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".