From: utzoo!watmath!rvpalliende
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Title: Re: burro
Article-I.D.: watmath.3176
Posted: Mon Aug  2 12:16:25 1982
Received: Tue Aug  3 02:16:55 1982


Spanish for donkey: burro. Spanish for butter: mantequilla (or manteca)
Italian for butter: burro.
Therefore, the story has the words Italy and Spain interchanged.

Interlanguage homonyms are called "false cognates".
Here goes another one:
Some Brazilian friends ov my parents were in Chile.
(Brazil => Portuguese; Chile => Spanish)
They were very surprised by the Spanish saying: "Wait for a mouse".
In the bank, in the restaurant, everywhere they were told to wait for a mouse.
It turned out that the Spanish sentence was "Espere un rato", which means
"Wait a while", but in Portuguese means "Wait for a mouse".