this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
63 points (95.7% liked)

No Stupid Questions

47511 readers
1229 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I know for instance, between Japanese & Mandarin there are a few words that are written the same despite them being pronounced differently along with having different meanings altogether:

Word Japanese Definition Mandarin Definition
手紙 Letter (mail) Toilet Paper
先生 Teacher Mister (Mr.)
天井 Ceiling Atrium
説話 Folktale To Speak
新聞 Newspaper News (media)
約束 Promise Constrain
文句 Complain Phrase
怪我 Injury Blame me
白鳥 Swan White Bird
皮肉 Irony Skin & Flesh
王妃 Queen Princess
中古 Used Product Medieval Times
氷箱 Ice Box Refrigerator
手袋 Gloves Handbag
邪魔 Hinderance Devil
Hot Water Soup
Boar Pig
Arm Wrist
Run Walk
Shelf Shed
Neck Head
Floor Bed
Scold To Eat
Desk (Furniture) Machinery
Daughter Mother

In hindsight: if you are bilingual, do you know any false friends between two languages (i.e. English & French) or (i.e. Spanish & Portuguese) that are spelled the same but have different definitions across both languages?

(page 2) 21 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 7 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

It's not just in different languages, but sometimes in different variants of the same languages.

For instance, in Belgian French, "tournante" is any task in which people take turn, like a card game. In French French, it's specifically gang rape. Or "torchon" which is a cleaning cloth in France and a mop in Belgium.

And then you have words that aren't spelled exactly the same way but seem like an obvious translation (actual false friends, which aren't usually exact matches), like the Spanish "constipado", which means to have a stuffy nose and not what you think.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 5 points 15 hours ago

There are a few close ones between Portuguese and Spanish but I can't think of any that's spelled exactly the same.

Between Portuguese dialects, the first that comes to mind is "puto" which just means young boy in European Portuguese and it's a swear word meaning male prostitute in Brazilian Portuguese (Brazilian Portuguese technically makes more sense because it's symmetrical to the female "puta" which always means "slut").

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

To be fair.....letters can be toilet paper. Especially bills.

[–] bryndos@fedia.io 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

The English slang word "bumf" - generally meaning unnecessary bits of paper like adverts , health and safety warnings and TFM - originated from the armed forces, where toilet paper may have often been rationed. Any loose paper was therefore considered "bum fodder".

'Bum' of course meaning 'arse' in this case - not 'homeless person'.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

When my mom left my dad, there was a day my mom was picking me up. This was the late 80s/early 90s. She was wearing a sweatshirt from the clothing brand "BUM". For those of you who are younger, you might be able to find pictures of your grandparents wearing clothing with the word "BUM" written in a basic font across their chest. This was for a very short time, a very popular brand that nobody questioned why it was called "BUM".

So, my mom is wearing that sweatshirt. My mom has recently left my dad, and my dad is in a very negative head space where he just wants to belittle and insult my mom any way that he can. Shocking she'd ever leave him, I know. But his comment was "Oh yeah? You wearing that BUM sweatshirt? You know what BUM means? Black Urban Male! Your sweatshirt makes you a black man!

My dad was/is a pretty racist person. There's a reason he has no friends, and his only child (me) doesn't even really talk to him. He's all alone now. Let that be a lesson to everybody. Don't be a racist. Nobody likes racists.

[–] kunaltyagi@programming.dev 5 points 16 hours ago

Preservative is common for eng and french

[–] renzhexiangjiao@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

tbf some of these japanese words also have secondary meaning that is the same as its chinese counterpart, like 中古 or 首

[–] Witchfire@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Assister in French means to attend in English

[–] one_old_coder@piefed.social 2 points 14 hours ago

Good in reverse since the verb "attendre" (almost like attend) means "to wait."

[–] tristan@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 1 points 12 hours ago

And supporter means to bear (as in the opposite of unbearable). Also retard means lateness.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Reserverad - reserved (Swedish) - spare tyre (German)

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Learned recently that in Spanish "anos" without the ñ is "anus," while in Portugese it's "years" (in Spanish years is "años").

[–] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Is it appropriate to point out that words are spelled certain ways and that spelt is a plant product?

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›