{"id":529,"date":"2013-07-24T19:58:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T02:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/?p=529"},"modified":"2019-09-27T00:59:09","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T07:59:09","slug":"my-baby-just-sent-me-a-letter-and-the-letter-is-an-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/?p=529","title":{"rendered":"My baby just sent me a letter. And the letter is an S?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A letter (i.e. correspondence) \u00a0that I write to you is of course made out of single letters (i.e. characters). English has the funny duality of calling these two somewhat different things the same: a Letter.<\/p>\n

English ==> Danish<\/strong>
\nA letter, a character => et bogstav
\nA letter (correspondence) ==> et brev
\nA letter (one who rents out an apartment) ==> en udlejer<\/p>\n

According to http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/letter<\/a>\u00a0this duality between the first two meanings of\u00a0“Letter”\u00a0is another remnant of the old Norman\/Saxon intermixing of French and Saxon (and Latin and Greek and other…) words, which through perturbation of centuries have become the same in modern English. So, in old French a single character of the alphabet\u00a0was Lettre<\/em> and in Latin it was Littera<\/em>. (A large collection of letters is of course Literature<\/em> in Latin – an expression well known in English and most other languages today). There is a verb in French pertaining to a person combining multiple characters: lettr\u00e9<\/em> (~to spell out, transliterate). That is probably the origin of the other meaning of the English “Letter”, as when writing correspondence. Because\u00a0one is indeed combining letters when writing a letter (“On lettr\u00e9<\/em>” in French)…<\/p>\n

But that was not the intended\u00a0topic of this blog-post… Funny things happen when a single letter sneaks its way into or out of\u00a0a sentence:<\/p>\n

English ==> Danish
\n<\/strong>0% interest (banking term) ==> rentefrit
\n0 interest (i.e. “zero interest”, “I am not interested”)\u00a0 \u00a0==> ingen interesse
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Danish ==> English<\/strong>
\nHr. Jensens kridtholder ==> Mr. (teacher) Jensen’s chalk holder
\nHr. Jensens skridtholder ==> Mr. (teacher) Jensen’s jock strap<\/p>\n

Positionspil ==> An arrow showing your position (on a map)
\nPositionsspil ==> A game based on position (like chess)<\/p>\n

Klik p\u00e5 flisen ==> Click on a tile (like in Windows 8)
\nKlik p\u00e5 fissen ==>\u00a0Click on female genitalia….<\/p>\n

\"Motivational-poster\"<\/a>\u00a0 \"Anal<\/a>\"the-box-tops-the-letter-ricordi-international\"<\/a>\"errorists\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n \n \"Fb-Button\"\n <\/a>\n <\/div>
<\/fb:like><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A letter (i.e. correspondence) \u00a0that I write to you is of course made out of single letters (i.e. characters). English has the funny duality of calling these two somewhat different things the same: a Letter. English ==> Danish A letter, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13,4,14,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ambigous-english","category-different-meaning","category-funny","category-history-of-english","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":766,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions\/766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}