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Humorous Blunders in Your Target Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Lootrock Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5752 days ago 18 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Mandarin, Arabic (Egyptian), Russian | Message 129 of 185 30 December 2009 at 1:31am | IP Logged | ||
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I've made a ton of blunders trying to learn french, but one that always makes me laugh(which was not too long ago) was when I was trying to figure how to say "to get + verb" so I used the example "you are going to get shot" because I wasn't quite sure how to say so I said to my friend "tu vas se faire tire" over and over to see if I said it right and also because I just liked the way it sounded. Well, I got the most part of it right, but I didn't know I was supposed to add "dessus" afterwards, so what came from "you're going to get shot" went to "you're going to get f^#$ed" :Z I was talking to a female, and to add to it, I kept repeating just because i liked the way it sounded. She pleaded for me to stop saying, but I didn't know why because she didn't tell me right off the bat what mistake I made and what that meant -_-. Well, finally when she told me, I think I laughed for a good 5 minutes. I'll never forget that. The funny thing is, i thought of this thread afterwards because i had read this several months before hand. I'm proud to be apart of it.
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| elvisrules Tetraglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5469 days ago 286 posts - 390 votes  Speaks: French, English*, Dutch, Flemish Studies: Lowland Scots, Japanese, German | Message 130 of 185 30 December 2009 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Hehe yeah 'tirer' has a lot of different meanings; to pull; to shoot; to f**k; to get out; to pick; etc. I remember in school we listened to a song that used a lot of the different meanings, I wish I remembered what it was called... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5464 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 131 of 185 30 December 2009 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hmm my blunders are too numerous to recall all of them, but one that sticks out happened when I first came to Japan and started learning Japanese. I was being taken somewhere by a Japanese acquaintance and her young daughter and we were waiting for my friend in her car. When the daughter turned around from the front seat and smiled, I noticed that her front teeth were missing.
I decided to ask her "Where are your teeth?", but instead of using "ha" for teeth, I switched the vowel and said "he". Unfortunately, "he" means "fart", so I ended up asking her "Where is your fart?" Hopefully the little girl was too young at the time to remember when the big ugly gaijin asked her a rude (and frankly bizarre) question... 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5464 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 132 of 185 30 December 2009 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ooh, I just remembered another one!
I decided to order a take-away "bento" boxed dinner over the phone, so I looked up the menu on the internet and decided I'd like "charcoal-grilled" pork, which in Japanese is "sumibi yaki". However, I misread the kanji as "tanka yaki", "tanka" being a word that often crops up in my translation work. So I phoned the shop and placed my order for "tanka yaki" pork, at which point the shop assistant sort of laughed politely and corrected me. Only then did I realize I'd actually asked for "calcified pork"... I like my meat well done, but not quite calcified. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 133 of 185 31 December 2009 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Haha TixhiiDon - you blunders are very funny!
But as we know: Some of this stuff is NOT funny when it happens, in front of (possibly) judgemental people. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------ When I first moved to England, I did not know the expression "I can't be bothered" It was used a lot among my friends and colleagues. Useful expression... People also said what SOUNDED to me like "I can't be asked" (South East England pronouncation). I thought that it was a more polite way to say "bothered". What they were really saying was of course "I can't be arsed". I guess people were rather surpised to hear me (polite Scandinavian girl) say that quite a lot. It took at least a month before I realised that this was really rude and not something I would knowingly use. Blush. I also remember telling a long and complicated story about my grandmothers dandelion wine to my prospective in-laws... After I'd been going on for several minutes someone finally corrected my pronounciation: Not dandélion, dandeLION.... I had learnt the word by coming across it in a book and looking it up. Had never at that time heard anyone use it. Edited by cordelia0507 on 31 December 2009 at 2:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6153 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 134 of 185 31 December 2009 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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While on the telephone to his boss, My Uruguayan colleague accidently said to him 'go shoot yourself'. He was trying to say 'fire away'. The entire office was in hysterics. It's a good job he and his boss both have a good sense of humour.
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5924 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 135 of 185 31 December 2009 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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This thread makes me remember my first embarassing mistake in Afrikaans. After having studied Afrikaans for about two months I thought I was ready to write messages in a Yahoo! discussion group. In my second message I wrote "Ek het lemoensap verdrink." which literally translates as "I have orange juice drowned"; I meant to write "Ek het lemeonsap gedrink" or "I have drunk orange juice".
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| qklilx Moderator United States Joined 6186 days ago 459 posts - 477 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 136 of 185 02 January 2010 at 12:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't remember if I posted this in the thread but here goes.
Earlier this year I was filmed for a Korean game show. The first error I made was when they had me do a 1-2 line self-intro. I said "I am XXX from Hawaii here on a study abroad. I carried my friends here today." I think that was the first time I ever made that mistake. I quickly corrected myself to say "bring" but it was too late and the hosts were already making fun of me. One of the words is used for bringing people, the other for bringing (carrying) stuff, but they use the same grammatical structure and somehow I got them mixed up that one time. My second error came during a brief interview portion and the hosts asked me how my roommate was when he drank alcohol. I clarified the meaning with a word that in English would mean "plastered," "wasted," and so on. In Korean the word I used is slang that is not allowed on TV. See, the thing is that I learned that word a good 4-5 months before I learned the proper term and used it several times a week, so it was habit. Even after learning the proper word I kept using the slang and even my teacher never corrected me, so I didn't know any better until I went on TV. Since I'm a foreigner they left it in for all of the nation to laugh. THAT is a mistake I am proud of. :D 1 person has voted this message useful |
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