I Can Eat Glass

I haven&#x27;t come across this one before, a similar project is <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;omniglot.com&#x2F;language&#x2F;phrases&#x2F;hovercraft.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;omniglot.com&#x2F;language&#x2F;phrases&#x2F;hovercraft.htm</a> (&#x27;my hovercraft is full of eels&#x27; from Monty Python&#x27;s Flying Circus)

One of the external links is a page that uses translations of the phrase as a UTF-8 rendering test. It has 150 translations, including some weird ones like Old Norse: ᛖᚴ ᚷᛖᛏ ᛖᛏᛁ ᚧ ᚷᛚᛖᚱ ᛘᚾ ᚦᛖᛋᛋ ᚨᚧ ᚡᛖ ᚱᚧᚨ ᛋᚨᚱ and Inuktitut: ᐊᓕᒍᖅ ᓂᕆᔭᕌᖓᒃᑯ ᓱᕋᙱᑦᑐᓐᓇᖅᑐᖓ<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.columbia.edu&#x2F;~fdc&#x2F;utf8.html#glass" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.columbia.edu&#x2F;~fdc&#x2F;utf8.html#glass</a>

What synchronicity! My work slack status is currently this phrase, in Swahili, translated by a recent hire with whom I connected over love of language.<p>The one time I have been able to bust out my knowledge of Swedish (limited to this one phrase) in order to try and flirt, the focus of my attentions was... not impressed. I couldn&#x27;t tell if it was because I was not impressive, or just a cultural mismatch. In any case, it didn&#x27;t discourage me from continuing to learn.

2019, 84 comments <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21121982">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21121982</a><p>Mainly anecdotes about fun language confusions ;)

For anyone who doesn&#x27;t know, the student who made the &#x27;I Can Eat Glass&#x27; project is Ethan Mollick. He&#x27;s now a professor at Wharton and in my opinion he is the best public LLM whisperer!

How interesting to use a comma splice in a phrase that&#x27;s purpose-built for translations. I wonder if that was a deliberate choice.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Comma_splice" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Comma_splice</a>

I love this. My coworkers and I call ourselves glasseaters since we&#x27;re all so scrappy.<p>The guy who started this translation project (per the wikipedia) was himself a startup founder <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;emollick&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;emollick&#x2F;</a>.

It is strange that Wikipedia claims that this became a meme, yet knowyourmeme.com is completely unaware of its memeness. That website is typically a solid source for the dankest and&#x2F;or most obscure memes you ever met.

It&#x27;s interesting that the page says that Afrikaans was derived from Dutch in the 20th century, but the two languages are so different.<p>Dutch: <i>Ik kan glas eten. Het doet geen pijn.</i> Afrikaans: <i>Ek kan glas eet, dit maak my nie seer nie</i><p>The truth, of course, is that Afrikaans split off from Dutch centuries earlier, but it wasn&#x27;t a &quot;prestige language&quot; until the 20th century.<p>The page comes from a more innocent time, when the internet hadn&#x27;t hit critical mass, and you could get away with stuff like that without pedants fact-checking you to death.

&gt;Saying &quot;I can eat glass, it does not hurt me&quot;, however, ensures that the speaker &quot;will be viewed as an insane native, and treated with dignity and respect&quot;.<p>Well, I&#x27;m not sure where Michel Lotito [0] (aka Monsieur Mangetout) fits w&#x2F; this ...<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Michel_Lotito" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Michel_Lotito</a>

The nuance of the Dutch translation is slightly wrong, possibly implying eating glass in general doesn&#x27;t hurt. Just a heads-up for those going to the old archived website in search of medical advice.

I used to play online games at an hour when a lot of Japanese players were online, I asked my sister who was studying Japanese for some phrases to say and this was one of them. Now I know where she got it from! I also used this phrase when I was visiting Australia and met two Japanese guys at a bar, they thought it was hilarious.

“Mi hermano está enfermo pero mis pantalones son rojos.”<p>This was my favorite bombastic phrase in Spanish—for the same purpose: to be “viewed as an insane native, and treated with dignity and respect”

The Mandarin translation is incorrect. The he chose close homophones of the right words, but they have the wrong tones. You can verify this by translating the image back to English.

When I was in Julliard pre-college music school, there was a girl I had a crush on. She was from South Africa and I wanted to impress her. But being 14 years old, I didn’t want to say something cheesy. So I asked my Dutch friends how to say this (it is the same in Afrikaans)…<p>Beware of the giant chicken! It will eat your hair.

Awesome. I remember this from the early internet. I think from everything2. An older code, but it checks out.

I was just thinking about this the other day; how strange to see that others remember and were thinking the same.

I read the title as grass and got excited...

&gt; Saying &quot;I can eat glass, it does not hurt me&quot;, however, ensures that the speaker &quot;will be viewed as an insane native, and treated with dignity and respect&quot;.<p>If there is anything rambling insane people get it is dignity and respect.

&gt; Saying &quot;I can eat glass, it does not hurt me&quot;, however, ensures that the speaker &quot;will be viewed as an insane native, and treated with dignity and respect&quot;.<p>Since context is such an important part of many languages, this almost guarantees no one will understand you unless you have perfect pronunciation

I had tons of friends who could do this literally in primary school (Nigeria) .. and it was normal. It&#x27;s funny the things you pick up as a kid in Nigeria that people look at you in amazement when you do it. For instance, the awes I get when I crack open a beer bottle with my teeth. Granted every kid in Nigeria could do this (soda bottles) since they were 6.

Once I met a young man who was able to eat glass, literally. I saw, right in front of me, him break a glass with his teeth, chew the pieces until they were very fine, and swallow everything. To prove that he wasn&#x27;t hiding the pieces in his mouth, he made a point of opening his mouth wide and showing that he had indeed swallowed them.

I asked chatgpt the following:<p><pre><code> Please translate the sentence &quot;I can eat glass, it does not hurt me&quot; into 50 different languages. Include a pronunciation guide for English speakers for each. </code></pre> And was not disappointed at all.

insane -&gt; dignity, respect<p>?