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?
As I’m half Arab/half European, my Arabian family tried to talk my native language. One of them wanted to say “I love you” which is in Dutch “Ik hou van je”.
He ended up saying; “ik geil van je” which translates along the likes of “I get horny of you”.
Had a good laugh but was bit odd to explain lol.
Kinda reminds me of how in Spanish, it’s common to say “te quiero” as a sweet, friendly way of telling someone you love them.
Of course it translates literally as “I want you”, which sounds SO SEXUAL in English 😂
Also in Spanish, you want to say “Tengo calor” = “I have heat” instead of “Estoy caliente” = “I am hot”, because the latter is used to mean “I am horny”.
My Spanish teacher also told us of a time he had taken a class to a Spanish speaking country and a student accidentally broke a glass while in a restaurant. The student wanted to exclaim “I am very embarrassed!”, but used a false cognate and instead exclaimed “Estoy muy embarazada!” = “I am very pregnant!”
Lol I’m pretty sure Peggy Hill did that one too 😂
Lmao this explains so much, thank you
Ah dutch.
I’ve heard someone translate “dat is geweldig” not with the correct “that is amazing” but “that is like violence”, which shows amazing skill in Dutch grammar, but a tiny lack in knowing words.
For those not fluent:
“Geweldig” means “Amazing”, but “geweld” means “violence”. Meanwhile, most words that end in “-ig” are nouns used as adjectives, like “fun” -> “funny”.
Similar thing happened to me with the Spanish speaking coworkers Lol. I wanted to ask a new guy his name (but trying not to say “¿como te llamas?” Which means "how are you called?) and accidentally asked for his number.
Nombre ≠ numero
I had an ESL coworker make a similar mistake to me. Mixing up name-nombre/number-numero goes both ways.
is that the origin of the German word?