An example of what I mean:
I, in China, told an English speaking Chinese friend I needed to stop off in the bathroom to “take a shit.”
He looked appalled and after I asked why he had that look, he asked what I was going to do with someone’s shit.
I had not laughed so hard in a while, and it totally makes sense.
I explained it was an expression for pooping, and he comes back with, “wouldn’t that be giving a shit?”
I then got to explain that to give a shit means you care and I realized how fucked some of our expressions are.
What misunderstandings made you laugh?
Not my story, but one a friend told me.
Someone had the misconception that there was a huge, huge sector of labor dedicated to working in cemeteries in the USA. Like almost everyone knew at least one person who worked at a cemetery. This misconception arose due to the ubiquity of the term “graveyard shift” regardless of the actual job being performed.
What is a graveyard shift?
It typically refers to any job where you’re working overnight, like from midnight to 8AM.
When your scheduled working hours is during the nighttime, 12am - 5 am or so
I can’t think of one off hand, but yours (E: and several of the replies) made me lol, thanks 😂
Glad to hear!
Apparently roasted corn is funny in Spanish. 🤪
When I was living in Japan (about 20 years ago now), I was dating a Filipino woman who spoke very good English. But I quickly learned that she didn’t understand colloquialisms.
There was one day when she kept calling me multiple times throughout the day. After the 5th or 6th call, I picked up the phone and said, “Jeez, you’re killing me!”
She immediately started crying and asked, “Why would you ever say that?! I would never kill you!” Which got a laugh out of me and just made her cry even harder.
I quickly realized she didn’t understand English expressions. I explained it to her, but she said she didn’t want me to ever say it again, because just hearing the accusation hurt her, even if I didn’t literally mean it.
While dating her, I became hyper vigilant to the amount of expressions we use in English. I had to continually rephrase everything I said because I caught myself using so many colloquialisms that she just didn’t understand. She took everything so literally!
Our Austrian exchange student told us “My sister wants to be a wet”.
The v sound is hard for German speakers
No it isn’t, they use it all the time - “wenn, was, wo” all read as “v”. The “double u” sound is the thing that trips them up - it’s common in slavic languages, not so much in germanic ones. For slavic the polish ł or russian “lambda” symbol sound like the “w” in wet. Could also be the accent, but I would wager it was more wires being crossed and saying “wet”, instead of a problem with pronounciation
it was probably written in a text
Yeah, could also be that, but OP said “told us”. Which means they used “w”. Unless the sister made a mistake too. But then again, why would she say that in english. Vet in german is “Tierarzt” which isn’t close to the english “veterinarian”.
I’m just saying I’ve seen plenty germans text that misspelling. “are we going to the wet tomorrow?” would be a classic misspelling of a German writing English
That’s true, but I come across a lot of German speakers and I can attest that they seem to find it difficult when speaking English. Or they mix it up a lot anyway. I do it myself fairly often in Dutch with V and F.
Loose fit, but my family lived in Australia for a few years. We’re German. One night, my dad feels like a shake after a long drive to a vacation spot, so he drives up to a McDonald’s and orders, the rest of the family dozing in the car.
“One erdber shake, please.”
“Excuse me?”
“One erdber shake, please?”
“… I don’t understand.”
At this point my mum realized.
“Oh, a strawberry shake!”
We all have a bit of a laugh. He said the German word for strawberry, but pronounced it English. None of us in the car realized and we all understood. The lady in the drive through said she thought they invented a new flavor she didn’t know about.
He also swaps the th and s in Thous Australia. :)
My argentenian friend called stuffed crust pizza “the pizza with cheese borders”.
Still call it that almost 20 years later.
I went to the doctor because I was worried about me grinding my teeth (bruxism).
Instead of saying “hagishiri” or 歯ぎしり I said “hagEshiri” or ハゲ尻
so I told to the doctor I was worried about my bald ass.
Haha amazing.
An American, English speaking friend was told to order food in Chinese while we were there and ended up making the whole restaurant laugh when he very loudly let her know he was sterile. According to our hosts haha.
I heard a story of an American student in Beijing asking for “paigu mien” (pork rib noodles), but he rather confused the waitress by asking for “pigu mien”, bottom (arse) noodles!
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The other day there was a girl on the train responding to the conductor saying “Nächster Halt, Itzehoe” (next stop, Itzehoe), which sounds exactly like “It’s a hoe”. She went “It’s a what!?” with her companion cracking up immediately.
I, an English speaker, was interacting with a Spanish patient at work. It was me first week, and it had been a long while since I had spoken Spanish but I had been nearly fluent for years. The patient had neck pain. I walked in and very confidently asked “Donde esta el dolor en su culo?” They looked shocked, turned red and said, “OH NO!” and I immediately realized I asked them “Where is the pain in your asshole?” confusing culo (asshole) with cuello (neck). I apologized profusely and they couldn’t stop laughing about it during the whole appointment. Good times.
Polish word for “searching” - “szukanie” - means “fucking” (the performance thereof) in Slovak language. This becomes a topic - and a source of amusement and confusion - almost every time people from these countries meet together, because how often these words are used.
A student was telling me about their pet dog, but it sounded like “duck.” I kept asking questions like, “how did you get a duck? Your parents bought you a duck?” They couldn’t tell the difference between what I was saying either. They showed me a picture and that cleared right up.
When my wife was in university, she went on an exchange with a dozen other students to a Chinese university. The program assigned her group a pair of local guides.
The first night, the guides offered to take them out for snake. Everyone refused.
The second night, the guides repeatedly offered everyone snake, saying that there were plenty of local places to get snake. Everyone refused.
The third night, her group had a discussion. They didn’t want to offend their gracious hosts. Snake had to be a popular local delicacy, because the guides repeated their offer daily.
They decided to be adventurous. One of them spoke up: “yes, we would like to try snake…”
The guide said, “what kind of snake do you want? chips? hot dog?”
A friend of mine was doing work-study in France and thought she was offering to show her coworkers her cat. Thankfully her coworkers informed her that she was being more than just friendly and how to actually offer to show her feline.
Strange how in polite French society, there are no female cats. Similar to rabbits in Spain…
Nor dogs in America
Is the difference here like chat and chatte? I’m not familiar with the French word for female genitalia.
