Croatian language fubar

[spookyevilone]

I bought a very old Croatian-English dictionary last week. It lists silk as 'svilem' with a note that English speakers might find the 'svi' part hard to say and noting that it can be substituted with 'sifi', 'sifilem' - accent on second 'i'. For gits and shiggles, I looked up 'sifilem' as a word and hurt myself laughing.

"I want to buy silk" could, with no effort, become, "I want to buy syphilis". Sifilem, emphasis on the 'f', is syphilis.

It makes one wonder whether the author of the book was really clueless or really sadistic.

Comments

[fairiedust1975.livejournal.com]

This is why I stick to English, because I is good at English. *grins*