#folketymology — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #folketymology, aggregated by home.social.
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Episode 3.
"Ont krut förgås inte så lätt." ("Evil gunpowder is hard to get rid of.")
This time the source is apparently a German expression: "Unkraut vergeht nicht" ("Weeds are hard to kill"). Someone apparently thought that "unkraut" was "ont krut".
Did noone ask: what the heck is evil gunpowder? Has it been possessed by demons and must be exorcised by a skilled demon-hunter before self-combusting? -
Episode 2.
"Kom ketchup så går vi!" ("Come on ketchup, lets go!")
A word-play lost in translation. In the original English version, the joke is that "catch up" and "ketchup" sounds the same. The Swedish version is just someone saying "lets go" to a ketchup-bottle. There's nothing that sounds alike, no wordplay, and it's not funny at all. Still people say it for some reason (or at least did when I was kid in the 80's).
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Strange Swedish sayings and expressions, season 1 episode 1.
"Surt sa räven om rönnbären." ("Sour, said the fox about the rowan(?) berries.")
A translation missing the point of Aesop's fable about the fox and the grapes. Since rowan berries *are* sour, the saying makes no sense in Swedish; in the original, the fox disregards the grapes *claiming* they are sour, without knowing. In the Swedish version... the berries just are sour, with no further explanation.