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But I thought it meant....! | ||
Tags: Error | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6662 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 1 of 9 08 May 2014 at 1:54am | IP Logged |
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You are never done learning. Sometimes in a language I feel fairly comfortable in I'll learn a new word in a given language and think, "Oh, that's a useful one!" and listen for it...only to hear it spoken and used everywhere all the time. How did I miss it for so long?
I can't think of any examples of those specifically right now, but yesterday I learned that the Spanish word "de repente" I had thought for 11 years was one of their handful of words for "maybe" actually means "suddenly" or "all of a sudden". 11 years! How many people did I confuse, or at least give a chuckle to after I left the conversation? :-) Any of you have stories like that? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5128 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 9 08 May 2014 at 6:36am | IP Logged |
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Well, actually you may not have been as far off as you think. In my Andalusian Spanish, "de repente" means
"suddenly" but my Peruvian friend uses it as "maybe", so do not worry. I do not know if it is also used in that way in other Latin-American dialects, but you have probably heard it from someone, or you would not have used it like that :-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6662 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 3 of 9 08 May 2014 at 7:28am | IP Logged |
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Thank you SC! I'll have to tell that to my interpreter colleagues at work. I learned Spanish in Mexico and for maybe usually said "a lo mejor" which means "maybe" in a positive light, like "ideally" I suppose, or whereas "quizás" seemed to have a more negative spin to it (or so I read...I haven't noticed much difference in usage on a day-to-day level).
I may have learned "tal vez" in school, but I don't remember exactly. I don't recall when it was when I started using "de repente" but it could have been while I was living in Peru, so maybe I haven't been using it for 11 years like that. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3841 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 4 of 9 08 May 2014 at 8:29am | IP Logged |
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Lol, I have a super funny story about a former
colleague of mine. Disclaimer: explicit language. He is Portuguese. One day, as a kid, he watched pulp fiction in English during a English class. There is a scene where a character says "I will go home and jerk off" that was subtitled in the Portuguese equivalent of "I will go home and do nothing". So, years later he moved to England to work and one day his boss asked him which were his plans for the weekend and he answered "I will stay at home and jerk off". His boss made a perplex facial expression and said "OK...". After some time he discovered what he really said :D Edited by tristano on 08 May 2014 at 8:32am 14 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5128 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 9 08 May 2014 at 1:10pm | IP Logged |
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I once had the opposite experience. I watched "Life of Brian" in France (since the film was banned in Norway
as blasphemy at the time) and one particularly crass English expression, was translated into French as " Il est toujours a la brèche". Wanting to expand my French vocabulary, I went to my French teacher at the University, and said that I had an expression which was so foul that I did not even know whether I dared to show it to him, but I was really curious about it. I had written it down, not wanting to say out loud something so bad. He read it, looked almost offended at me, and said: This simply means 'in the forefront'. "You have a very narrow mind if you consider that a bad word, mademoiselle". I was so embarrassed. It was evident that he considered me the biggest prude in recorded history, and the fact that I was the youngest pupil at the university of Oslo, 17 and with a Synnøve Solbakken-image I was unable to shake off, even with fishnet stockings and marihuana leaf earrings did not help. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4327 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 6 of 9 08 May 2014 at 1:33pm | IP Logged |
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My mother tells this story that when I was a child of about five or six I was standing at the front door of our house in Australia with my Lithuanian grandmother and mother, hitting the back of our Labrador dog Franny with a stick, which she obviously liked, as she was itchy. I said something like "Look Franny's a Methodist".
After a moment my mother realized that I had somehow picked up and mangled the word masochist. At that point both my mother and grandmother burst out laughing. The next day my grandfather told my mother he had heard the story from my grandmother and couldn't understand why my "Look Franny's a Presbyterian" was so funny. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zografialep Hexaglot Groupie GreeceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3933 days ago 41 posts - 71 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek, Greek*, EnglishC2, GermanB2, Spanish, Latin Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 9 08 May 2014 at 3:04pm | IP Logged |
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I have done the ''classic'' mistake at Spanish.
I was walking around with some Spanish friends and I don't remember exactly what the subject was, but probably something unpleasant because I said that '' I'm embarrassed'' - ''Estoy embarazada''. Then my friends looked at me with wide eyes, said ''you're what?''- ''Que estas?'' and starting laughing, leaving me clueless. Later I discovered that ''estoy embarazada'' doesn't mean ''I'm embarassed'' in Spanish, it means ''I'm pregnant''! - Considering our age -16 years old- it was a very weird thing to say. I was so ''avergonzada''- the actual word for ''embarassed'' in Spanish. At least now I'm definitely not forgetting this! Edited by zografialep on 08 May 2014 at 3:04pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6391 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 9 09 May 2014 at 4:50am | IP Logged |
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I never wondered what exactly espejismo's username means. Turns out it's mirage.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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