Words from an Irishman on his way home...

Monday 1 May 2006

My new dictionary has me perplexed.

I spent a lot of money on it so you'd figure it wouldn't go letting me down.
Well some of the search results it's given me have me worried.
The other day I went to look up 'bean', and what came up as one of the associated idioms? 'Beans & motherf#%$ers'! That's right... 'Beans and motherf#%$ers'. Apparently this was the name many US soldiers gave to their unappetising rations during the Vietnam War. But seriously when I am ever going to need to be able to translate that into Japanese, much less use it in English.
And then today I looked up valley. All was good and as it should be until I scrolled down the page to read some example sentences. What did they tell me? Well if ever I need to know how to say 'It's rude to look down a woman's sweater.' in Japanese, then I'm all set.
That's 28,000 yen I'm never getting back.

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