Het zwaard, de zee en de valse vriend

[muckefuck]

KOT "excrement" (German); "cot" (Dutch)
What I Read: "Ik strekte mij iedere avond op mijn kot..."
What It Said: "I stretched out every evening on my cot..."
What Was Said In My Head: "I stretched out every evening on my excrement..."
Notes: Never would've made that mistake if not for the presence of the page break, since on the verso of the page the sentence continues with "...van houtspaanders en zelfgejaagde dierenvellen..." ("...of woodchips and the skins of animals I'd hunted myself...")

Comments

[areia.livejournal.com]

What Areia read: "I stretched out every evening in my dorm room..."

In modern Dutch, although kot can mean both shed and dorm room (specifically a room rented by students in a privately owned boarding house), if you're stretching in your garden shed you would say in mijn kot, whereas op mijn kot specifically indicates a dorm room.

It should be noted that Belgians do not typically construct either sheds or dorm rooms out of wood chips and animal skins.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have presumed such. (It should be noted that the speaker is a Frisian. A 5th century Frisian, but for all I know they still preserve such traditional techniques.)

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

woodchips and animal skins seem fairly excremental to me.
...or maybe that's just how I'm feeling this morning.

[strongaxe.livejournal.com]

I find it's worse with spoken language, since unlike written text, it's impossible to read ahead - you just get one word at a time. Instead, I often find myself auto-completing sentences in my head before I hear the actual endings, often with hilarious results.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

This particular confusion wouldn't have occurred in the spoken language since kot has a short vowel, sounding so much like the English "cot" that German Kot (with a long vowel) never would've popped into my head.

[itchwoot.livejournal.com]

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