Ask Lemmy

day 2 at a new job

Boss's boss and I are the only two there.

Boss^2: Vhat is za status of our new office in Catalina

Me: O.o (They have offices all over the place but I am not aware it's someplace named Catalina exists, I've heard of the dressing before so maybe it's a thing?)

I...um I'm not sure

Boss^2: Well, you need to find out.

Me: I don't even have anybody's phone number yet this is just my second day if you have some people you'd like me to call I can do that.

Boss^2: yez, look up the office and call them and ask them what their status is.

Me: (starts googling Catalina, an island in California? That wouldn't make any sense. A region in Spain Catalonia? That would make a little more sense but still not a lot and I don't speak Spanish)

Boss^2: well?

Me: I can't find an office in Catalina or Catalonia. You wouldn't happen to have their phone number would you

Boss^2: Catalina, Catalina, CAT-O-LINA, sea ate aya oh lee n ya

Me: Wait, Carolina, I'm so sorry let me find them.

(Rings, voicemail) It's 8:00 a.m., there's no one there yet.

Boss^2: rrr o k

Loose fit, but my family lived in Australia for a few years. We're German. One night, my dad feels like a shake after a long drive to a vacation spot, so he drives up to a McDonald's and orders, the rest of the family dozing in the car.

"One erdber shake, please."

"Excuse me?"

"One erdber shake, please?"

"... I don't understand."

At this point my mum realized.

"Oh, a strawberry shake!"

We all have a bit of a laugh. He said the German word for strawberry, but pronounced it English. None of us in the car realized and we all understood. The lady in the drive through said she thought they invented a new flavor she didn't know about.

He also swaps the th and s in Thous Australia. :)

When my wife was in university, she went on an exchange with a dozen other students to a Chinese university. The program assigned her group a pair of local guides.

The first night, the guides offered to take them out for snake. Everyone refused.

The second night, the guides repeatedly offered everyone snake, saying that there were plenty of local places to get snake. Everyone refused.

The third night, her group had a discussion. They didn't want to offend their gracious hosts. Snake had to be a popular local delicacy, because the guides repeated their offer daily.

They decided to be adventurous. One of them spoke up: "yes, we would like to try snake..."

The guide said, "what kind of snake do you want? chips? hot dog?"

Some years ago I was learning Chinese, I was excited and eager to practice after learning only a couple phrases, so one day I see this young lady handing out flyers downtown, I confidently approach her and say "ni hao!" and she replies "I'm Korean". To make things worse the flyers were actually from a Korean learning institute.

Talking to someone from Korea in VRChat and they only knew some English.

Someone said Cancer and they got all excited saying they knew that word, it means leage of legends.

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.

It was me who did a dumb recently. Talking to a cellist, in English: "Oh, you're a striker?".

I, an English speaker, was interacting with a Spanish patient at work. It was me first week, and it had been a long while since I had spoken Spanish but I had been nearly fluent for years. The patient had neck pain. I walked in and very confidently asked "Donde esta el dolor en su culo?" They looked shocked, turned red and said, "OH NO!" and I immediately realized I asked them "Where is the pain in your asshole?" confusing culo (asshole) with cuello (neck). I apologized profusely and they couldn't stop laughing about it during the whole appointment. Good times.

Sounds like you don't know shit. (Standup comedy >4min)

Also your comment made me think of Jimmy Yang, who apparently knew English when he moved to the US, but not that well, not knowing any expressions. When someone asked him "what's up", he just looked at the ceiling.

As a kid we giggled at "Disney Home Video" because "Disney" is a proper noun, so doesn't translate, and "video" is "video" in Finnish as well, but "home" means "mould", (as in the fungus.)

Portuguese in Portugal has a slang word for queue, which is exactly the same as the Brasilian Portuguese slang word for queer.

I have on more than one occasion had to explain to Brasilian acquaintances that I had not just stated I was going to visit a queer person but that I was going to stand on a queue.

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.