An example of what I mean:
I, in China, told an English speaking Chinese friend I needed to stop off in the bathroom to “take a shit.”
He looked appalled and after I asked why he had that look, he asked what I was going to do with someone’s shit.
I had not laughed so hard in a while, and it totally makes sense.
I explained it was an expression for pooping, and he comes back with, “wouldn’t that be giving a shit?”
I then got to explain that to give a shit means you care and I realized how fucked some of our expressions are.
What misunderstandings made you laugh?
I’ve made this mistake and apparently others have as well: the words for lips (kuchibiru) and nipple (chikubi) got mixed up in my head leading to some awkwardness in Japanese.
But kuchi means mouth… seems not too hard to remind yourself that? Awkward nonetheless haha
My brain isn’t consciously thinking about the constituent parts of words as I’m saying them. I definitely don’t think “milk neck” when I think nipple, either.
Kubi means head or top in that case… milk head is a pretty good etymology for nipple ;)
It was me who did a dumb recently. Talking to a cellist, in English: “Oh, you’re a striker?”.
I’ve lived in a couple of European countries and speak 7 different European languages (though my German is kinda crap and my Italian not much better) and regularly take the piss by playing the “ignorant foreigner” with the expressions in other people’s languages and acting as if, by translating them literally, I totally misunderstood them.
This works great because there are so many expressions in pretty much all languages which are have entirelly different meanings when interpreted literally but the natives don’t really think about it like that because they just learned that stuff as a whole block of meaning rather than having reached it by climb the language-learning ladder from “understanding the words first” as foreigners do.
For example the English expression “I want to pick your brains” which has quite a different and more gruesome meaning if read literally or one the dutch expressions for “you’re wasting time in small details” which translates quite literally to “you’re fucking ants” and is my all time favorite in all languages I speak well enough to know lots of expressions in.
Huh. Maybe you could help me.
I’m listening to Stromae, Pomme - Ma Meilleure Ennemie (from Arcane Season 2) Lyrics w/ translation.
And one line is “Mais comme dit le diction: Plutôt qu’être seul mieux vaut être mal accompagne.”
French (sorry for butchering some of the letters, I’ve a Nordic layout), roughly for “But as the saying goes: Better than alone, is to be in bad company.”
Reading that, I remembered a Spanish line from last weeks episode of “The Day of the Jackal”: “Mejor solo que mal acompañado.”
“It’s better to be alone than in bad company.”
Opposite sayings?
A difference in views between the French and the Spanish?
To understand lyrics by Stromae you need to check the French version of the lyrics on genius.com as there are explanations added by friendly native speakers. The texts are full of connotation, context, idioms - I’ve not seen anything like it in any modern song. It’s very cumbersome to translate all of that but I found it rewarding. Especially the lyrics of Papaoutai and Bâtard are masterpieces.
Check out your best enemy here: https://genius.com/Stromae-and-pomme-ma-meilleure-ennemie-lyrics
Yeah, it does sound like they’re opposite sayings.
I wasn’t aware of the French saying, but was of the Spanish one, plus there’s one which is exactly the same as the Spanish one in Portuguese.
That said, feeding “Plutôt qu’être seul mieux vaut être mal accompagne” to DDG gives pretty much only results with the saying “Mieux vaut être seul que mal accompagné”, which is the same as in Spanish and Portuguese, so I’m thinking that the lyrics of the song are in fact purposefully reversing the well known saying “Mieux vaut être seul que mal accompagné” for impact.
are in fact purposefully reversing a well known saying for impact.
Oh. Well, that does explain it. Thanks.
Tbf mierenneuken is also a very odd expression to me as a Dutch person.
Wow I’m gonna make “you’re fucking ants” a regular expression in my english vocab. I will provide no details when I confuse people.
I’m learning Dutch so I can eventually move there, what phrase is that? Wasn’t mentioned here
It’s “mieren neuken”.
A dutch person responding to my post already mentioned it.
Also, as somebody who has moved there first and then learned Dutch whilst living there, I do recommend just learning it over there since it’s a much faster way to learn a language when you’re there surrounded by native speakers, with lots of things written in Dutch around you and with Dutch TV and Radio whilst actually using it, than it is as just learning from the outside with little in the way of useful practice with the actual experts of the actual language.
Also you can easily get away with using English in The Netherlands whilst you’re learning Dutch - in fact if you have a recognizable accent from an English-speaking country it’s actually hard to get the Dutch to speak Dutch to you in the early and mid stage of learning their language since they tend to switch to English as most Dutch speak that very well.
my grandfather (polish) was talking to my cousin’s boyfriend at the time (german) in english. the poor guy was trying to make a good impression so he was really going the extra mile. it took about 10 minutes for them to realize one was talking about chess, and the other about jazz.
The other day there was a girl on the train responding to the conductor saying “Nächster Halt, Itzehoe” (next stop, Itzehoe), which sounds exactly like “It’s a hoe”. She went “It’s a what!?” with her companion cracking up immediately.
My work once sent me to Madrid. I only have some high school Spanish.
I had a cold at the time and soon ran out of cough drops. My coworker told me where I could buy some more, and what to ask for.
When I got to the store, apparently I misremembered what he told me to say. I said to the woman, “quiero caramelos de mentales.”
She looked at me confused. I tried again, slower: “caramellos…de…mentales?”
She seemed a bit alarmed. She said something in Spanish. I said “lo siento, no comprendo.”
She called over her coworker, who asked me “what are you looking for?”
I said, “cough drops.” She looked confused. “Cough…drops? What is it?” I tried “caramelos de mentales” again, no success, just confusion.
Then I remembered I had some wrappers in my pocket so I pulled one out and showed her. Suddenly they both beamed with understanding. “Ohhh! Caramelos mentolados! You were asking for ‘brain candies.’ She thought you wanted something illegal.”
The Dutch word “poepen” (taking a shit), is a Belgian euphemism for sex. Which is always a great source of fun when making friends near the southern border.
Never really though about it but there are similar words in German “poppen” (colloquial term for having sex) and “pupsen” which is farting.
I love that in my head im reading “poepen” as “poopin’” with a funny accent
Lol this reminds me of BBC Pidgin:
Geef me een klap, papa
Hey, don’t judge the Belgians.
We visited an office, and the person guiding us around told us about one of the employees that “it is his first day” - we all misheard this as “it is his birthday”. And started to sing…
Another friend once thought twat was a synonym of twit. First time she called someone a twat in my presence I was gobsmacked but thought I must have misheard; there was definitely nothing twattish going on.
The next time it happened I made a note to raise it privately with her later. “You do know what twat means don’t you?” “Yeah, it’s another word for twit.” “Er, no.”
Aren’t they both insults though? Am I confused about what twit means
A twit is kind of like an idiot or a nitwit.
twat in american is a far harsher word than in englisj
I’ve had a few weird exchanges with my wife, although we both are native french speakers.
Turns out the word we use in Switzerland for prune (the fruit) is only used for the dried version of the same fruit in France. Perfect set up for a strange conversation about baking until we found out.
I enjoyed this because it took me a second to think what a not-dried prune is: a plum.
Ah! You know what? I looked for a translation of the damned word… without trying to translate the word for plum, as it is obviously the same word in my head 😅
Thank you for letting me know 😂
I was surprised that my Japanese online friend couldn’t differentiate sit and shit… sorry
Was in Spain on a Spanish club field trip. I forget what I did as it was years ago but I wanted to express how embarrassed I was about something.
Used the word ‘embarrasada’.
Hilarity ensued.
Edit: Oh look! Other people in this thread did the same thing lol. I feel so much better.
The Spanish word embarrasada means “pregnant” and not “embarrassed”.
Guy I worked with when younger, at a restaurant, primarily a Spanish speaker. He kept telling me that another one of our co-workers “won the race”… I had no idea what he was talking about. “He win the race, he win it!”
What race? Eventually he expands to say it was easier to say in Spanish, but basically if there was a race to be fat and ugly, this guy would win that hypothetical race.
He was very pleased with himself.
Eventually he expands to say it was easier to say in Spanish, but basically if there was a race to be fat and ugly, this guy would win that hypothetical race.
There’s a very similar expression in English: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/take_the_cake
I would love to hear the actual idiom if anyone out there knows it haha
I was resolving a conflict once and, instead of saying “make up or breakup”, I said “make out or breakout”. The fact I screwed that up probably helped the conflict cease though.
after hours gaming at work with awesome ukrainian colleague.
we all get regular beers from the fridge. ukrainian co-worker is sitting there and suddenly spits his drink all over the floor and looks utterly grossed out. He reads the label with scrutiny and says loudly ‘guys, vat thee fak is ROOT BEER?!’
oh how we laughed
Me learning ginger beer =/= ginger ale
So what is it? Is it beer? Another fermented beverage? Is it soda?
I had it once, and I thought it tasted like most subways smell.
It doesn’t seems very appealing.
It is soda traditionally made with sassafras bark. I doubt they still use that to make it but in my (probably unpopular) opinion, it tastes like garbage.
It’s a traditional American soda that many Europeans hate. I’ve heard that it tastes like herbal toothpaste to them, but in America the only herb in our toothpaste is mint (though cinnamon is increasingly popular despite being a spice). But anyways yeah it’s a soda flavored like certain medicinal roots.
