Today on Monday Mysteries we take a quick look at an advertising campaign we saw in Hamburg. The mystery: did the person who created the ad know the potential for its (mis)interpretation by an English speaker?

In order to appreciate the ad we saw, you will need to know that in German

• the word for “bath” – as in a bathtub or a public bath – is Bad
  It’s a classic example of a “false friend” when you’re learning the language, as the meaning of the similar sounding/looking words are radically different in English and German.
• the word for “idea” in German is Idee
  Now this word is not a false friend, as the meanings are the same in these two similar sounding words.
  
• you can form compound words in Germany by combining any two nouns together

OK. Now that we know that, consider the ad campaign on the side of a truck we walked by in Hamburg:

Advertisement for a Badidee, Hamburg

Badidee = Bad Idee = “bath idea”

Of course, it also immediately struck both Chris and I that this ad and the photo in it was a a rather bad Bad idea, in a variety of ways. For starters, how big would your home have to be to have a bathtub that was big enough for the whole family?

Anyway, some fun with language and the mystery of odd advertising campaigns: starting the week off right today on Monday Mysteries. 😉