Do you want to eat Egypt? (Turkish/English)
On one evening in Istanbul, Turkey, I was out with a friend who spoke English, but not fluently. While we were walking, he pointed to someone on the street corner and asked me in English if I wanted to eat Egypt. Thinking I must have misheard, I asked him to repeat himself. No, he in fact did say: "Do you want to eat Egypt?" After struggling for a bit, I figured out he was pointing to the street vendor selling barbecued corn. I looked up corn in my pocket dictionary and it turns out that in Turkish, the word for Egypt and corn is the exact same, misir.
Sent by: Amr
Comments
Turks like to emphasise that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk rid his language of many terms of Arabic origin. I always thought that was suspicious, but this is the first time I actually heard of a term of Arabic origin causing language problems! Misir can mean Egypt because it comes from the Arabic name for Egypt: Jumhuriyat Misr al-Arabiyah. I guess misir traditionally means 'corn' though!
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