But what does this mean in Portuguese?

By , 22 Jan 2018, 21:05 PM Lifestyle
But what does this mean in Portuguese? Neža Loštrek

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The strange twists in cross language meanings. 

January 22, 2018

A few days ago I was sitting on the corner of a local bar, not far from the sign where the pedestrian zone ends. Cona, the sign reads, with a picture of a walking woman and a child crossed out below this.

A group of young people walked by and a woman stopped at the sign.

“What does this mean?” she asked her friend, presumably a local.



”It means an area,” he replied.

“Oh,” she said, “do you know what this means in Portuguese? A pussy.” 

The answer was a bit too much even for the eavesdropper I am, so I had to check online whether this was true –  and it was. In fact, the word is of even lower register, imagine the worst possible sounding word in English: that is what cona means in Portuguese.

It thus might be quite a shock for a Portuguese-speaking person walking round Ljubljana, this word jumping at them from every corner, I thought.

Well, it could be worse. I read online that Cona is a very popular surname in certain parts of Italy.

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