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Humorous Blunders in Your Target Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Earle Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6315 days ago 276 posts - 276 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Norwegian, Spanish | Message 57 of 185 20 March 2008 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | ||
Not a gaffe, but once, as I was being given a ticket by an Austrian highway patrolman, he'd thought I was Swiss, from my accent in German (and the rental car had a Swiss tag). When I confessed that the car was a rental car (I was playing dumb, hoping I could dodge paying it), he stepped back, looked at it and said "So, es ist ein Mietwagen?" I had to laugh, which he didn't much like, because, being a native English-speaker, the term "Meat wagon" popped into my head... Edited by Earle on 20 March 2008 at 4:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6109 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 58 of 185 21 March 2008 at 3:21am | IP Logged | ||
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When my mother was young, she was working in a hotel reception. One day she showed to an elderly German couple their room, wishing them a pleasant stay in German, something along the line "have a good living here!" (sorry I don't know German and I forgot her exact wording).
Unfortunately, she messed up and used lieben instead of leben. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6665 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 59 of 185 21 March 2008 at 4:52am | IP Logged | ||
'Lieben Sie wohl!' instead 'Leben Sie wohl!' (But that would be for saying goodbye...) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6109 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 60 of 185 21 March 2008 at 5:48am | IP Logged | ||
It must have been that. Maybe she said it when leaving the couple in their room, would it be possible? Anyway her German was quite bad then. Otherwise she wouldn't have confused leben and lieben... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Halcyon Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6455 days ago 35 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese | Message 61 of 185 21 March 2008 at 7:56am | IP Logged | ||
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When we were learning foods like dumplings, soup, rice, baozi, etc. in my Mandarin class, a couple people kept mixing up the pronunciations and tones... like the ones for dumplings (饺子 jiao3zi) and steamed-buns-with-stuff-inside (I don't know the English equiv. for 包子 bao1zi), so instead of:
“我喜欢吃饺子。”I like to eat dumplings. wo3 xi3huan chi1 jiao3zi. They were saying: “我喜欢吃婊子。” I like to eat whore(s). wo3 xi3huan chi1 biao3zi. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| epingchris Triglot Senior Member Taiwan shih-chuan.blog.ntu. Joined 7028 days ago 273 posts - 284 votes 5 sounds Studies: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese, German, Turkish | Message 62 of 185 28 March 2008 at 8:35am | IP Logged | ||
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A joke in Mandarin is that a foreign not quite familiar with is invited to a Chinese's house. As the host was introducing his house (fang zi), table (zhuo zi), chairs (yi zi), the guest noticed that each of these nouns contained a "zi", so he figured that it must be a common suffix for nouns. When the host's wife came out with a watch (biao), the foreigner exclaimed: "Oh! What a beatiful biao zi!"
As said above, "biao zi" means whores. Overgeneralizations can be bad. Edited by epingchris on 28 March 2008 at 8:36am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ems_8674 Pentaglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6077 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Latin, Italian Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 63 of 185 05 April 2008 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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My friend told me about how once on a French exchange her host had been feeling ill so she tried to ask "tu te sens mal?" (Do you feel unwell?), but came out instead with "tu sens mauvais?" (Do you smell bad?).
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ems_8674 Pentaglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6077 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Latin, Italian Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 64 of 185 05 April 2008 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, and also not me but a friend of a friend on holiday in Spain had to change some money and insisted despite not really speaking Spanish that she knew the word for change and marched right up to the counter demanding "gambas"...which would have been great except that the word she wanted was "cambio" and what she was actually asking the guy for was prawns!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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