I’ve actually developed a weird automatic response because of my job. Every time I talk to a broker or someone on the phone they say, “Hi pbbth, this is Broker Bob. How are you? I need to know about…” and they just rush right through without ever waiting for an answer to the “how are you” portion of their greeting. Because of this now when people ask me how I’m doing I don’t respond for a good 5 seconds or more. Just staring at people when they ask you how you are doing really freaks some people out.
I’m sure there’s plenty but a then-humiliating one always springs to mind:
Cute guy who I had a crush on as a pre-teen: “Do you like Salt and Peppa?”
Me, confused, but: waxes eloquent about condiments
Him: “No, I mean the band.”
:smack: :smack: :smack:
Back in the mid 70’s, me and my sister ( who were 10 and 11 at the time) were at my cousins house. She was 16 years old, the same age as my brother. As we were leaving, my cousin told my sister to ask my brother if he wanted to go to a concert with her since she had an extra ticket.
Conversation between by brother and sister:
Sis: “Nancy wants to know if you want to go to a concert with her and her friends. She has an extra ticket for you.”
Bro: “Oh yeah? What concert is it?”
Sis: “I can’t remember the name exactly. It was some guys name. Sounded like the name was Guy Galaband.”
Bro: “Guy Galaband? I never heard of him. Are you sure that’s the name?”
Sis: “Yeah, that’s it. Guy Galaband. She wants you to call her if you wanna go.”
Bro: (laughing) “I never heard of the guy. Sounds lame. I’m not going.”
Turns out he turned down a ticket to the J. Geils Band.
On the way home from a self-drive holiday in France, we get off the ferry and I say to the ladyfriend: “Right, are you ready for this?”.
What I meant: “I’ve been driving since 7 a.m., we agreed to swap once we were back in England, here are the keys.”
What she heard: “Brace yourself, I’m going to dump you.”
The caretaker of my school in Bulgaria, who was prone to asking me really weird and/or personal questions, once asked me if America had customs. I was like, no, we are the land of blank slates. We have no holidays or specialty food items.
(Actually, I stared at him for a moment and said “what?” at which point he elaborated, giving me some Bulgarian customs as examples. Then I said, “yes, we have customs.”)
I have these weird misunderstandings pretty much every day here in India. Most of my colleagues speak English fluently, and I speak English fluently, but sometimes our English doesn’t really match up and then we have really bizarre conversations trying to figure out what the other is talking about. For some reason, it usually happens when I make some kind of offhand remark that isn’t really worth the effort, and by the time we’ve untangled it, I’m embarrassed to have said it in the first place.
OH this reminds me of something really funny that happened last month. I was the only person in the office, so when the phone rang, I picked it up and answered in my best receptionist voice. (And I used to work retail AND I was an office manager, so I know how to do this.)
Me: Good afternoon, [company name].
Person: Hello, is [boss] there?
Me: No, he’s out of the office today. Can I take a message?
Person: Is [boss] there?
Me: No, he’s not. Can I take a message?
Person: Can you please speak English?
My coworkers practically died laughing when I told them about this. It’s become a running joke, with them constantly asking me to speak English.
In Japanese, people leave off the subjects of sentences, unless they are specifically not understood. Combined with the lack of articles “a” and “the,” and that verbs are not congicated by 1st, 2nd, 3rd person or singular or plural, figuring out what the other person is taking about can be challenging. Even natives get confused. A typical converstion:
A: (something? someone? I? The cat?) Finally went.
B: At last.
A: (I? someone’s grandmother? the neighbor?) think(s) so.
B: (the fact that someone, something, you, the cat) (went, (if we’re still talking about the same subject)) is terrible (because it should have been the dog? because it took a lot of planning? because you will be gone for 5 years now, so we’ll have to break up?)
That people don’t misunderstand more often is amazing.
The scary thing is, I can translate that right back into Japanese!
Early in my first semester of Japanese, this resulted in one of my few in-class mistakes. We were supposed to come up with a few sentences about ourselves. I decided to say that I have a cat, and that I speak Latin. What I said was:
猫があります。ラテン語を話します。
My teacher looked at me and said, “Your cat speaks Latin?”
What’s especially funny is that if the sentences would have been in the opposite order, the meaning would have been what I intended.