’t really.
Like the fact that the word gift in German, G-I-F-T, means poison, and the word in French for bread looks like the English word pain, P-A-I-N.
Well, that prompted some lively letters from listeners.
Kathy wrote from the University of Maryland to say, as a cataloger, I sometimes notice what is awaiting processing at another person’s desk.
More than a decade ago, I was surprised to see a book with the title, Die, Marx Brothers.
Imagine my relief when I realized the title was in German.
And Hope wrote to us from St. Paul, Minnesota.
She said, when my college-age son returned from visiting Armenia, he was delighted to show us his favorite purchase, a box of soap powder called Barf.
Now, this sounded too good to be true, Grant.
So I did some digging, and it turns out that there is indeed a detergent named barf.
What?
Yes, yes.
No way.
Yes.
And if you go online, you can find all sorts of photos of barf detergent.
And it turns out that the reason is because the Farsi word for snow is barf.
So it makes sense that something that’s supposed to get your clothes nice and clean is going to be called by the word that means snow.
In this case, barf.
Very good.
Very good.
And supposedly this is a popular detergent in the Middle East.
And something tells me that the manufacturer is probably also doing a booming business among tourists who buy the detergent just so they can go home and, you know, with a box of barf.
You know, smell my clothes.
I wash them in barf.
But, you know, I’m also sure that turnabout is fair play.
And they’re probably English words that cause no end of hilarity for people who speak other languages as a first language.
So we’d love to hear about those.
Or if you brought home a souvenir from another country because you were so tickled by a box of barf or something else, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email about it to words@waywordradio.org.
