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Humorous Blunders in Your Target Language

  Tags: Error | Joke | Multilingual
 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages Post Reply
185 messages over 24 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 20 ... 23 24 Next >>
Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5384 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 153 of 185
02 September 2010 at 4:47pm | IP Logged 
When I was still learning English, I told a girl "You'll miss me"... I always wondered if she understood what I meant because I never heard from her again.

In Japanese, I still confuse unko (poop) and anko (bean paste), and hantai (opposite) and hentai (pervert).
2 persons have voted this message useful



Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5959 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 154 of 185
02 September 2010 at 5:29pm | IP Logged 
Arekkusu wrote:
When I was still learning English, I told a girl "You'll miss me"... I always wondered if she understood what I meant because I never heard from her again.


I said the same thing once to an ex-girlfriend. Turns out I was right (she did not really have the scope sighted in correctly and missed me by at least a couple of feet).

Arekkusu wrote:
In Japanese, I still confuse unko (poop) and anko (bean paste).


Dining out for you in Japan may well be an adventure!!
1 person has voted this message useful



Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5384 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 155 of 185
02 September 2010 at 5:38pm | IP Logged 
Spanky wrote:
Arekkusu wrote:
In Japanese, I still confuse unko (poop) and anko (bean paste).


Dining out for you in Japan may well be an adventure!!

Unfortunately, in this case, even seeing the object first turns out to be confusing :)
1 person has voted this message useful



clang
Groupie
United States
Joined 5342 days ago

54 posts - 82 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Russian, Italian

 
 Message 156 of 185
02 September 2010 at 5:48pm | IP Logged 
I'm still embarrassed of this one. I, a 25 year old, was outside playing with a bunch of the neighbor kids. I climbed
to the top of the jungle gym and, being incredibly clever, proceeded to exclaim "Смотрите на меня, я выиграл! Я -
коровa!" thinking I was saying "Look at me, I've won! I'm the king!"

The kids all stared at me and said "no no, that's the girl version, you should say 'бык'." Because I'm not the
brightest, I tried to explain to the children my train of thought: Wasn't it that королева was the feminine and коров
(a?) was the masculine, queen and king? They just rolled their eyes.

It was only that evening that I realized what I'd been saying. Корова = cow, король = king, and королева = queen
(and бык = bull or ox or something).

7 persons have voted this message useful



AeOeUe
Tetraglot
Newbie
Germany
Joined 5221 days ago

16 posts - 31 votes
Speaks: German*, English, French, Dutch
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 157 of 185
04 September 2010 at 11:48pm | IP Logged 
I have had tons of blunders in Russian since I was forced to speak it although I have
no fluency in it at all... Once asked if I wanted to buy a "Platskart" (i.e. a seat
rather than couchette on a train) I exclaimed "Nyet! Ya khochu SPID!" ("No! I want
AIDS!") instead of "ya khochu spat" (I want to sleep), which at least made the woman at
the ticket counter, otherwise a typically grim worker, burst out laughing.

Another time I had learned that "ya shuchu" means "I'm joking" and that past tense is
formed by adding a "-la" to the stem, so I told my friends "ya shuchula", meaning to
say "I was joking", but apparently it came out as "I'm a little penis". (At least
that's what they made of it, I haven't found this vocabulary in any dictionary yet. The
correct form would have been "ya shutila".)


5 persons have voted this message useful



cymrotom
Tetraglot
Groupie
United States
cymrympls.blogspot.c
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56 posts - 60 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Mandarin, Welsh

 
 Message 159 of 185
24 February 2011 at 10:47pm | IP Logged 
Bean paste sometimes looks like poop :D
Arekkusu wrote:
When I was still learning English, I told a girl "You'll miss me"... I always wondered if she understood what I meant because I never heard from her again.

In Japanese, I still confuse unko (poop) and anko (bean paste), and hantai (opposite) and hentai (pervert).

1 person has voted this message useful



jdmoncada
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5037 days ago

470 posts - 741 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish
Studies: Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 160 of 185
25 February 2011 at 6:13pm | IP Logged 
In my Spanish class at the university we were working on past tenses of the language. So we were asked the question, ¿Porque no comiste el desayuno? (Why didn't you eat breakfast?)

I was very quick to answer, Porque yo no tenía hambre. (Because I was not hungry, or literally "Because I did not have hunger.")

My teacher made a joke that made me doubt I'd said the correct answer, because she said, "'Porque yo no tenía hombre' es muy diferente."

The funny here is that by changing only 1 vowel, the sentence became "Because I didn't have a man."

And I guess that's one reason some people wouldn't eat breakfast. :D


1 person has voted this message useful



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