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(Many) years ago I was cycle touring on my own in northern Norway, not long after living near Trondheim for 3 months. Got chatting to a local whilst awaiting a ferry. After a while she asked what part of Sweden I was from. Never having been "good" at languages this was the biggest compliment anyone could pay!  
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Now deceased comedian Harald Heide-Steen Jr. used to impersonate a Russsian submarine captain caught in Norwegain waters ("But we can't see that border underwater!"), speaking Norwegian with heavy Russian accent. One Russian language expert identified from this accent where Heide-Steen Jr. had learned is Russian, and was very surpriseed to learn that Heide-Steen Jr. didn't know a word of Russian. He had learned the accent without learning the language.
There are also a few Norwegian singer-songwriters who are extremely good at talking gibberish that doesn't sound like gibberish, usually either in Norwegian or English. Usually it starts out as meaningful words/sentences, but somewhere in the middle of it - you can't tell exactly where - you loose grip of it. It still is like the chatting you can hear from the neighbouring table at the café. It is the same language; you just cant make out the words.
That is tor of the opposite of what you describe, but I think it takes much of the same abilites, "having an ear for" (is that a valid way to phrase it in Englihs?) the language.
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That's quite an achievement! You could probably have answered Jämtland and been believed.
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Thanks for the hints.
The problem searching for homographs in a language not your native one is that often you do not know the two+ different pronounciations; you mispronounce some of the meanings. Actually, I did that myself once, laughing at this record sleeve identifying the lead (heavy metal) guitar - I honestly though that it was a joking way to say "heavy bass guitar". My friends laughed at my pun, and only much later did I discover what "lead guitar" really means (and how it is pronounced). My friends never discovered that I really made a fool of myself rather than making a pun ...
A non-native speaker may encounter exactly that problem I am addressing: If you feed a word into a speech synthesis module to learn its pronounciation, you usually are given one single alternative. So you might "learn" that the wind blowing or to wind your watch should sound the same way. To learn the difference, you need a dictionary that provides an IPA (phonetic alphabet) version for each meaning, so you can see the difference (if there is one). And then there are dialects - I am sure that most languages have dialects distinguishing between words that other dialects pronounce a single way. So, to make an exhaustive (or even extensive) list of homographs with with different pronounciation requires strong familiarity with the language.
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"Led" guitar in a heavy metal band. Maybe they were influenced by Led Zeppelin.
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I had such a list, collected with a willing helper, from when I worked for the US Department of Energy.
It started with 'wind' and 'lead' but there turned out to be a surprisingly large list of them.
Amazingly, one of the early version of the list was sitting under my monitor - right here!
project, live, polish, unionized, bass, sow, bow, content, record, present, close, minute, dove, use, combine, row, refuse, console, invalid, incense, flower, periodic, read
The majority have related meanings but are pronounced differently depending upon the context. Some are chemistry related (ionized and iodic). Others are totally mysterious until they have some context: is polish a nationality or the act of shining something with mild friction?
The main list had more of the fun ones, like wind, polish, sow, console, bass, &etc.
Another part of word fun is with very different meanings in alternate languages. We had a visiting professor from Brazil who went historical laughing when it was his first pay day - sound to him like a day dedicated to flatulence. "Exxon" was a word found by what passed for a computer search to find a word that meant nothing in any other language. It used to be "Esso". Chevrolet got into trouble with it "Nova" in Spanish speaking countries, translating to "no go"
Conclusion - and ancient wisdom: the only way to avoid trouble over what you say is to keep one's mouth shut.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos wrote: there turned out to be a surprisingly large list of them.
Exactly like I experienced with Norwegian. I am still collecting, but I think I have caught most of them by now!
Thanks for your contributions. I guess I will start collecting English ones now - but I guess that for several of them, I will have to look up the proper pronounciation.
Another famous example of a product/company name explicitly chosen to have no meaning, in particular: offensive/derogatory, in any known language, is "Kodak".
In translation between languages you frequently encounter "false friends". If a Norwegian refers to "eventual problems", he usually meant to write "possible problems" or even "problems not likely to happen". I've got a small dictionary of Norwegain-English false friends. But even languages as close as Swedish and Norwegian (we rarely care to translate, except for formal documents) have false friends. If I write to a business partner "Jeg har ikke anledning til å møte deg", I regret that I won't have any opportunity to meet you, the Swede will read it as I do not have any reason to meet you.
Then there are those English vs. English stories... The classic book "Big Business Blunders: Mistakes in International Marketing" tells about this joint project between a British and a US company. The cooperation was rather unsuccessful. For one joint project meeting the management agreed that "these problems be tabeled". Problem was that to one party, "tabeling" a problem meant putting them face up on the table, for everybody to see, to solve the problem. To the other party, "tabeling" meant laying it face down on the table, not bringing it up, keeping it down. One party got crossed because the other party seemed to refuse to take the discussion that they had agreed upon, the other party got crossed because they had agreed to put those problems aside for that meeting, yet the other side kept pushing.
... Today, I think I would have been more fascinated by working professionally with natural languages than with programming languages ....
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One of my absolute very favorites: Gift
In English, it's nice to receive a gift.
In German - not so much[^]
Add Australian English (is it still English?) for some twists as interesting as their fauna.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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In Norwegaian, gift is (like in German) something you should not consume. Gift is poison.
And, being married is to be "gift".
Draw whatever conclusion you want.
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Its knot Michael .
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Let me cheque and get back to you.
/ravi
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Or Have in.
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
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When spelling checkers were something new, I was working with office automation software in a company called Norsk Data ("ND"), and the spelling checker was marketed as "The ND Spell".
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Dew ewe mien write aweigh oar wen hee dyes?
If you can't laugh at yourself - ask me and I will do it for you.
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Mornin,
I have just been told that our on site IT dept can no longer help with IT problems, there were two networks, on that was locked to nth level the 'Corporate' and one which was a bit looser that I use called the 'Dev' network. On site IT could help with the 'Dev' but not corporate. Worked fine, but at some point that changed and we have to phone a flower when we need help. Who makes these choices before there was mumbles and you got what you needed, now you get told "that is outside of your needs, no!", some one is going to end up sitting on window ledge with a sniper rifle taking pot shots before long! 
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We had exactly this problem where I used to work. Our answer was just tell the boss what we needed to do our jobs, and let him argue the toss.
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They have sniper rifles in the UK?!
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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If you know the right (or wrong!) people...
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Slowly working towards that level here too. Next idea is to get rid of the guest network for general use, force vendors to request access for specific time periods weeks in advance, and ban all personal devices from logging into VPN. Also got our two-factor fobs with no information about how to use them because the person responsible for that is out for the time being. 
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Two Factor, What a waste of time! As the company I work for is run with 'most' people working remotely using company laptops & phones, my part of the company was office based with desktops not laptops and no company mobiles. We had to use our own mobiles... I was not happy about that. We then got asked questions as to why we ordered fobs and not use our mobiles... 
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glennPattonWork wrote: no company mobiles. We had to use our own mobiles
one place I worked one evening (after hours) the boss tried to call me, called and called and.. till I switched off the phone.
next day, "why didn't you answer your phone?" "well because it costs me money, it's my phone, I bought it, pay for it, I decide what I do with it. I was only waiting for a call from my wife anyway so I also wanted to save battery."
(this was back in the earlier days when it cost even to answer calls and battery life really sucked - it was only a few years past the bricks.)
anyway just a few days later, company announcement: all the local consulting staff now got a "phone allowance" - with the proviso that we remain contactable. (Actually not bad, about 100 staff*.)
Me though: I switched off my phone even more often - bought a pager (still a thing back then) - the wife would page me if I should call her / pick her up etc. Office tries to call (phone off): "sorry, battery died." - also still very much a valid thing.
(* E&Y consulting - before it was sold off to Acupuncture. - which BTW was still the quite new name that DeToilet and Douche had chosen for their consulting arm after the US govt made accounting firms divest or split off their consulting arms - conflict of interest and all that crap - as if it made any diffeence - PW accounting still "strongly recommends" PW Consulting, DeTiolet still "strongly recommends" Acupuncture... same owners or similar hip joining's.)
after many otherwise intelligent sounding suggestions that achieved nothing the nice folks at Technet said the only solution was to low level format my hard disk then reinstall my signature. Sadly, this still didn't fix the issue!
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LOL. I turned down a company mobile because I knew what would be expected.
A colleague, soiling his pants: We tried calling your mobile, but it kept going to voicemail!
Me: Yes, it was turned off. I have it for my convenience.
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We got our two-factor fobs issued two years before I left the company. I carried on my keyring for those two years but we never activated the system. Then I left and handed in my very worn looking fob that had never even been tested. It turns that the guy setting them up had left and no-one had taken over, and since everyone hated the idea of having to use the fobs, no-one reminded anyone about them! Success?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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You, lucky, lucky so & so! 
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