Sunday, July 13, 2014

Phocine Vulgarity

phoque sounds like fuck

24 comments:

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    1. This reminds me of a very funny story. During the 2012 world games in Cali, Colombia, there was a mistake during the design of the medals and tehy endedup reading WORD games. I think this typo made the medals even more valuable :-D

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    2. That's a pretty ironic spelling error...

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  2. But in the picture, there is an otarie and not a phoque :(.

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    1. You drew a sea-lion, and phoque in french only refers to seals. The difference is in the freedom of mouvement and structure of their flippers.

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    2. Wow! I'm learning so much about seals now. Is this a phoque?

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    3. No, fur seal is an otarie.) These are phoques http://bit.ly/W66eAT.

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  3. That one gets complicated. The english name uses the word seal, but the animal is actually a species of ses lion with desireable fur. So technically, no, it is not a phoque, but it is true that many people still use the words interchangeably.

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  4. Another easy way to tell the two apart is that sea lions have visible ear flaps, whereas seals do not. That doesn't apply to your cartoon (which I liked, by the way), but you can store that for future reference, if you'd like.

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  5. "This" happened to me when I was referring to Kant (the philosopher) in the U.S. once in a conversation and someone close by overheard only that word...

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  6. I went to the Bronx Zoo recently and I will quote a sign by the sea lion enclosure:

    "Is a sea lion a seal?"
    "Yes. Sea lions are eared seals. Sea lions, other eared seals, earless seals, and walruses are all pinnipeds - marine mammals that have four wing-like flippers."

    So whatever they're phoque-ing called in French, it is technically correct (i.e. correct) to refer to sea lions as seals!

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    1. Sooooo....am I right or still wrong?

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    2. I defer to Louis C.K.'s expert opinion above :-)

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  7. My favourite is when a student on italki mispronounces "focus"..... you'd be amazed at how many of them say the same thing (then wonder why my eyebrows hit my hairline) :p

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  8. Tổng hợp những Kinh nghiệm mua đồng hồ trên Amazon có thể bạn sẽ quan tâm đến. Cỏ là một loại chất kích thích, vậy Hút cỏ có gây nghiện không. Cùng tìm hiểu chi tiết về Trúng xổ số có phải nộp thuế khôngThay bugi xe máy giá bao nhiêu , nên thay bugi loại nào tốt nhất. Hiện tượng chết lâm sàn là gì? Chết lâm sàng linh hồn đi về đâu

    Xe máy có được rẽ phải khi đèn đỏ không? và những mẹo để Cách đuổi dơi ra khỏi nhà hiệu quả nhất sẽ giúp ích cho nhiều bạn đọc.
    Hướng dẫn cách mua hàng trên amazon nhậtship về Việt Nam nhanh chóng, uy tín, giá rẻ.

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  9. This also happens when an Italian mishears English
    i.e. "I love when a girl pets my cats" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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  10. Wow, I got an interesting experience with this comic. :) When I seen second panel, I didn't got that these symbols are hiding mishearded curse word, and thought:
    "Oh, little girl happily talks about murder, violence, etc in a zoo? Sounds legit, 'cause wildlife is hard, after all, and the strongest survives, so... Nothing wrong with her, why Itchy Feet is so bothered?"
    And then I stop reading to think about myself in a middle school, where we had so called "pet corner". Literal translation "live corner" - this is a common practice in Russian schools (I'm not sure is there something similar in other countries but higly likely, I suppose), though rare nowadays, to have some animals, of whom childrens can take care (or just come to play with) during their day in school. Basically there are some hamsters, rabbits, Guinea pigs, rats, parrots, fishes and turtles, but I attended what was considered a privileged school, so we had also spiders, snakes, owl, some breed of eagle-like or hawk-like bird, little caiman (yeap, I'm serious!), piranha and chinchillas. So I seen myself in this girl because I have had a strange looks from others at our pet corner due to my extreme happiness with the sight of feeding snake daily routine, e.g. snake eating little hamster. I was like "Wow, it really hunts it down, crawling closer, closer, and than, suddenly - STRIKE! What a REAL WILDLIFE HUNT I've just seen!!!" And other childrens and adults stared at me like: O_O or >_> or :'( , so they're definitely thought I'm insane or something.
    And with these thoughts of understanding and relation to little girl from a comic and upset to Itchy Feet, because he thinks she is crazy, I finally looked at third panel and I was like "WHAT? What he is talking about?" I still don't got it, I was so confused with my personal suggestion on what is happenning.
    And after that I stared at last panel in like ten seconds, blinking and still not understanding. And then I finally got the joke. xD Well, I guess I could got it quickier, but honestly basically I have no idea how to pronounce French words correctly, so I always spell them as if they were English (sorry to French-speaking people, I know I spoil the beauty :( ), and it took me some time to realise that in French it should be spelled like really different English word...
    Well done comic! With memories and confusion like that it become only more hilarious! :)

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