Do some people at all realise...

[yakalskovich]

... what their name means to the English speaking part of the world?

There exists a business called Bonk Consulting in a small town in Frankonia (one of the areas of Germany with a notoriously ugly accent and a reputedly reduced cleverness of the inhabitants).

They sell some software product named Orwell.

Well.-

Comments

[wiebke.livejournal.com]

My friend Rob used to find me candies, usually from Denmark, with hilarious names. One of them I remember was called "Spunk." It's true that the word has a positive meaning in English, it's also a slang term for... a white milky substance. Which isn't good when your product sort of resembles little sperms.

[yakalskovich]

Oh dear; that's a bad one as well.

Spunk, on the other hand, means as much as gumption, too. Bonk is just bonk.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Ob!Pratchett: Bonk pronounced "Be-yonk", right?

[yakalskovich]

Yes.

Only, this one isn't. It's pronounced 'bonk'.

[nazgulwears.livejournal.com]

reduced cleverness?
They are barking mad, all of them!
Though I think the Gonk Droid from Star Wars isn't any better...

[yakalskovich]

I wasn't going to put it quite as crudely; and English speaking people can't truly realise the full horror of phrases like 'dem Dräigo sei Muddäh..."

[woelfle.livejournal.com]

Hey, Bonk is the capital of Überwald, so that's fine, right? It is, of cours, pronounced Beyonk, as we all know. :-D

And I think the Badisch accent is cute. I couldn't stop using it when I was there for the musical, and even some time after... But then that's a matter of personal tastes. I love almost every dialect.

[yakalskovich]

The accent though is Fränkisch. nazgulwears and I were going to Nuremberg by train once, a few days after HBP was published, and there were these school girls talking about it - only published in English then, which was utterly inaccessible to all of them except one.

So, the one who could read it started telling the others what happens in it; "Also, dem Dräigo sei Muddäh geht zum Snäip unn..."

Nazgul and Yakkie: *die of gigglefit*

[woelfle.livejournal.com]

Ahahahaaaah! ROFL! Dr Dräigo änd dr Schnäip! Did they talk about slash too? :-D

[yakalskovich]

Nah, just the contents of the first chapter; even that one girl in command of the English language hadn't read further yet. It was that new.