Translation

I sometimes wonder why we do the things that we do. What makes the human mind tick. But one of the things that fascinates me the most is the names that we give things. Like who decided to call a tree a tree? Why can a tree not be called a sock? Yes sure the name tree now means brown thing with green leave but who decided that and why? Similarly, who decided on the translation, or is it just that some person in another part of the world also just happen to name the same thing by a word that sounds more or less the same.  Now this is where things get interesting. 

Translated words.

English is a much older language than Afrikaans, which is my mother tongue. When I look at translations from one to the other, I seriously want to know what the fuck, the founders of Afrikaans was smoking? Jesus, have you seen some of the translations? So what I am going to do here now is give you some English words, the Afrikaans word for the same thing and then translate the Afrikaans directly to English

Horse – Perd - Horse

Leopard – Luiperd – Lazy Horse

Cheetah – Jagluiperd – Hunting Lazy Horse

Dragonfly – Naaldekooker – Needle Cooker

Butterfly – Skoenlapper – Shoe Ragger

Gearlever – Rathefboom – Gear Handle Tree

Armadillo – Iettermagog – What the fuck!!! I don’t even know what that would be.

Riaan Cruywagen

On SABC 2 (which is a Television station in South Africa) we have a newscaster that reads the news in perfect Afrikaans. I hardly ever know what the fuck he is talking about. I really just have no idea what he is on about most of the time, so there is just no point. The funny thing is that this man has been a newscaster since 1976 when T.V. first came to South Africa. To top it all off old Riaan Cruywagen (born in 1945) still looks exactly the way he did in 1976. No where can you find photo’s of him without his wig and make-up. I am sure that 1, he looks so different that even if you did walk past him on the street you would have no fucking idea or 2, they cryogenically freeze him after every broadcast just to do it again tomorrow night (which seems to be pretty much what most people think). To give non south africans an idea of this mand legacy, he is our Chuck Norris. Watch, when I am 66, his current age, he will still be reading the news at age 104 and he will still look like he does today. Riaan we commend you! You Rock Man!

Mwah!

Some Riaan Cruywagen Jokes

http://coda.co.za/blog/2006/03/09/riaan-cruywagen