Linguistic reefs: 01 (Singapore)

It’s the linguistic False Friends that are the hidden reefs.  

One example I cited to my Chinese community centre Mandarin students:  

In my dialect (Teochew / 潮州 / Cháozhōu), “stingy” is made up of two sounds, which are “鹹 / 咸 xián / salty” and “澀 / 涩 / sè / tart*”.  

(*澀 / 涩 / sè:  “tart” is the best word I can think of for the furring-up effect on one’s tongue when one eats unripe fruit, especially persimmons / kaki / sharon fruit.)  

One day, a Teochew speaker tried to describe, to some Cantonese speakers, a man (who was present) as being “stingy”. 

(BTW, this was done good-naturedly, as the Chinese tend to go for what I call “rough humour”, i.e., the closer one is to someone, the freer one can feel about giving that person a hard time.)

They simply converted the two Teochew dialect sounds (“salty tart”) into the Cantonese pronunciation.  Unfortunately, those two sounds in Cantonese = to be lecherous, so the Cantonese listeners all looked at the poor man in disgust.

(Singapore, 1960s)