English-Urdu False Friends

For those of you who don't know, Urdu is national language of Pakistan. It is written right-to-left in modified Arabic script.

False Friends are pairs of words from two languages which have different meanings in each language but they sound almost or exactly the same. One example is the word die. In Dutch it means that one and in English - well you know what it means in English. I think you get the point.

There are several words in Urdu that have false friends in English with totally different meanings:

Following is a small list of English words and their totally different meanings in Urdu:

English Word	Definition in Urdu
Ball	Hair, Child
Bay	2nd letter of Urdu, (prefix) Without
Be	(loosely) Ma'am
Bean	A musical instrument
Bot	Weights for scale
Bus	Stop, End, Enough
Car	Work, Action, Act
Cheese	Thing, Object
Chore	Thief
Coffee	Enough
Façade	Corruption, Riot, Infighting
Fay	26th letter of Urdu
Fuck	Pale (usually with fear)
Gall	Cheek
Gee	Yes
Gill	A clan of Jat people
Gnaw	No
Hay	9th and 33rd letters of Urdu
Hey	9th and 33rd letters of Urdu
Late	To lie down
Light	Electricity
Mall	Money, Wealth
Naw	No
Noon	31st letter of Urdu
Now	Boat
Or	And
Ore	And
Pawn	A chewable stimulant made of Betel leaf and tobacco
Pit	To lose a contest
Pore	Part of Finger
Pull	Bridge
Ray	14th letter of Urdu, (a rude way of addressing someone) hey, you
Seen	18th letter of Urdu
Shean	19th letter of Urdu
Wow	32nd letter of Urdu
Yay	35th and 36th letters of Urdu

I will update this list as new words come up. Please visit again.

Last Updated: September 12, 2017

Blueprint Films and Pakistan

Growing up in Pakistan, young boys, as they hit puberty and start getting curious, come to know of mythological existence of Blueprints or Blueprint Films (and pictures).

The legend is that in these Blueprints “films” or photographs naked people engage in open debauchery for your viewing pleasure. As an inevitable consequence, Blueprint is a dirty word and is not menat for a polite company. Its abbreviation, BP, is also not meant to be said unless it is in the context of medical health of a person in which case it simply refers to blood pressure.

My dear Pakistani men and boys, I have a bit of bad news for you. There is no such thing as Blueprint films, or pictures for that matter. In other words, Blueprint does not mean dirty films or photographs. Outside Pakistan, blueprint is not a dirty word. (I have been told that our favourite enemies in the east and frenemies across east are also suffering from same lingual incertitude.)

According to a dictionary¹ following is the meaning of blueprint:

a photographic print in white on a bright blue ground or blue on a white ground used especially for copying maps, mechanical drawings, and architects' plans

In simple words, blueprint is a technical map or drawing of a building or machine drawn with white lines on a blue background.

Here are some examples of real blueprints:

Blueprint of an old airplane

Blueprint of spaceship from Star Trek

Blueprint of Batman's car

In normal conversation in English language, blueprint often means a plan or scheme.

In olden days, dirty movies were referred to as blue movies which somehow became blueprint movies in Pakistan. The terminology of blue movies still exists but is rarely used in English language.

Therefore, my dear Pakistanis, STOP using the word blueprint for dirty films.

References:

1. "Blueprint." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2014. .