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Humorous Blunders in Your Target Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| brozman Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie Spain Joined 5845 days ago 87 posts - 106 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, English, Japanese Studies: Russian, Indonesian | Message 89 of 185 16 July 2008 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, now that you talked about the sillable "si" in Japanese, I remember when I was at my high school in Japan and laughed out loud when all my classmates and I had to perform the song "Oh happy day".
Do you know the lyrics? When it says "when Jesus washed... he washed my sins away!". You can imagine how I felt in the middle of a group of Japanese teenagers singing passionately "when Jesus washed... he washed machines away!". I can't imagine Jesus sweating and washing his car on a sunny day! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6061 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 90 of 185 22 July 2008 at 5:35am | IP Logged | ||
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I think it is on Wikipedia somewhere: humorous blunders Dutch people make speaking English. I also saw a book devoted to the subject in the Netherlands. Can't quote any examples, though.
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| TheMatthias Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6035 days ago 105 posts - 124 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 91 of 185 24 July 2008 at 10:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was watching a Japanese person on Youtube trying to speak English; he was counting to twenty..
He said... 1, 2,...17,18,19, and for twenty said "Ten Ten" haha, was so funny! Not my target language but I thought it was hilarious. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tryna36 Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5858 days ago 56 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 92 of 185 01 August 2008 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I often have dinner with a Korean family. On one such occasion, the wife, who is having a difficult time with English, asked me if I would like some more lice.
When I first met her, she asked me a question, and I replied, "I'm sorry, but I don't speak Korean." I was so embarrassed when I realized she was talking to me in English. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6386 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 93 of 185 01 August 2008 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had a hilarious one in Finland a week ago :D It was at a rock festival which was held in a beautiful place by a lake, and just before leaving at 1 AM I decided to take some pics of the lake, but with my camera night photos come out completely blurry without a tripod (and of course I don't have one), so I leaned my cam on a tree... I probably looked strange enough for a security guy to come up to me, but my answer to his "are you ok?"-question was even more strange - I meant to say I was using the tree as a tripod (jalusta), but instead I said I was using it as a stirrup (jalustin) :DDDDD Thanks to Tolkien probably..,
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| LittleKey Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5741 days ago 146 posts - 153 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Japanese | Message 94 of 185 04 September 2008 at 1:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I was once told in Spanish class to say very old milk, which would be leche muy viejo i believe. But instead, i accidently said leche vieja. The teacher had a nice laugh then brought it to the class's attention that i just said old lady milk.
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 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6683 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 95 of 185 06 September 2008 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | ||
I imagine it was "leche de vieja" you said. "leche (muy) vieja" does mean "(very) old milk", even if it might not be the most natural way to describe a bottle of milk that has been standing around for a week and gone stale. "leche pasada" would be more likely for that. In general you should be a little careful with the word "leche" since it has all sorts of uses, which could end you up in varying degrees of embarrassing situations. Edited by Hencke on 06 September 2008 at 7:00pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| SPINMASTER X Tetraglot Newbie United States myspace.com/spinmastRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5711 days ago 14 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Portuguese Studies: Dutch Studies: Italian | Message 96 of 185 13 September 2008 at 7:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Back in 2005 when I was learning to speak somewhat "decent" German, we were having a military exercise at the military base I work at and there were 2 German construction workers walking around unescorted and my boss flipped out and told me to go and tell them they are in a forbidden area and they need to be escorted.
We drove over there and I told them this area is "Connected" when the airplanes land here. I meant to say "forbidden" which is "Verboten" but I said "Verbunden" which means "connected". They both looked at me with this crazy expression and one of them says "Verboten" and I said "oh yeah, sorry, verboten" and then they walked to their escort and when we drove away I felt like a complete idiot. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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