6. stationary/ stationery- Are you out of stationary or stationery to write to your relatives? The only spelling difference is the a and the e at the end of the word. Stationary refers to something that is fixed, immobile; while stationery refers to the materials used for writing and letter paper usually accompanied by matching envelopes.

7. imminent/ eminent- Imminent refers to something that is ready to take place, while eminent refers to something/ someone prominent or famous. You talk to an eminent person and, danger is imminent.

8. proceed/ precede- This is easy, the prefix -pre means “before” while proceed means “to go forward”. So, let’s proceed with reading. We are almost done!

9. static/ ecstatic- Are you static or ecstatic about learning all of these things? Similar to stationary, static, refers to something that does not move, among other meanings related to electricity or radio frequency. Ecstatic is something marked by ecstasy. So, I really hope that you are ecstatic!

10. desert/ dessert- Desert (not the place where there is a lot of sand and cacti) comes from the word that gave us “deserve”. So, after all of this learning, don’t you think you desert some sweet dessert to reward yourself?

This is just a small list of words that can be confusing in the English Language, words that are worthy of our attention, so we can use them properly and guide non English speakers in their use. If you can think of more confusing words in the English Language, feel free to share.

Some of the changes to the old version are:

The greeting:

a.  The Lord be with you.

Old response: And with you.

New response: And with your spirit.

The Creed:

a. Old Creed: We believe.

New Creed: I believe.

b. Old: Seen and unseen.

New: Visible and invisible.

c. Old: Born of the Virgin Mary.

New: Was incarnate of the Virgin Mary.

Before Communion:

a. Old: Lord I am not worthy to receive you but only say the word and I shall be healed.

New:  Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

Also, in the communal confession the words “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault”, were added.  And confessors will now say “for I have greatly sinned” instead of just “I have sinned”.

Something we found curious about the new translation was that, for the Spanish speaking part of the world (at JR Language we have an Argentinian, a Venezuelan and a Puerto Rican), these changes to the English Mass are what we have being saying for years, probably since the Church started using Spanish and not Latin in our countries to perform Mass.  We say: “Y con su espíritu”; “Creo”;  “de todo lo visible y lo invisible”; se encarnó en María, la Virgen”; “por mi culpa, por mi culpa, por mi gran culpa”, etc.

One thing is for sure, English speaking priests better create some workshops for people to memorize this new version or else Christmas Mass won’t be as beautiful this year with half of the people saying the new version and the other, the old one.

1. less/ fewer- Fewer refers to things that can be counted and are tangible, while less refers to things that cannot be counted and are not tangible. So, the average American actually has fewer than two children, not less than two children.
2. lose/ loose- These two words are highly confusing basically because they are practically homophones (they are pronounced almost the same way). Lose is the basic form of the past tense lost. Loose refers to something that is not rigidly fastened. In that case, you would lose your keys every morning!
3. compliment/ complement- Do you complement or compliment your new hairdo with good makeup? Complement comes from the Latin word for “complete” and, when you compliment you show admiration. So, with that said: what do you do?
4. its/ it’s- Does your dog have its own or it’s own personality? Its means “belonging to it” while it’s is the contraction of “it is” or “it has” (from the verb to be).
5. prosecute/ persecute- Both come from the same Latin word meaning “to pursue” but, lawyers prosecute criminals and employers, can certainly persecute employees for no reason, although they shouldn’t.

To read the rest of the list go to 10 Highly Confusing Words in the English Language-part 2

’twas the night before Christmas and all through la casa,
not a creature was stirring. Caramba! i.Que pasa?

Los Ninos were all tucked away in their camas,
some in vestidos and some in pijamas.

While mama worked late in her little cocina;
el viejo was down at the corner cantina.

The stockings were hung with mucho cuidado,
in hopes that San Nicolas would feel obligado
to bring all los ninos, both buenos y malos
a nice bag of dulces and otros regalos.

Outside in the yard there arose such a grito
that I jumped to my feet like a frightened cabrito.

I ran to the window and looked out afuera
¿and who in the world do you think that it era?

San Nicolas in a sleigh with a big red sombrero
came dashing along like a crazy bombero!

And pulling his sleigh, instead of venados
were eight little burros aproaching volados.

I watched as they came, and this quaint little hombre
was shouting and whistling and calling by nombre:

“Ay, Pancho!Ay, Chopo!Ay, Pepe! Ay, Cuca!
Ay, Beto! Ay, Chato, Nieto y Maruca!”

Then standing erect whith his hand on his pecho
he flew to the top of our very own techo.

He struggled to squeeze down our old chimenea
with his round little belly like a bowl of jalea.

Then, huffing and puffing, at last in our sala
with soot smeared all over his red suit de gala,
he filled all the stockings with lovely regalos
for none of the children had been so muy malos.

Then chuckling aloud, seeming contento
he turned like a flash and was gone like el viento.

And I heard him exclaim -and this is verdad-
“Merry Christmas to all! Feliz Navidad!”

Parody against the elimination of the letter “eñe” from the Spanish alphabet.

For example: in the United States there are often untranslated product names that, while consumers may not understand the meaning of the name, customers do acknowledge it as a legitimately ethnic product.

Sometimes, however, this is not the case. Sometimes when a product name is left untranslated it is a false cognate.

Sometimes this is harmless, sometimes it can be image ruining.

There are countless examples of the false cognate “mist,” which is a word in both English and German.

Mist, in English, means a wispy cloud of liquid.
Mist, in German, means manure or dung.

Some companies that made this oversight:

Irish Mist Whiskey.
Clairol Mist Stick

The company that noticed:

Rolls Royce planned to call the successor to their “Silver Cloud,” the “Silver Mist,” but renamed it the “Silver Shadow,” prior to production, after realizing the car’s unintended German meaning.

There are a few lessons to be learned here:

• You really can’t always trust machine translations.
• You really can’t always trust machines in general.

Now, this isn’t exactly a mistranslation… This could be the name of the place… It seems like a bit of bad luck/timing on their part though:

The unfortunate downside to the amount of faith we put in computers...

]]> http://jrlanguage.com/coffee-break-blog/index.php/the-tourist-part-5_00118/feed/ 4 http://jrlanguage.com/coffee-break-blog/index.php/new-official-language-of-the-europen-union_0019/ http://jrlanguage.com/coffee-break-blog/index.php/new-official-language-of-the-europen-union_0019/#comments Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:44:34 +0000 The Lighter Side http://jrlanguage.com/coffee-break-blog/?p=19 English only ! English only!
Official language ….. ?

The European Commission has just announced an agreement
whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English.”

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c.” Sertainly,
this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k.”
This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f.”
This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters
which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e”
in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as
replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v.”

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop
vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
If zis mad you smil , pleas pas on to oza pepl.

One thing that comes across loud and clear is: “Do not dangle any doll.” Sorry doll danglers, your kind isn’t welcome here.

Not sure what "Asthma Paper" tastes like, but I think I'll just have a salad.

The sign tells Spanish speakers to watch their belongings and English speakers to take good care of "his" belongings.

Fake Commercial:

Do you enjoy the finer things in the world?

First class life, first class pets, first class family?

When you fly, you fly first class.

When you fly first class with us, you fly naked.

As I warned, this is not an actual commercial, but when American Airlines(by many accounts although not 100% confirmed) translated their advertising campaign for the Mexican market, their new first class slogan, “Fly in Leather,” was translated into “Vuela en Cuero.”

“Vuela” translates into “fly”

“en” often into “in”

and “cuero” into leather.

The idiomatic expression “en cueros” essentially means “completely naked,” the person that crafted the translation must not have realized the danger in assuming a word-by-word translation always maintains meaning.

Not...quite...sure what this sign is about...

Are your wikipedia wild-caught or farm-raised?