Incidents of In My Language, That Sounds Like... specifically involving the Bulgarian language.
- In Bulgarian and some other Slavic languages, "неделя" ("nedElya") or some similar word means "Sunday", and is an amalgamation of two words: "не" ("ne"), which simply negates whatever follows, and old Slavic word that sounds like "delo", meaning "work" (so Sunday is "no-work-day"). Makes sense, it's the day when nobody works, right? Both small words actually exist in Russian with the same meaning; but "неделя" also exists in Russian and means "week". Bulgarian used to have "nedelya" meaning "week" too, in the sense of "the time from one Suday to another", before it got replaced with "sedmitza" ("seven-parter").
- In Bulgarian, "kotka" means cat and "matka" means uterus. In Finnish "kotka" means eagle and "matka" means journey.
- German "Ebene" ("plain" or "plane") and "eben" ("just so"), cognates to English "even", sound like "ебане" [ebane], "[the act of] fucking". Ditto for English "ebb".
- "Кур" [kur] used, as in Old Slavic, to mean "rooster", but much like "cock" in English, has evolved as an euphemism for phallus (and then also became just as obscene). In Bulgarian, it has only retained that meaning, making Russian "курица" [kuritsa] ("hen") sound funny, as well as unrelated words like "курить" [kurit'] ("to smoke") and names such as "Кура" [Kura] (in Bulgarian: "The Dick") and "Курск" [Kursk]. Other languages aren't safe either, such as German "Kur" ("cure") and "Kurort" ("resort", which has been introduced to Bulgarian and is hence a subject of puns when complaining about a resort's low quality) or Romanian "cur" ("ass").
- Speaking of Romanian, there's "buza" which means "lip" in Romanian but "cheek" in Bulgarian. One could imagine some romantic drama ensuing along the lower Danube. Other such words exist, owing to the two countries' history of being closely associated with one another until the Late Middle Ages but then diverging.
- Anything with "ser-" ("serum", "seropositive", "serotonine", "serine", "serrated") could sound funny, because of the verb "сера" [sera] ("to poop"). This includes any word derived from the Italian "sera" (evening), such as "serenade" or even the greeting "buona sera".
- Any mention of the phrase "all I know" will raise eyebrows because it sounds like "о, лайно" ("oh, [a piece of] shit").
- English names "Michael" and "Mike" sound like "майка" [maika] ("mother").
- Even Latin isn't safe. One notorious example is the mountain pine, Pinus mugo. When written together with the name of its discoverer, Antonio Turra, it reads like Pinus mugo Turra, which sounds like "'mu go tura", or "[I'm] gonna put it into [him/it]".
- "Путка" [putka] is Country Matters, so foreign critics make fun of Vladimir Putin's name. One Bulgarian footballer happened to be interviewed by a South African journalist named Putco Mafani, which in Bulgarian sounds like a demented form of "you cunt, grab me".
- In the early 2000s, the Indian company Mittal Steel, property of the Mittal family, purchased Bulgaria's foremost metalworking facility. Their name coincidentally sounds like the Bulgarian word for "metal" as spoken with an Eastern Bulgarian accent.
- "Add" and "Ad" both sound like "Ад" (hell).
- Germans, especially former East Germans, saying "cheers" ("Prost") should be aware that this means "uncultured/stupid [man]" in Bulgarian.
- направо (napravo) means "direct; straight; outright" in Bulgarian and "right (turn)" in Russian.
- плод (plod) means "fruit" in Bulgarian and "foetus" in Russian.
- фамилия (familiya) means "surname" in Russian and Bulgarian.
