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Tinned what? (Welsh/English)

Supermarkets in Wales make an effort to be bilingual with their signs. So, above a tinned food aisle, they had the words bwyd tin prominently displayed. This would seem natural enough, as bwyd means food, but the second word they were looking for was tun (pronounced the same as 'tin'). Tin, with an i, is a less-than-polite word for someone's backside.

Sent by: Ceri

Comments

Lynne 2010-08-12

At a supermarket in Carmarthen recently, I noticed that there was a translation above the "Ten items or fewer" sign, reading "Deg eitem neu llau"....which actually means "Ten items or lice". The words "llai" (less/fewer) and "llau" (lice) sound identical and are easily confused. No wonder the aisle was empty....

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Bethan 2009-10-26

Many years ago I bought a new computer and it came with a free digital encyclopaedia. I checked out the section about Wales and it said lots of nice things about the scenery (lakes and mountains) and the folk music etc. At this point you could click to hear a song that was supposed to be called "Tan y Llyn" - under the lake. Instead it was a song called "Tân yn Llŷn" which means fire in (the) Llŷn (peninsula). This was in fact a nationalist protest song about the setting fire to a bombing school there in 1936! Those accents make all the difference you know! Either they had very bad translators or some Welsh speaker on the team was having some fun!

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Huw 2008-09-01

It could have quite easily have been alcam, tin, which would have avoided this mix up.

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