Transferred this from the Survival Forum as this post drifts too far off thread to be "survival-related". Was in response to kevral's information in his thread "Re: Kit review: The Mountain Tarp ("Fjellduken")."

Thanks.

My father was an English teacher who spoke French, German and Italian with a fair degree of fluency (which turned out to be quite useful when he was on the run from the Nazis in wartime Italy, I'm told <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> ) and I learned growing up that you can often get a fair idea of what's been written in a language if you can relate it to words in other languages. But my younger brother, who teaches English as a Second Language in Germany, told me to watch out for what linguists call "false friends" - words that look like a familiar word but actually mean something quite different, like the German "bekommen" which means "to get" and not "to become".

His favourite example was the time he went to Italy and (not speaking any Italian) ordered a latte. He says he should have clued in when the waiter asked if he wanted it hot or cold; he said "hot" and was surprised when the waiter brought him a glass of warm milk. Only then did he clue in that "latte" is actually the Italian word - for milk! <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />