Faveládos

From a Czech newspaper: Jak obrovským trnem v oku to musí být všem "faveládos" - členům drogových gangů, kteří si zde po léta dělali, co chtěli, a policie se bála do "jejich čtvrtí" vůbec vstoupit! Translation: This must be a thorn in the back of all "faveládos" - members of drug gangs who for years have been doing here what they want, and the police have been afraid to step into "their areas".

The thing is that favelados, no accent mark in Portuguese, maybe the journalist used it to indicate a long vowel in Czech, are not drug dealers, but slum dwellers. Favelado is a somewhat pejorative appellation similar to slumdog.

To launder "dirty" money

I've recently learned that the standard Czech way of referring to laundering money is to launder dirty money, which sounds redundant to my ears: prát špinavé peníze. If it were up to me, but it isn't, I'd do away with špinavé. Lots of hits in Engligh on Google Books for "launder dirty money" as well. You can only launder dirty money, right? If it's clean, no need to launder it.

Surcorea y Sud(r)américa

No entiendo por qué está bien Suramérica/Sudamérica y Norteamérica , pero Surcorea y Norcorea no. ¿Cuál es la lógica por detrás de ello?

Gazapo, caçapo

http://www.fundeu.es/Articulos.aspx?frmOpcion=ARTICULO&frmFontSize=2&frmIdArticulo=3185

Descobri que gazapo, o filhote do coelho, em português se diz caçapo ou láparo, parecido com o latim lepus (pense em lábio leporino) e o francês lapin. O interessante também é que o grego dasupous significa, literalmente, pé hirsuto.

Lamer and hombre in Spanish

Why is it that Latin lambere became lamer (lick) and Latin homo became hombre (man) in Spanish? Why is it that when there was an mb, both bilabial consonants, the second consonant got lost in lambere, but an extra b (plus an r) was added in hombre (from Latin homo, hominis) and in hambre (from Latin famis, famis)? There seem to be two divergent phenomena here.

Microondable

http://www.fundeu.es/Consultas.aspx?frmOpcion=CONSULTA&frmFontSize=2&frmIdConsulta=2742

Para mí el sufijo able presupone un verbo, que sería microondar, que no me consta que exista. El DRAE es menos riguroso que yo y dice que el sufijo se añade casi siempre a verbos. Apuesto que el inglés microwavable ha influenciado la creación de ese término. Dudo que los hablantes solos hayan tenido esa idea.

No, me equivoco, parece que ya se usa microondar: http://www.google.es/#hl=cs&source=hp&biw=1351&bih=580&q=microondar&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=3ada8e47afe16d90, pero nótese que en la mayoría de las veces debería ser un simple microondas.

Teja

Não, não é nem o feminino do rio Tejo e surpreendentemente não equivale (ou sim?) à forma esteja do verbo estar (Teje preso!), mas, pasmem, ao verbo ter. Ouvi ontem pela primeira vez, e o pior duas vezes, o que me diz que não foi um simples lapso, teja como tenha, algo como: Ele não quer que ela teja toda a felicidade que ela merece. E não foi de um estrangeiro, não! Foi de uma baiana radicada em São Paulo há vários anos. Vejam outros exemplos extraídos do Google pertinentes a este assunto: cursos gratuitos em salvador 2010 que teja 15anos, Alguem sabe um habbo pirata q teja moedas pets e vip?, Alguem que teja conta gordon compartilha comigo ae. É verdade que não são muitos, mas que las hay, las hay. Não sei vocês, mas às vezes tenho a impressão de que a linguagem que usam umas pessoas na Internet não corresponde a língua humana, é quase uma paralíngua, por isso que se deve tomar cuidado com pesquisas feitas com o Google. Como se formou o tal teja? Ainda não tenho resposta. Entendo que as formas do verbo estar muitas vezes perdem a primeira sílaba na fala, mas como teja equivale a tenha, do verbo ter? Ou será que estão confundindo estar com ter, o que até então me parecia impossível que um falante nativo fizesse? Para concluir: http://goiania.olx.com.br/comments-about-quero-um-homem-especial-id-3296632-p-6 Atentem para um dos comentários, que mostra que alguém já notou o tal do teja antes de mim.

Gender of breakfast in Polish and Czech

The genders of cognates tend to agree among native Slavic languages. Exceptions are words of foreign extraction that have a certain ending matching a gender and declension pattern in a given Slavic language, such as Czech tramvaj, adresa and banka, feminine, and Polish tramwaj, adres and bank, masculine, to name just a few. But there is one word of pure Slavic breed that has differing genders between Czech and Polish: the word for breakfast. Czech snídaně is feminine and Polish śniadanie is neuter. Czech snídaně is probably feminine to match other similar ending words like kolegyně (female colleague) and žákyně (female student). Polish śniadanie is neuter to match words ending in e, which are always neuter in Polish: serce (heart), morze (sea), and pole (field). Even though Czech words ending in e are mostly feminine, the cognates of serce, morze, and pole, srdce, moře, and pole, are neuter in Czech. I wonder what gender was śniadanie/snídaně in Proto-Slavic.

Zakupoholik

Provavelmente baseado no inglês shopaholic foi inventado em polonês zakupoholik (zakup = compra). Estou pensando como se poderia expressar o mesmo em português. Comprador compulsivo? Nalgum rincão da minha memória há uma palavra de origem grega usada em português que se refere exatamente à mesma coisa, mas não consigo lembrar-me.

Bosta

Quem acha que bosta tem a ver com boi tem toda a razão e a etimologia comprova-o. Bosta vem do latim bostar, estábulo dos bois, que, é claro, é cheio de... É até possível que analisando mais a fundo se verifique que bo vem de bos, bovis (boi) e star, de stare (estar).

Prostitute in Greek

Isn't it funny that prostitute in Modern Greek is ιερόδουλη (pronounced yerothuli, with a voiced th), since ιερός (yeros) (think of hieroglyphic) is sacred and δούλος (thulos) (think of doula) is slave? This Greek etymological dictionary states that it refers to a servant working as a prostitute in a temple.

Nonstandard possessive adjectives in Czech

I have seen instances of nonstandard possessive adjectives in Czech and what caught my attention is that they look even closer to Slovak, showing once more than nonstandard Czech has some features shared with Polish and with Slovak. Substandard Czech possessive adjectives follow the usual (nonstandard) declension of adjectives. Here is the set for animate masculine nouns:

Standard Czech:
nominative: otcův
genitive: otcova
dative: otcovu
accusative: otcova
vocative: otcův
locative: otcovu/otcově
instrumental: otcovým

Nonstandard Czech:
nominative: otcovej
genitive: otcovýho
dative: otcovýmu
accusative: otcovýho
vocative: otcovej
locative: otcovým/otcovym
instrumental: otcovým/otcovym

Standard Slovak:
nominative: otcov
genitive: otcovho
dative: otcovmu
accusative: otcovho
locative: otcovom
instrumental: otcovým

Heces fecales

Estoy de acuerdo con que en la mayoría de las veces basta con decir heces, pero hez también es un depósito dejado en las bebidas, por eso no me parece incorrecto añadirle fecales, sobre todo si hay riesgo de ambigüedad.

Societal

Lo anterior es una situación que puede causar risa; no obstante es digno de un análisis sociológico, ya que el «narcomundo» está permeando de manera acelerada en diversos espacios societales, esa «narcocultura» se manifiesta a través del lenguaje partiendo desde las conversaciones coloquiales.

¿No habría bastado social? Me parece que sí y no soy el único que tiene esa opinión.

Latin sylva

This says Sylvan comes from Latin sylva, which I had never seen. I know silva, with an i, not a y, and I wondered why there should be a y there instead since that word doesn't seem to be of Greek origin. Greek words containing a upsilon were often spelled with a y in Latin, such as chrysanthemum, from Greek χρυσάνθεμον (golden flower) and lyra, from Greek λύρα. I haven't been able to find σύλβα anywhere. This dictionary says sylva is "weniger gut" (less good) than silva.

Tip (gratuity)

Several languages display something in common regarding the word tip. In Portuguese it is gorjeta, which comes from French gorge, meaning throat, it's money you give someone for them to wet their throat. In Czech it is spropitné, inside of which is the word pít, to drink. In Polish it is napiwek. Pić means to drink and piwo is beer. In German it is Trinkgeld (trinken = to drink, Geld = money), also used in colloquial Czech under the disguise of tringeld, tringelt, trinkgeld or trinkgelt. In French it is pourboire (pour = for, boire = to drink). The Russians, albeit their fame as heavy vodka drinkers, have чаевые (chaevye, for the tea), which could be an example of euphemism. The Greeks have the romantic φιλοδώρημα (filodórima), which could be interpreted as filia (friendship) + doro (present, gift). In Hungarian it is borravaló, where bor means wine.

Chce to

It looks as if I've found a Czech expression structurally and semantically very similar to an Italian one: chce to and ci vuole. Chce is from the verb chtít (to want), vuole is from the verb volere (also to want). The sentence I've seen Chce to odvahu (Courage is necessary, We need courage) could be expressed in Italian with Ci vuole coraggio.

Mota

I heard the character Pablo Escobar in the movie Blow say mota to Johnny Depp, who plays an American drug dealer. The word mota (marihuana, grass, weed) that had been used a couple of other times in the movie, is Mexican (also used in surrounding countries) and would most likely not be used by a Colombian speaking to an American who spoke very little Spanish. I know that dialectical precision would be asking too much of Hollywood, but that inaccuracy really caught my attention.

More here.