I’m not talking about saying, “Oh, you big dumb smelly Yank!” Or even preconceptions about Americans—lord knows, I KNOW what they are!
I mean puns and names and such. Log onto the www.engrish.com web site and you’ll see attempts to translate Japanese into English that often has hilarious results. Also, third-grade “funny” foreign names like Hu Flung Dung, Fritz von Schpittendroolen, Paddy O’Furniture or Lord Loveaduck.
Are there any multilingual Dopers who can recall American names or phrases or products that are particularly hilarious to foreigners?
On a related note (perhaps this is a subtopic), I’ve been wondering if English speakers from other countries besides the US, such as Britain, Australia, and maybe even Canada (although we’re pretty close, eh) imitate, or at least try to immitate, US accents, and if so, what they sound like.
I’ve also been wondering if I can get through the rest of the day without typing another run-on sentence.
Hee hee. The first thing I thought of when I saw this title was my 2 friends from France. They like to call Americans “Merde-in-a-cans”. It’s all payback for the time I called them stinky.
On a related note (perhaps this is a subtopic), I’ve been wondering if English speakers from other countries besides the US, such as Britain, Australia, and maybe even Canada (although we’re pretty close, eh) imitate, or at least try to immitate, US accents, and if so, what they sound like.
I’ve also been wondering if I can get through the rest of the day without typing another run-on sentence.
I read (probably on this very messageboard) that when the Japanese want to imitate Americans in a silly way they throw up their hands and say “Oh my God!”.
Heehee.
This is true. The Chinese do it too. I did not realize how often many Americans (especially young people) say “Oh my god!” until I caught some Asian friends imitating the habit.
Eve, I’ve had both Japanese- and Chinese-reading friends tell me that many of the characters printed on Asian-themed t-shirts and such are either 1) utter nonsense or 2) do not mean what they are billed in English as meaning. My sister, who studied Chinese for a couple of years, once had an art class with a girl who had recent gotten a tattoo of what she believed was a Chinese character that meant something like “the mystical feminine power of womanhood.” According to my sister, the character was simply “girl.” Just plain old “girl”, as in “It’s a girl, Mrs. Walker!”
Strainger, I’ve heard Brits imitate American accents, with varying degrees of success. It’s just like Americans imitating British accents.
Similar story:
One of my former roommates came home and wanted to show me his new tattoo.
Roommate: “Dude, what do you think of my new tat?”
Me: “It says ‘Earth’.”
Roommate: “No, it doesn’t, it means ‘warrior’!”
Me: “Uh, sorry, but it means, ‘earth’ or ‘dirt’”
Then I got my hanja dictionary and showed him. The character for “earth” has a long stroke on the bottom and a short stroke on top, whereas “warrior” is opposite-- short stroke on bottom, long on top. Was he pissed!
They must have a middle initial and the forename has to be a surname. For instance there was a minor character in a kids’ comic in the '30s (no I wasn’t alive then) called Fisher T. Fish.
Even more so they’d have to be cross-cultural and over-elaborate, like Irving P. Rickenbacker IV or something.
I thought I was going to die laughing at a cricket match in Christchurch, New Zealand. I had a video camera with me, and these two guys I didn’t know came up to me and asked if they could address my fellow Americans back home. They had been drinking…
The first guy broke into this hilarious Kiwis of Hazzard accent:
“Yeeee-HAW, Ah jest love sittin’ round drankin’ McFuckin’Budweiser an’ shootin’ people! Got a fuckin’ Kentucky Fried Chicken on every fuckin’ corner!”
The next guy held up a can of Canterbury Draught (which I happened to like, but which my fellow travellers very much did not) and said:
“Look, Yanks, if you’re not drinking this, you’re drinking utter piss.”
But I only told you that story so I could better explain this. When I was there, everyone, and I mean everyone called me “Colonel Sanders.” Why? Because I had a goatee with handlebars. KFC was spreading like a disease in Christchurch, and the local style was clean-shaven.
I must have watched people I had not met before spontaneously nickname me “The Colonel” a dozen times in two and a half weeks. Very unusual.
Those double barrel girls’ names like Something-Lee or Somethingelse-Anne seem very American to me.
Here are my feeble Aussie attempts at some US stereotyped names:
COP: Kowalski or O’Hara
BLACK GUY: Any surname used as a given name (such as “Curtis”).
WHITE GUY: Chuck, Travis, Bob (pronouced Barb ), Randy (means horny here).
SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN: Maximillian R. Jackson Jnr III
YOKEL: Cletus, Bubba.
BIMBO: Jo-Beth, Sue-Ellen.
), Randy (means horny here).