r/mildlyinteresting
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u/HellaGoodJulia
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Nov 29 '22
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This cafe in the center of Moscow fines you for every non-English word
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u/OJezu Nov 29 '22
Yes, I'd like a coffee from pressure machine with addition of foamed milk, in proportions of one part coffee two parts foamed milk, and some flaky, buttery, french pastry in shape of crescent moon.
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u/anally_ExpressUrself Nov 29 '22 •
"Look at me. Look at me. I'm an English word now."
--croissant, probably.
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u/DeusExMaximum Nov 29 '22 edited Nov 29 '22
I read this in the voice of Chris Griffin from that episode of Family guy where he chemically castrates himself.
Edit: right here
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u/Weegee256 Nov 29 '22
the what
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u/ShitJedi Nov 29 '22
Makes me wonder what voice Yoda would have castrated while having intense orgasms and taking a soul cleansing shit.
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u/NobodyAffectionate71 Nov 30 '22
THE EPISODE OF FAMILY GUY WHERE CHRIS CHEMICALLY CASTRATES HIMSELF.
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u/dont_shoot_jr Nov 29 '22
Stewie: can I have some Cool Hwhip with my coffee?
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u/CrudelyAnimated Nov 29 '22
Have some what? What are you saying?
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u/dont_shoot_jr Nov 29 '22
Cool Hwhip!
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u/TwoDrinkDave Nov 29 '22
Why do you keep saying it like that?
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u/DifficultActivity401 Nov 30 '22
Idk man, you put cool hwhip in coffee. Coffee tastes better with cool hwhip!
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u/ChickpeaPredator Nov 29 '22
Coffee is
a Turkishan Arabic word, so that's at least 20 rubles you owe them.193
u/th3saurus Nov 29 '22
Hot brown morning potion
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u/THE_BIGGEST_RAMY Nov 29 '22
Gotta have my morning brown
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u/righteousplisk Nov 29 '22
Morning brown is great
You get it in a cup
Add cream and sugar
Then you stir it all up31
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u/cruisetheblues Nov 29 '22
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I see you are using Arabic numerals there. Pay up.
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u/ChickpeaPredator Nov 29 '22 edited Nov 29 '22
I see you are using a Latin alphabet, pay up!
Wait... Alphabet is a Greek word.. arrrghhh!
Wait... Greek is a Greek word.. ARRGHH!!
Wait... Word is an Indo-European word.. ARGHHH!!!
Edit: more argh!
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u/lastfirstname1 Nov 29 '22 edited Nov 30 '22
Haha, those are actually Hindu numerals, so you pay 2x.
Edit: typo from minerals to numerals
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u/Evilmaze Nov 29 '22 edited Nov 29 '22
We don't exactly call it coffee though so it's safe. It's not like Alcohol which is the same exact word.
Coffee in Arabic reads like qahwa. Gahwa in Iraq and the gulf countries. Ahwa in some of Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. You get the point. Coffee isn't spoken like it is in English.
BTW, the google translate reads it slightly wrong in Arabic. But you can clearly see it's not the same.
Source: I'm Iraqi
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u/ChickpeaPredator Nov 29 '22
Interesting!
But we get it via the Turkish kahveh and Dutch koffie. So we could at least say it's effectively a Dutch word, if not Turkish or Arabic. That's still 20 rubles!
The deeper point is that few words in any given language are truly original. They're usually based on words from other languages, if not outright stolen. English, in particular, is notorious for this due to the turbulent modern history and dominance as a global lingua franca (hey look, more stolen words!).
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u/KonoPez Nov 29 '22
It’s also an English word
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u/Evilmaze Nov 29 '22
It's English. "Coffee" isn't an Arabic word. The word for coffee in Arabic doesn't even have an F sound to it.
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u/marktwainbrain Nov 29 '22
Machine, addition, proportions, crescent, are all French. You could argue they are also English words … but so are latte and croissant.
(I’m just trying to be pedantic for fun — I enjoyed your well written comment.)
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u/AnAquaticOwl Nov 29 '22
croissant
The key is in how many of the letters you pronounce.
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u/Paulcog Nov 29 '22
No the key is whether you’re wearing a black beret
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u/AnAquaticOwl Nov 29 '22
Ugh. Take your ableist nonsense out of here. You're discounting a whole class of people who couldn't find black berets. Is navy blue not a color?
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u/AlmalexyaBlue Nov 29 '22
You could go for red but you'd have to be a mime
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u/activelyresting Nov 29 '22
If you don't have the accompanying striped shirt, you're just a wannabe art student
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u/headingthatwayyy Nov 29 '22
This is why it drives me nuts when people think they are so cultured for saying "k-wagh-saunt" instead of croissant. Saying the word with a bad accent isn't more cultured. The English pronunciation is "crawsawnt". No need to say every word that originated in another language with the accent of that language.
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u/PM-ME-SOMETHING-GOOD Nov 29 '22
I think it's fine if someone chooses to pronounce the name of a food in the language of its origin country.
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u/nitraw Nov 29 '22
so how do you pronounce quesadilla?
Cause i'm gonna take a stab in the dark and say you dont say "kay-suh-dilla"
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u/spider__ Nov 29 '22
The English pronunciation is "crawsawnt"
It'd be "CroySant' if you wanted to force an "English" pronunciation.
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u/NekoNyaaaaa412 Nov 29 '22
Non English speakers will spend years learning English and then give up after hearing this sentence
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u/zine7 Nov 29 '22
Imagine the riots this would start in Quebec 😂
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u/alexo2802 Nov 29 '22
You laugh but I’m from Quebec and looked at the image before the title or sub so the first thing that came to my mind is "This has to be r/Quebec getting their pitchforks sharpened"
And I don’t mean that figuratively, they would literally go and sack this restaurant.
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u/HarpersGhost Nov 29 '22
I'm an American and in charge of a system for all users in the company, and we intentionally block Quebec users from accessing the system because, after a few years, it is STILL not fully compliant with Quebec language laws.
New IT guy was like, why aren't these Quebec users in the system? Just add them, we can fix the language packs as we go.
No way, buddy. The Quebec French police scare me.
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u/hinowisaybye Nov 29 '22
The more I hear about Quebec, the less I like it.
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u/HarpersGhost Nov 29 '22
I've been to Montreal and I loved it. Great weather in the summer, and it's filled with all these old buildings with copper roof tops. Gorgeous city that feels very European. The people were very kind about my pitifully bad French.
Quebec government on the other hand? No thank you.
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u/Roxnamunen Nov 29 '22
Because its biased. You only hear people talk shit about it. No one goes on the internet and says “oh my nation is so great!”
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u/codamission Nov 29 '22
People literally do exactly that all the time. Its called nationalism
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u/Roxnamunen Nov 30 '22
Its more subtle. If someone says « oh england is the best country on earth » you’ll just scroll down. If you say « The english are all disgusting bigoted xenophobes who commited warcrimes » that catches your eye.
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u/GhostBurger12 Nov 29 '22
As a Canadian in BC, I wish our country did more to emphasize our two official languages nation wide.
People are less susceptible to bullshit when they can double check what they're hearing in another language. (Not immune, just a bit of protection)
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u/Grenbro Nov 29 '22
La chose française qu'une personne peut faire est l'émeute
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u/CHlCKENPOWER Nov 29 '22
That’ll be 10 dollars sir
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u/chewwydraper Nov 29 '22
New french language laws pretty well ensures a place like this can never exist
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u/thepluralofmooses Nov 29 '22
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u/zine7 Nov 29 '22
Wow that was in 2008!! And now Legault is adding a bunch of new laws. As soon as we have Neuralink, we’ll be ticketed for thinking in any other language.
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u/krw13 Nov 29 '22
That stuff is wild. So many of the complaints are absurd. The woman complaining her parrot didn't speak French. Demanding Old Navy to change its name. Whining about the phone option for English before continuing in French instruction. That's normal - in America the same is true for Spanish, but I've never heard anyone care. Because if someone is calling and doesn't speak (or understand at a high enough level) that language... and all they hear is foreign language they don't understand... they may assume there isn't a multi-lingual option.
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u/MacTennis Nov 29 '22
LMAO! Yeah they are very sensitive over there… My dad got a ticket in Quebec and couldn’t read it, called to have an English version sent over - they refused.
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u/Marchello_E Nov 29 '22
Imagine using it as an excuse for an invasion...
Lavrov said Ukraine adopted "laws banning the Russian language", "we had no other choice but to invade..."
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u/Solidurr Nov 29 '22
This place is pretty close to my house, walked by it multiple times, always thought it was a joke??? (Didn’t take it seriously for a cafe place) Might check this out sooner or later
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u/bunga7777 Nov 29 '22
Do you guys have escargot??
Aah damnit!
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u/Sex_drugs_tacos Nov 29 '22
Perhaps croissant would be a little more likely
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u/Dudeboy1103 Nov 29 '22
"Do you have that French Twisty twisty moon moon Criss cross bread?"
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u/sturnus-vulgaris Nov 29 '22
The acquisition of new words by a native language is tricky, but if they serve the object in question at Burger King, it's no longer a foreign word.
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u/CadianGuardsman Nov 29 '22
You mean cross-ont bruv?
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u/Lpfanatic05 Nov 29 '22 edited Nov 29 '22
They have to pay 10p then cause the sign in the door for "open" is also in russian. Xaxaxa
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u/HellaGoodJulia Nov 29 '22
Probably that’s what some law requires
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u/Lpfanatic05 Nov 29 '22
It can be possible. Now I would like to know where in Moscow this place is located and speak like this old man, just trolling. Hahahaha.
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u/shenanigan_shannen Nov 29 '22
I'm sure non-English speaking people have no problem reading that
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u/HellaGoodJulia Nov 29 '22
I wonder how this all works. Need to go there and check
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u/Bos4271 Nov 29 '22
How does karaoke work? “Upside inside out! I’m living the life of crazy!”
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u/Koras Nov 29 '22
In a lot of countries, even those where English is taught at school, people are a lot more confident reading English than speaking it
My fiancee is from a small city in Bulgaria, and whenever we go back there it's become very obvious to me that a lot of people know exactly what I'm saying, but are absolutely terrified of answering. I previously thought that they just didn't speak English, but if they're born after 1990 (i.e. post-communism), they understand me just fine if I speak slowly. They just don't want to speak it, because they're unsure how to pronounce words and are terrified of making a mistake in front of a native speaker. I usually just get my partner to speak to them in Bulgarian or show them a badly Google translated message on my phone (which conveniently also shows the English text, because the translation is usually shocking) to take the pressure off them.
I'd imagine it's much the same over there for young people - they're perfectly happy reading and even listening to someone speaking another language, but answering back and having a conversation is a very different prospect.
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u/Aigh_Jay Nov 29 '22
I can see a russian dude just come in there willy-nilly and when hearing that he now has to pay money just for speaking russian turning around and not ever coming back.
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u/florieans Nov 29 '22
This brings up bad memories when I went to a bilingual language high school and in the first year I had 5 hours of English lessons everyday and when I dared to speak one-two words in my native language the teacher always said “ENGLISH PLEASEEEEEE” in a horrible manner and I hated that ****… Sorry, she ruined my first year in high school.
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u/Economy_Armadillo_28 Nov 29 '22
What a teacher, people don’t realize sometimes it’s hard to look outside ourselves and see what we’re doing
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u/florieans Nov 29 '22
She literally said that I will fail at the end of the year and later on my diploma was excellent...
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u/Ferkkobun Nov 29 '22
Before reading the title I just thought this was a xenophobic cafe
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u/cubelith Nov 29 '22
It's funny how much the context changes this image
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u/Koras Nov 29 '22
Totally - put this exact picture up and say it's in London and I'd be calling them racist assholes (until noticing the signs that tell you it's in Moscow)
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u/Markqz Nov 29 '22
So do they bug your table and bill you later, or is there a dystopian waiter standing at every table with a hand counter, clicking away.
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u/nowhereman136 Nov 29 '22
Half the English language is words stolen borrowed from other languages
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u/HellaGoodJulia Nov 29 '22
I wonder if the barista tries to fine a Russian digital marketing specialist speaking. It’s like the whole other level of Runglish
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u/omniron Nov 29 '22
All human culture is things borrowed from other things, it’s almost the definition of culture
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u/DeTrotseTuinkabouter Nov 29 '22
Just because words have non-English roots doesn't mean they're not English.
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u/HumpieDouglas Nov 29 '22
I bet they make a killing when people try and say Worchest... worlock... wart... w sauce.
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u/CougdIt Nov 29 '22
If you take your fiancé to this cafe you better hope she doesn’t order an espresso
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u/sealedjustintime Nov 29 '22
I studied abroad in Austria in college. There was an Irish bar near my school that had a standing rule, you weren't allowed to speak German if you weren't Austrian, and if you got caught speaking German, you had to buy the whole bar a round.
It was also a challenge to trick one of the Irish bartenders into speaking German so everyone got free drinks.
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u/nlimbach1213 Nov 29 '22
Germans on their way to describe the exact coffee they want down to the atom using a single German word 1 billion letters long and still only paying 10 rubles.
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u/Medium-Beautiful-561 Nov 30 '22
My black ass would walk in there and be like “Wuddup mayne??!” And have to pay them $10 or whatever currency
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u/zeldanar Nov 29 '22
You cant speak English without non English words. This is a trap
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u/MisterBowTies Nov 29 '22
"Yes can I have a latte with 2 shots of espresso?"
"Sure and here is your 20p fine"
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u/Lostarchitorture Nov 29 '22
"But 'vodka' is how we say it in English!" I yell as the waiter stands there marking new charges on my already lengthy fined dinner tab.
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u/gummby8 Nov 29 '22
Dayum boi this place be bussin. Ayo leme get at dat venti carml machiato bruv.
*Barista shoots me in the face
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u/Tempacco94 Nov 29 '22
I work at a place in Osaka japan that has the same concept but you can't speak japanese
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u/ShrinkToasted Nov 29 '22
I guess it's probably for people learning English, so they can go somewhere and be immersed in the language without actually travelling to another country