Buying Your Bong at the Movies!
I was at the movies with my Norwegian friend the other day and she asked me ‘Har du en bong med deg? (Have you a ‘bong’ with you?’) I stopped ‘I didn’t think it was that kind of movie!’ A moment of ‘what the?’ passed. In her sentence I knew every word except bong and so it just translated to me as… ‘bong’. Little did I know that bong means ‘ticket’ in Norwegian. I was always taught that ‘ticket’ was billett. Oh well, now I know what the checkout chick is saying when she is asking me ‘do you want your ‘bong’? (Vil du ha bongen din?)
by in category Language, Norlish, Quirks & Tickles
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Haha! I would have made the same mistake! Lisa, American transplanted in Hamar
Actually, “bong” is not “ticket”, but “stub”. “Bong” is also slang for “receipt”.
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from L-Jay:
On check-out software in Norway it says: ‘slett bong’ or ‘skrive bongkopi’ so… the ‘slang’ has certainly turned into the real deal.
Also ‘bong’ might translate into ‘stub’ in Norwegian but in English it means ‘ticket’. For example, you have a ‘ticket/bong’ for a free drink at a party.
A ‘stub’ in English is the bit of paper retained by the seller to keep a record of the sale of the ticket that has been torn away. Like in raffle tickets: the buyer gets the ticket and the seller retains the stub.
What I’m discovering the more I learn Norwegian is how much Norwegians have mistranslated their words into English. For example: ‘på’ – in Norwegian language class we are taught that ‘på’ means ‘on’ in English where, in fact, it actually means ‘on’ and ‘at’ depending on context. Language always changes and therefore translations must continually change to keep up – however, translations in Norway from Norwegian to English, at least, have seemed to stay the same. Maybe a ‘reformation’ of Norwegian words into English needs to happen? What do you think?
I’ve never heard that word before,and I’m Norwegian. I use billett.
As far as I know as Norwegian, “bong” isn’t by most considered fully interchangable with “billett”(ticket). I have only heard it when related to beer or drinks. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if many youths are beginning to replace it with ticket also in other contexts.