The love affair with multilingual labeling continues…
Having made it clear that they would like a downstairs bathroom (using bad behavior that suspiciously coincides with my starting engineering school full time), my cats got their wish today. I bought them a new litter box for the first floor and a litter mat to put in front of it, in a futile effort to prevent litter being tracked all over my formerly litter-free downstairs.
The litter mat is labeled in four languages. While the English "litter mat" is dull and utilitarian, it sounds exciting when translated into the other three languages. The French is tapis de litière, which is mysterious and romantic. The Spanish is estera para litera, which is poetic. But the German rocks my world: Schmutzabstreifer! It begins with a satisfying alveolar fricative that slides into a nasal bilabial stop. After the subsequent vowel, we chew upon a meaty sandwich of crunchy affricates, a plosive bilabial stop, and assorted fricatives, washed down with a diphthong. For dessert, a light labiodental fricative and a smooth vowel. Ah!
Ach, mein Shatz! Mein Schmutzabstreifer!
185 words | March 28, 2004 08:57 PM | Because I said