>>Vreemde talen - You should translate into 'foreign languages', but you might think 'weird languages'.
>>Vreemdeling - You should think 'foreigner', but you might think 'weird person'.
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>Reminds me of Orson Scott Card's four levels of strangers, probably based on Nordic version of the same words.
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>As yet another example of the common roots of words across the vast family of Indo-European language, the corresponding word "strange" also has the same two meanings - something foreign and/or something not-quite-the-way-normal-people-are. The same pair of meanings exists in Russian, in a way: stranniy means not-regular, weird, but the other meaning is, IIRC, covered by inostranniy - foreign, from other country. However, "strana" is a country, "storona" is a side.
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>Now in Serbian (et al), "strani" means only foreign, not strange, "strana" means a side (left/right, inner/outer, over/under, but not a side of meat) but also a page (for it's a side of a sheet of paper), "inostrani" is foreign (from the other side), "inostranstvo" - the rest of the world except one's country. However, the word for strange-as-weird is "čudan" - from "čudo", a miracle, with "čudak" - a weirdo, "čudesan" - amazing, "čudovište" - a monster.
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>Go figure.

In English, strange usually means only "out of the ordinary". A stranger, OTOH CAN mean foreigner, but usually just someone not from rounf these parts. In French, however, you hsve "etranger" which means both (just as their "histoire" can be story or history)