this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Our Austrian exchange student told us "My sister wants to be a wet".

The v sound is hard for German speakers

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

No it isn't, they use it all the time - "wenn, was, wo" all read as "v". The "double u" sound is the thing that trips them up - it's common in slavic languages, not so much in germanic ones. For slavic the polish ł or russian "lambda" symbol sound like the "w" in wet. Could also be the accent, but I would wager it was more wires being crossed and saying "wet", instead of a problem with pronounciation

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

That's true, but I come across a lot of German speakers and I can attest that they seem to find it difficult when speaking English. Or they mix it up a lot anyway. I do it myself fairly often in Dutch with V and F.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

it was probably written in a text

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah, could also be that, but OP said "told us". Which means they used "w". Unless the sister made a mistake too. But then again, why would she say that in english. Vet in german is "Tierarzt" which isn't close to the english "veterinarian".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I'm just saying I've seen plenty germans text that misspelling. "are we going to the wet tomorrow?" would be a classic misspelling of a German writing English