As the more faithful reader will have noticed, I like collecting stuff in lists. Here is yet another one, this time of funny transpositions. (Please note, that this one, like some of the others, is work in progress: I will be adding to it each time I find something, and additions are welcome).
The best pair so far is marital - martial, because they are both adjectives and can therefore be exchanged one on one, as in martial sex and relations, marital arts and sports. Tied at second place are complaint - compliant, because of their psuedo-opposite meaning, and united - untied, especially when capitalized and linked with the word "Nations". Other examples, in decreasing order of perfection: from - form, Brian - brain, Daniel - denial, intimation - imitation, filtration - flirtation.
Of course, this sort of thing occurs in all kinds of languages. My favorite Spanish example is como - moco (meaning "I eat" and "snot", respectively), but there are many many more. As individual words, they can be found almost anywhere, but when the mating season comes around, they all seem to migrate towards the notebooks of stand-up comedians and writers, as if these notebooks were some kind of Noah's Ark (which, come to think of it, could be paired to the word "car", to form a homophonic transposition).
And of course there are transpositions that are not much use to comedians, but quite interesting to linguists, such as crocodile (EN) - cocodrilo (ES) kabeljauw -. baccalao which are almost homonyms and both mean "cod", but one is Dutch and the other Portuguese. (See this link if you are interested how this came about).
The best pair so far is marital - martial, because they are both adjectives and can therefore be exchanged one on one, as in martial sex and relations, marital arts and sports. Tied at second place are complaint - compliant, because of their psuedo-opposite meaning, and united - untied, especially when capitalized and linked with the word "Nations". Other examples, in decreasing order of perfection: from - form, Brian - brain, Daniel - denial, intimation - imitation, filtration - flirtation.
Of course, this sort of thing occurs in all kinds of languages. My favorite Spanish example is como - moco (meaning "I eat" and "snot", respectively), but there are many many more. As individual words, they can be found almost anywhere, but when the mating season comes around, they all seem to migrate towards the notebooks of stand-up comedians and writers, as if these notebooks were some kind of Noah's Ark (which, come to think of it, could be paired to the word "car", to form a homophonic transposition).
And of course there are transpositions that are not much use to comedians, but quite interesting to linguists, such as crocodile (EN) - cocodrilo (ES) kabeljauw -. baccalao which are almost homonyms and both mean "cod", but one is Dutch and the other Portuguese. (See this link if you are interested how this came about).
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