I don’t have any fantastic anecdotes of my own, but I wanted to say that one of the funniest SD threads I have ever read was on a similar topic.
I speak a little French, but not much. On my first trip to Paris, I was out taking pictures, and was stopped by a guy who said something incomprehensible to me in French. I had no idea what he had said, so replied, *“Je ne comprends pas; je ne parle pas français.” *(“I don’t understand; I don’t speak French”). So the guy repeated what he had said, a little louder, and I repeated, *“Je ne comprends pas; je ne parle pas français.” *Now the guy was visibly upset, and again repeated himself. And I repeated my answer, then walked away from him. Then something occurred to me. I went back to him and said *“Parlez-vous Anglais?” *(“Do you speak English?”)
It turned out that he also was an American, and spoke even less French than I did; and he was just asking for the time. Each of us thought the other was being a rude Frenchman.
When I first arrived in China(in 2003), I was surprised at the efficiency and speed at which you get through the arrival area of the International Terminal of Beijing Airport.
I was particularly stunned at how there was practically no formal customs, no questions asked, and almost no search of my bags(with me present I mean). So, as I go to the exit area of the airport, I found myself wondering about the customs procedures.
A wonderful Chinese lady named Kathy met me at the exit and helped me with my bags and got me to the van that would take me to my job/home.
Still wondering, I said to her(in English), “That was so quick. Does China have any customs?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, rather shocked.
“I said, ‘Does China have any customs?’”
Thinking I had just insinuated that China may not have cultural traditions, she replied, “Uh…China has many customs that go back thousands of years.”
At that moment, she was looking at me like I had just explained everything wrong with the United States. I tried to explain what I meant by customs, but she was already helping others and I got lost in the mix.
“Doesn’t China have any customs?”
I’m such a moron.
:smack:
I was once having a friendly online chat with a Phillipino woman. She suddenly told me she wanted to ‘hold and kiss my brother’.
I was confused. I explained that I had no brother, and wasn’t I good enough?
She explained that brother was slang for penis.
I corrected myself and explained that, in that case, I had a big brother.
Not a personal anecdote, but just in case you hadn’t seen it before, [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7702913.stm]this* is fantastic.
… And that was put on the road signs.
When my husband was studying abroad in Japan, he had such an experience in Japanese class one day. They were learning kanji (the characters) and the teacher was asking the students to go up to the board and write various words.
My husband was asked to write the word “embassy”.
It should look like this: 大使館 taishikan (big + use + palace)
Instead, he wrote: 大便館 taibenkan (big + convenience + palace)
Understandable, right? The second characters in each look very similar. However, the teacher fell down laughing and couldn’t get her breath for about five minutes. Turns out the ben (the character my husband got wrong) is the same character used in the word benjo, the slang term for toilet. So he ended up writing something along the lines of “big shit palace”.
You’re right, in most places it’s a “pollo” dead or alive, but in some corners of Latin America they say only “gallo” or “gallina” for the live animal.
We used to pass a shop called “House of Holland” a furniture shop when driving into town. I asked my mum if we could stop there one day and have a look.
“It’s not that easy”, she says "you can’t just go in there, you have to queue up for ages, get a letter from your member of parliament. There’s not much to see ’
Us kids in the back seat: :dubious:
Turns out she’d heard “House of Commons”.
It’s now a family joke should anyone mention going down to Home Depot or wherever … you better take your passport, contact your MP etc.
When I was in Chengdu (China) in 1993, our favorite place to shop was the “Tekramrepus” (we pronounced it “tech-ram-a-pus”). As it turns out, it was the English word for supermarket spelled backwards - a bit of English in a Chinese format.
American tourists are betrayed by the fact that while the language may be called “Spanish”, the details of “Spanish” vary greatly from “Spanish” speaking country to “Spanish” speaking country.
I was on a tour in Costa Rica, and one of the fellows in the group lost his towel. He tried to get a new one by going into a shop and asking for a towel, using the word he’d learned in an American Spanish class. He got strange looks and incomprehensible answers, only to discover he’d been asking for sanitary napkins. Whoops.
My brother’s friend’s dad (I know, I keep telling third-hand stories) was visiting a kibbutz in Israel, and he wanted to know what there was to eat. Oops- he accidentally said “Who is there to eat?” The guy he was talking to looked at him and said, “Sir, we are not cannonballs”.
So, a couple years ago, I was teaching my sixth grade class in Bulgaria, and one of my kids (who was a terrible student and a troublemaker) kept turning around in his seat to talk to the pretty girl behind him. Exasperated, I finally asked him:
“Petko! Zashto si obratno?” (“Petko! Why are you turned around?”)
Turns out “obratno”, which I THOUGHT only meant “backwards” or “turned around” is also slang for “gay”.
My students reacted about how you’d imagine.
Good times, good times.
When I was just learning Spanish, I shared a four-hour car ride with my then-boss. A song came on the radio with the line: “Eres una fruta jugosa” (You are a juicy fruit). But I misheard it as: “Eres una puta fogosa” (You are a horny whore). My boss laughed for a while – at least I kept him entertained for part of the trip!