What are some of your favorite foreign words?

When I was teaching at a school in the Middle East I tried to pick up a little Arabic. I learned that in the local dialect when you ask a male how he is doing, you actually pronounce it "kee-f***?" (to a female it is "kee-fick?"). Another teacher at the school and I used to love asking each other that, however, instead of answering properly in Arabic with some warm pronouncement like "Hamdulillah!" (meaning praise God!) we would say "kee-f*** you too!".....I know, juvenile, but we had to make fun when we could find it.

Ahem wrote:

Matlock wrote:

Saudade - Portuguese. Final d more like a j. Means something like homesickness, longing, reminiscing, remembering.

Carioca wrote:

yeah but that's not portuguese, that's brazilian.

http://www.google.com/dictionary?source=dict-chrome-ex&sl=en&tl=en&q=saudade

A feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament.

saudade is also a word in: Portuguese

Correct me if my information is not current, but the language spoken in Brazil IS Portuguese, not Brazili

dreamrunner11 wrote:

When I was teaching at a school in the Middle East I tried to pick up a little Arabic. I learned that in the local dialect when you ask a male how he is doing, you actually pronounce it "kee-f***?" (to a female it is "kee-fick?"). Another teacher at the school and I used to love asking each other that, however, instead of answering properly in Arabic with some warm pronouncement like "Hamdulillah!" (meaning praise God!) we would say "kee-f*** you too!".....I know, juvenile, but we had to make fun when we could find it.

Funnier still is the standard arabic for 'only'. You probably heard most students say "Bes" (as in "Shway bes" - 'just a little') but that's spoken arabic. in proper arabic it's "faqat", which is pronounced just as you'd suspect.

Thai - saying hello sounds like saying:

so-what-dee-crap

Korean:

kwinchanaeyo - I'm ok, it's ok, a million other things ... I say this word like 50 times a day.

opseoyo - It's not there, doesn't exist ... I say this word like 50 times a day.

ganjinanda - My favorite word to say to Korean girls ... means to be pimped, off the hook, always gets a good laugh when I white person says it

I've always liked the word Weltanschauung.

late to the game again wrote:

farfegnugen

+1

michael t. smith wrote:

Ahem wrote:http://www.google.com/dictionary?source=dict-chrome-ex&sl=en&tl=en&q=saudade

A feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament.

saudade is also a word in: Portuguese

Correct me if my information is not current, but the language spoken in Brazil IS Portuguese, not Brazili

What the other guy was referring to was my comment on pronouncing the final d like a j. Yeah, that's the Brazilian pronunciation. The Europeans would say it with a hard d. I like the way Brazilian Portuguese sounds but that's how I speak it so I'm biased. Anyway saudade is a nice word. Used a lot by those who have lost something they'll never get back, be it a loved one who's died, or a homeland you'll never return to.