For more than two months I was abroad experiencing cultures, sights and sounds that I have never noticed before. I came across some strange familiar sounds in particular. These phonemes I am talking about are words that co-exist in two different languages, only having different morphemes.
Take for example susu, in Chinese it means the father's brother but if you were conversing in Hindi, you would rather not call your paternal Uncle that, would you? Another interesting word I came across was "kana kow" almost like "khana khao" without the aspirated K. The second one in Hindi is merely asking someone to eat their meal but in Taiwanese, well, it is an offensive term.
Another interesting word was pintu to mean gate in Malay, which is a very common nickname in India, and probably the only word to mean something in another language.
Lastly and this might spoil your appetite I came across the word tandas to mean lavatory in Malay, how appropriate no?
