Interesting things said to you by non-native speakers

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I am traveling in Thailand right now, and of course most people here don’t speak any English. Those that do speak English, even in travel related jobs, often struggle. Not to knock them, at least they’re making an effort, but I’ve had two so far this week that I need to share:

[ul]
I love you!(While going through the initial security checkpoint for a domestic flight, said by a male security person to me, another male) [/ul][ul]
Excuse me, are you delicious?(At lunch today, asked by my waiter)[/ul]

I’m fairly confident that my server just meant to ask if I thought the food was good. In the case of the security guy, no idea what he actually meant. My best guess is that he just froze up and that was the one phrase in English that came out.

2

I have a funny story that happened many years ago, in Spain, when I was young and impressionable :slight_smile:

We were having a little party at a friend’s house. One of the persons in attendance was a young British lady, very cute, who was in Spain doing some sort of exchange program or something.

We were having a very nice time, but at a certain moment the British girl glanced at her watch and announced that she was sorry, but she had to run.

At least, that is what I am reasonably sure she wanted to say. Because what she actually said, in Spanish, was hilarious :slight_smile:

OK, here comes the (long) explanation – The verb “to run”, in Spanish, is “correr”. Intransitive verb, and everything. Now… In Spanish, as in English, when you have a transitive verb and you want to use it to express and action that you perform on yourself, you put the verb in the reflexive form: I have to comb myself, “he de peinarme”; physician, heal thyself, “médico, cúrate a tí mismo”. And so on and so forth.

Well, it seems that this lovely young woman thought that, in Spanish, whenever an action applies to yourself, you have to put the verb in the reflexive form, no matter what verb it is. So, “Sorry, but I have to run” became, in Spanish, “Lo siento, pero tengo que correrme”.

All fine and dandy, if a bit ungrammatical… Were it not for the fact that “correr”, in reflexive, although ungrammatical, has a very definite meaning in slang.

It means “to have an orgasm”.

So, what she loudly announced to all those present was, literally, “I’m sorry, but I have to have an orgasm”.

Oh, what a disappointment it was when the mix-up was solved… XD

3

I must say, that beats the good old “¡oh, estoy tan embarazada!” by about three full turns around the Solar System.

False friend: in Spanish, embarazada means pregnant, not embarrased; specially fun when said by a dude.

This one wasn’t by mistake but by design: ternera and ternura look and sound almost the same, but they mean veal and tenderness; driving foreigners nuts by giving them the wrong pairings is a favorite pastime of a certain brand of morons (you know, the same ones who think it’s funny to be mean to little kids). The very similar yet difficult to encounter in language lessons ternilla means a tendon found in a piece of meat. An American girl who came to my home town for a year-long exchange solved the first problem by never using those two words (she ate “cow” rather than “veal” and felt “nice” when looking at little kids); when she encountered the third word, she thought for a while and then asked “is it ok if I say ‘a hard bit’?” “yes” “great!”

4

Missed the edit window :stuck_out_tongue: I wanted to say that “correrse” (the verb “correr” in reflexive) is not really ungrammatical, but has specific meanings. Some are “innocent” (it can mean “to move aside”, “to scootch over there” and, in archaic Spanish, “to feel shame”). However, nowadays, the “orgasm” meaning is the most prevalent one.

5

I have a good friend born and raised in Germany who has lived, worked and gotten citizenship in the US. Her English is amazingly good. She has a charming accent, but most of the time, I forget that English is not her native language.

…which makes her tale of being at an important meeting involving the defense of her dissertation (Psychology) and her unfortunate use of the phrase “here comes the money shot!” all the more hilarious.

She had no idea it was a sexual term. The stuffy old Psych professors nearly swallowed their tongues.

6

My story is when I was working at an exhibition in China, where we were giving away tennis-ball-sized globes of the earth. One pretty young Chinese woman came up to me and said, “I like your balls.” I’m sure that she had no idea that there are at least two idiomatic meanings of that in English, but I worked out that she was just asking for one of our give-aways, not admiring some aspect of me.

7

In my pre-teen years, I spent an afternoon splashing around in a swimming pool with my cousin, another girl swam with us most of the time, she never said a word, but in the way that kids do, we all got along.

Then when we were getting out of the pool she turned to me and said “I was French”

I refrained from saying “oh, so what are you now?”

8

A male Italian co-worker was talking to a female American co-worker. He asked when her birthday was and she responded with a date in September. He comes back “Oh, you’re a virgin!”. She went bright red until she worked out the virgin = Virgo.

9

The most interesting thing really had nothing to do with their language, but their origin.

I used to live in DC and work on the Mall. One day I saw two women on the sidewalk poring over a map and obviously confused about something, where they were or where they were going. So I helped them out, and having noticed their accents, I asked where they were from.

They each answered at the same time: “We’re from France.” “We’re from Belgium.”
Then one kind of bowed her head in shame and admitted grudgingly: “Yes, we’re from Belgium.”

My knowledge of Belgium is largely limited to Monty Python sketches, so I understood completely why they didn’t want it known.

10

It’s not necesarilly a sexual term. It’s an old movie making term for a shot where you have some elaborate stunt or pyrotechnics or some other effect that meant that the shot would be expensive or difficult to reshoot so you had to get it in one take. If you’re making a pornographic film, there just so happens to be a certain type of scene you also only get one take for, but that’s just an example of a money shot, not the definition.

Not that I’d personally use it while defending a dissertation, but at least until quite recently it could still be used in polite conversation.

11

My (former?) SO never could remember his belt was not his seat belt, so many mornings he’d ask if I’d seen his seat belt. Also for some unknown reason he’d always mix up toes with fleas.

12

Years ago I worked with a woman from Russia and while her English was good she didn’t know much American slang. One day we were all complaining about a project leader named Dick and she spoke up and said ‘I have worked for many years and many different places and I can tell you that every office has its Dick’.
I had to explain to her why the entire group burst out laughing.

I also had to explain the meaning of hump day to her, that on Wednesday you are over the hump. I told her I had been confused by that one as well since I thought Saturday was hump day and why. I can still remember how her face brightened and she said ‘You have zee day for zee hump? Only in America do you have zee day for zee hump. I will tell my husband. I will tell him it is American law that everyone must hump on zee hump day’.

13

You’re not sure if you’re still dating him? Huh.

Sorry, didn’t mean to impregnate you.

14

I think it’s correct Indian English, not a mistake? but I was charmed by a customer service representative one who said she would “do the needful”. What a useful expression!

15

Malaysian English doesn’t quite fit the OP, since it is a dialect of English with its own native speakers, but one of its eccentricities is that it shortens many verb+preposition phrases to simple verbs.

Thus, my Malaysia-born wife will often ask me to, for example, “please throw this light bulb” (rather than throw it away.)

16

Had a non-native speaking friend in college who mixed up two idioms. After a night of drinking he came down to the dining hall the next morning with a bad headache and loudly announced, “I am so well hung!”

17

I’ve always enjoyed that one and the idea of “preponing” something.

18

A former coworker (Chinese) once commented that if you eat something bad, you might “throw out.”

19

I worked with a nurse from India a few years ago, who, though she had grown up speaking both English and Hindi, was not fully on board with most English/American slang. So, one day, someone put a picture of a man holding a giant cat up in the break room - you know the one, the picture from the chain letter email about the man who lived next door to a nuclear power plant. Anna, the nurse, decided to alert the rest of the staff about the picture of a man with a giant cat.

Needless to say, when we actually saw the picture, we were all disappointed.

20

:confused: Did you mean a giant pussy?