Virgin car (English/Finnish)
As a student in the 70's I worked in Finland for the summer. Finnish has little similarities with other European languages, however modern words are often adopted with an i appended. E.g. 'transistor' becomes transistori or 'compressor' becomes kompressori. When I had problems with my Hillman Imp and took it to the garage I found out, to my surprise, that Imp didn't change to Impi in Finnish. BMC had rather unadventurously called the car 'Sunbeam' in Finland. The reason for this is that in Finnish impi means 'virgin'.
Sent by: Roger
Comments
There is another reason why the word Imp would only ask for trouble: the final P in Finish word is so strong it becomes like a double consonant, like Imppi. Now, the problem is that pimppi is a childish word for 'female sexual organ'. The importer of the car saved the brand from the Imppi-pimppi jokes.
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