Share you funny situation from language-learning materials

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Sorry, I can’t think of a more eloquent way to say that. What I mean are the funny, akward or corny situations in the books and films we use to learn foreign languages.

My examples:
When I studied Spanish in High School, in our textbook there was a cartoon of a man and woman checking into a hotel. In spanish, they said:

Man: We would like a single-bed room please.
Woman: No, we would like a double-bed room.

I still think that is hilarious.

When I first studied Russian in undergrad, we watched the typically-corny videos, which were rife with akward situations.
In one scene, the American guy who had just arrived in Moscow, when his Russian female companion turned her back briefly, quite obviously was checking out her ass. As soon as she turned back, he quickly looked away. This was clearly not part of the story.

Please, entertain me with your tales of similar experiences learning foreign languages.

2

In my Hindi class, we mostly work off of written-out packets the teacher made. One of our vocabulary words was khirki (I don’t know if I transliterated this right), which I thought meant ‘widow’. Fast forward a few weeks. I was using that word with some postposition, and the teacher says, “Nice try, but you can’t use that postposition with an inanimate object.” So I sez to her, “What do you mean? Khirki is animate!” Turns out WINDOWS are quite inanimate.

:smack:

3

Well, the French In Action video teaching series notoriously stars a braless, bouncing French girl as one of the main characters. I’m brushing up on my French, and nothing brings Mr. brown a-running like these videos. I can’t begin to imagine a classful of hormone-laden twenty year old college guys learning anything from this series - their mouths would hang open and their brains would shut down.

4

Yeah, that French In Action chick is hot, hot, hot!

5

You just try 3 semester of Latin with the Oxford Latin Course books without laughing at the horrible artwork. There’s one where poor Cincinnatus looks like he’s sizing up an ox butt for the perfect entry angle.

6

Our high school German textbook contained the immortal line, “Die Esel mag jeder.”

That means: Everybody likes the donkeys.

snigger

When I took German in college, we had to watch this soap opera called Forsthaus Falkenau in the media center and then answer a bunch of questions on a worksheet. Every week, I would report on the plot to my roommate, who enjoyed soap operas, so it was something we could bond over. There was this love-interest character named Eberhard who I just could not stand. He was supposed to be a major hunk, but this is from a people who revere David Hasselhof, so . . . you get my drift. I wanted to pop the smarmy bastard in the puss every time he opened his mouth.

Anyway, at one point there was a cliffhanger—literally. In which he fell off the cliff. And he fell down, tumbling over and over through the bush, and that was the end of the episode. I was ecstatic. I ran back to the dorm and charged down the hall, shouting, “Eberhard fell off a cliff! EBERHARD FELL OFF A CLIFF!”

It was a beautiful day. sniff

Unfortunately, he recovered. Sigh.

7

What are you trying to say? :dubious:

8

Uhh, that David Hasselhof is…well, less than desireable to most people outside the German community?

Sorry. I gotta agree with this. :smiley:

9

You can view the entire French in Action series just by registering here. All the Mirelle one could want!

10

Them’s fightin’ words. I stand with Gabe.

11

[Hasselhof]
You have discraced your house!
[/Hasselhof]

12

In high school Spanish we had a paperback book that was supposed to be a mystery with pictures to help us learn Spanish. I think it was called “Vamos a ver” - “Let’s go see”? or something to that effect. Anyway, it was extremely dull so we dubbed it “Tequila Mockingbird” and wrote new captions for the pictures, making it more of a soap opera. We had some good laughs doing that. Never did learn much Spanish though.

13

We all giggled at the following caption for a drawing of kids playing at the park, and were repremanded by our Spanish teacher…

Maria tiene pelotas de Carlos. Maria tiene todas las pelotas.

Translation:

Maria has Carlos’ balls. Maria has all the balls.

I think Maria was based on my uncle’s wife. :smiley:

We also used to get in trouble playing teléfono, because one kid inevitably ended up changing the message to something like “El perro de Holly es un Puerto rican homosexual.” Which wasn’t true. He was a german shepard.

14

How do you say “purple monkey dishwasher” in Spanish?

15

I think purple is modifying the right thing (you want a purple monkey, not a purple dishwasher, right?) , but it’s something like “lavaplantos del mono purpureo.”

16

er, make that lavaplatos without the “n”.

17

CynicalGabe, my favorite piece from our French textbook was also about a couple checking into a hotel.

Guy: We would like a room.
Hotel clerk: I will take your bags.
(in French, obviously, but that part wasn’t as memorable)

The punchline:
Woman: Le bagage n’arrive pas! (The baggage has not arrived!)

In high school we thought this was a stitch, because it seemed like the couple was lying about their luggage being lost to cover up for a quickie.

As life is funny that way, later in my life I went on to work in Europe for a brief time. My luggage was always lost. I’ve found myself saying Le bagage n’arrive pas! in hotels and airports all over Europe and being thankful it was included in high school French class.

18

Our German book had ‘sample conversations’ that we all had to memorize and act out. One of them had the line :
“Kennst du Ingo? Ingo ist mein Freund.”
(Do you know Ingo? Ingo is my friend.)

This became a catchphrase we used all the time, which made it seem even more like some odd cult introduction.

Nothing, though, was as odd as the Guten Tag films with Felix. Foreign language films as if directed by Ingmar Bergman.

19

I though Inigo was Spanish? :wink:

20

I took Japanese in college, from a teacher of Japanese birth. As you may or may not know, in Japanese you will use different words and different sentence structures when speaking to different people; as in, you wouldn’t speak to a teacher the same way you’d speak to a fellow student.

Anyway, a few times a year we would have one-on-one exams with our professor, where we’d sit with her and have a conversation. At the start, she would hand you a note with the “rules” for the conversation. On one occasion, the note said, “You are waiting outside the office of your professor (me), waiting for her to arrive. You will be approached by a fellow student and by another faculty member.”

So, she started conversing as though she were a student, and we chat about this and that. The conversation turns to what I’m doing. “I’m waiting for my teacher, Professor Suzuki, to arrive.” “I don’t know Professor Suzuki. What does she teach?” “She teaches Japanese.” “How old is she?”

I froze. Did she really want me to guess how old she was? “…I really don’t know.” “Well, guess.” Damn, she wasn’t giving up, she wanted me to guess her age. “Um…about 24 years old.” “Oh, I see.” And on the conversation went.

I asked her, after the next student came out, why she did that. She said that she wanted to know how old we thought she was. So I asked how old she really was, and she said 26. “You were nice. He guessed 27. He was not so nice.”

And on a completely different subject: ever read Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need? In the intro, he mentions something about how all he learned from language classes were useless phrases, like “Show me the fish of your brother Raoul.” For the rest of the book, that phrase keeps popping up in different forms, from the Italian phrase, “Your brother Raoul sleeps with the fishes,” to a menu listing “the fish of your brother Raoul” in French to the Church of St. Raoul of the Fishes. That running gag cracked me up.