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?
My friend tried to call me a “night owl” because we tended to talk very late at night for my time zone. She accidentally called me a “lady of the night”.
EDIT: “lady of the night” is a term for prostitute
I don’t remember the details, but a similar situation on a ship with people from all over the world, resulted in my shift being called “vampire shift”. It was very suitable too, as I got up at sunset, and my shift was over around dawn. I liked it that way - it kept me out of the sun.
EDIT: This was in addition to the other shifts; day shift (noon->midnight), night shift (midnight->noon), and chief shift (0600->1800). My shift was a weird one that only I had so that I could overlap with both day and night and cover for the chief tech during his off hours.
Kind of like “graveyard shift”, which isn’t a funny translation, it’s commonly used (where I live) slang for the overnight shift. I like “vampire shift” better than “graveyard”.
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We had two female black cats named Midnight and Luna,
When guests would come over ask about our young children about the cats, a child would explain to the adult guests that Midnight and Luna were our ladies of the night, explaining that Luna means moon.
This went on for years.
Friend: You’re a talkative owl-whore! 😂
You: ☹️
Not my story, but one a friend told me.
Someone had the misconception that there was a huge, huge sector of labor dedicated to working in cemeteries in the USA. Like almost everyone knew at least one person who worked at a cemetery. This misconception arose due to the ubiquity of the term “graveyard shift” regardless of the actual job being performed.
What is a graveyard shift?
It typically refers to any job where you’re working overnight, like from midnight to 8AM.
When your scheduled working hours is during the nighttime, 12am - 5 am or so
One time when I was a kid, we went on a long car trip and a thunderstorm approached. My dad said, “Don’t worry about the sound. It’s the light that kills you!” My Japanese mom was not cool with this. “No, it’s the sound. What are you talking about?” A fierce argument ensued.
So, the words for thunder and lightning in Japanese are kaminari and inazuma, respectively. But that’s not a perfect translation. kaminari means something like “peal of the gods”, and is the forceful, dangerous part. inazuma is basically just a light show.
English is the opposite. Thunder is just a sound, while lightning can kill you. To put it another way, in English, one word is light + electricity while the other is sound. In Japanese, one word is sound + electricity while the other is light.
Anyway, I was about to speak up when my big brother tugged my arm. “No. This is a popcorn moment. Don’t ruin it!”
This is fascinating to learn.
They’re both wrong, it’s the electricity that kills you. Light and sound are just side effects.
Okay, but try telling that to the people who came up with the words a thousand years ago.
One time when I was a kid,
That’s how childhood and passage of time works.
Years ago, when I first moved to America from the UK, I was working in a pretty quiet office that backed on to a field. One day mouse appeared, freaked out a couple of the gals in the office, and then it ran and hid under an office cube.
I investigated to see where it was hiding, but it was pretty dark down there. So I asked if either of the gals had a torch. They both got an expression of wide-eyed horror, which confused me for a few seconds.
Then I realized that torch had a different term in America. So I corrected myself and asked if either of them had a flashlight. And they looked very relieved. They thought I was going to get an old school torch and try to smoke the mouse out or set it on fire, and probably set the whole cube on fire in the process.
I was in North Carolina for work recently and one lady was talking about her local brewery where she could “grab her growler” and head over there. Took me a while to recover from laughing at that one.
I means a bottle for transporting beer here, I’m guessing like all British slang it means genitalia?
Oh of course yeah, if it doubt then it is a safe bet to assume that. From a 2003 entry in urban dictionary:
- Growler
Female pubic region, having gone into a state of repair/part of male mating call
Get your growler out
Only Growler I have is from a brewpub that doesn’t exist anymore. They did gangbusters business in a walkable downtown area selling pints over the bar. They decided to move across town to the part where pedestrians never go to focus on retail sales of packaged beer and were out of business within 6 months.
What does that mean to you?
From a 2003 entry in urban dictionary:
- Growler
Female pubic region, having gone into a state of repair/part of male mating call
Get your growler out
Is growler not used in the US the same way? It’s a style of jug in Canada most often for beer, wine or cider
I think so but I’m not American, I’m British
It is used that way here, yes. I’m not familiar with any other meaning.
Thank god you didn’t ask them if you could borrow a rubber.
UK English: Eraser.
US English: Condom.
Haha, yeah. Pretty sure I would have been summoned to have a chat with HR in that case.
At least you didn’t ask to bum a fag
Not a single Jonathan who has been through the UK school system in the past forty years has gotten away with being asked “Have you got a rubber, Johnny?”
Not one.
Maybe they thought you were accepting the classic introductory RPG quest?
Gotta get that xp somehow.
I made this comment about a year ago: https://midwest.social/comment/6247683
“A friend of mine is a non-native English speaker. He teaches at an elementary school and works with ‘English as a second language’ students. He casually mentioned that he always tells his students to take a ‘horse bath’ in the bathroom sink after recess if needed. He was traumatized when I told him that he’d misheard that phrase for his entire adult life.”
What’s the real phrase?
Whores bath. It’s when you hit up the bathroom to freshen your junk before you get busy
Bruh .ml censores the urls too
pathetic ass instance
Wow, that’s insanity. I don’t particularly like the word, but come on.
The censor hits any substring, rather than trying to heuristically guess whether the substring is being used as a slur or not, it assumes users are smart enough to pick up on the context.
“Whore bath” is how I’ve heard it
People are trying to post the answer and it’s getting censored lol. The term is “core’s bath,” but replace the “c” with “wh”.
It isn’t censored on most instances.
#JustDotMLProblems
Lemmy.ml censors the word “whore”???
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/main/crates/utils/src/utils/slurs.rs#L78
Line 78 has the regex for Lemmy’s profanity filter. The .ml instance has it enabled, .world and most others I’ve seen do not.
I’m quite impressed by the elaborate regex for the n word
ni((g{2,}|q)+|[gq]{2,})[e3r]+(s|z)?
I mean, I can kinda understand it - socialists/communists/anarchists generally prefer ‘sex worker’, because ‘whore’ has some pretty terrible connotations due to being used as a slur for so long.
But still, censoring it instead of just deleting/blocking the handful of pricks who still say it as an insult seems… well, par for the course for .ml tbh
I don’t understand it at all when it’s not nearly as bad as some of the shit that gets said on there.
Pretty pathetic that they feel the need to censor words
What a bunch of pricks
So he wanted to tell them to clean up their junk, but mixed up the phrase?
He thought a “horse bath” was just a quick rinse off in the sink. He was inadvertently teaching ESL elementary school kids the phrase “whore’s bath” which, while it is technically just a quick rinse in the sink, there is definitely different connotation.
just a quick rinse off in the sink
Bird bath, sparrow bath, crow bath. Terms in some Indian languages for that.
Wow—please tell us which translations you’re referring to
Translation of terms/phrases for ‘quick rinse off’ in Marathi or Hindi
I used to work with a Ukranian coworker, who had so little of an accent that I often forgot he was not a native English speaker.
One time during a meeting, I mentioned “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” and I can still picture the horrified look on his face when he processed what I just said.
In all fairness, it’s a pretty morbid expression!
I have a Moldovan friend who does have a thick accent and had a lot of trouble saying “beach” and “beaches” for a bit.
Once he found out why people were laughing, he decided to keep saying he “loved going to Florida for the bitches” anyway.
I used to hang about with this Italian couple, and I remember smoking outside a pub with them years ago when I sort of offhandedly said “it’s like the difference between shit and sheet”, and one said “what’s the difference?” so of course I spent a good ten minutes trying to demonstrate the difference by saying “shit” and “sheet” over and over with them trying to copy me. The bouncer loved it.
We have a climate chamber ("Klima-Kammer in German) at work for testing products, and my Ukrainian coworker kept referring to it as the “camera”, I thought that was funny.
My Dutch friend. We were on discord playing guild wars and the topic of alcohol came up. The majority of the group are british and we were talking about different drinks like whisky, gin etc and the question came up “so what famous dutch spirits are there?”.
There was a bit of silence before he said, “I don’t know, William of Orange?”. Turns out he had never heard of the word ‘spirit’ to refer to high proof alcohol before so selected a famous historical dutch figure.
I could imaging a William of Orange rum. Bet it would taste pretty good.
The answer, of course is “jenever”.
The funnier answer is “witte wieven”
The majority of the group are british and we were talking about different drinks like whisky, gin etc and the question came up “so what famous dutch spirits are there?”.
In case you want an actual answer to that question, look up the history of gin.
This was a rather long time ago, my gin and oude en jonge jenever collection has rather grown since then lol
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.
I love that in my head im reading “poepen” as “poopin’” with a funny accent
Geef me een klap, papa
Lol this reminds me of BBC Pidgin:
How is that headline about the woman and not the british man she invited over who threw poop out her second floor window?
Hey, don’t judge the Belgians.
Yeah, take your hands off of them!
Never really though about it but there are similar words in German “poppen” (colloquial term for having sex) and “pupsen” which is farting.
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 😂
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”.
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.
geil = horny
is that the origin of the German word?
I went to the doctor because I was worried about me grinding my teeth (bruxism).
Instead of saying “hagishiri” or 歯ぎしり I said “hagEshiri” or ハゲ尻
so I told to the doctor I was worried about my bald ass.
Haha amazing.
An American, English speaking friend was told to order food in Chinese while we were there and ended up making the whole restaurant laugh when he very loudly let her know he was sterile. According to our hosts haha.
I heard a story of an American student in Beijing asking for “paigu mien” (pork rib noodles), but he rather confused the waitress by asking for “pigu mien”, bottom (arse) noodles!
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Me learning ginger beer =/= ginger ale
So what is it? Is it beer? Another fermented beverage? Is it soda?
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.
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.
I had it once, and I thought it tasted like most subways smell.
It doesn’t seems very appealing.
I had sort of the reverse, working with German-speaking coworkers. I used the term “schpiel” to refer to a long talk I was going to give. This led to a moment of confusion because that’s not what the word means in German. It means “game” or “play” and in the context they thought I meant to imply that I was not taking the speech seriously, or maybe wasn’t going to be completely honest. Almost like a con. That’s probably how the loanword first entered the English language, and its meaning has drifted over time.
The word spiel “schpiel” is of Yiddish origin. It comes from the Yiddish word shpil (שפּיל), which means “play” or “game” same as German.
Yiddish and German are like Spanish and Portuguese. They are of course different languages, but there is a lot of overlap in vocabulary. I don’t know which language was the vector for the word.
I was once working with a team in India to resolve a database issue. During a particular call, we had to export data several times to create backups. Exporting the DB data is done with “dump” commands and my Indian counterpart would repeatedly tell me that he “took a dump just now”.
The taking/giving/reaching out term differences between Indian dialect and American English caused me some confusion on one of my calls. They kept saying they were trying to “take RDP from” server A to server B. I interpreted that as connecting from A to B, since they used the word “from.”
It took a bit, but I eventually realized that there seemed to be to be a fundamental difference in the way these things are thought about.
Americans, we always are reaching toward, pointing to, connecting to, or connecting something from HERE to THERE, like we’re shooting a gun or drawing a line. That is not how these Indian guys were looking at it.
If you are “taking RDP from” server A to server B, then that means you are on server B trying to connect to server A. It’s more like if you were to imagine reaching out with your hand and grabbing something toward you.
This is super interesting and I often wonder how differences in thought patterns, as they relate to a language, affect the culture of the language speakers themselves.
Do those speaking that dialect have like a cultural feeling that they need to “take” or “receive” or otherwise “acquire” a thing (like RDP) to make a connection? This as opposed to what I see as a very american way of looking at things (again using RDP as an example here), where “we’ve already got it, so will give it to you to make the connection.”
It feels like, and I could be very wrong, one comes from a place of not being accustomed to already having what they need, vs taking for granted the things they have and “sending it forth” or whatever.
Hahaha, I’m using this in the future, just for laughs.
Lol. I would always reply with something like “That’s nice, but did you also take a backup?” or “During the call???”.
I went to Mexico and told a lot of people that they don’t speak Spanish. When someone said something that I couldn’t hear well, I’d compliment their digestion.
Right phrase: No hablo Español (I don’t speak Spanish)
What I said: No hablas Español (you don’t speak Spanish)Right phrase: Que dices (What you say)
What I said Que diges (what digestion!)I think most people can guess as it’s very common to hear the “no habla” one.
I’ve got one though: A roommate told his new Spanish boyfriend that she wasn’t feeling like meeting his parents because she was “muy embarazada”.
Turns out that’s not embarrassed, that’s pregnant.
That’s a really common one here in San Antonio where people speak conversational Spanish but don’t know more formal words like that. One of my friends tripped and fell in front of her family visit from Mexico. It was at our graduation and she stepped on her gown. She said “estoy embarazada” and everyone freaked out, running to her aid. Her parents were really confused how their lesbian daughter got pregnant.
Es un milagro de navidad! (Navidaz?)
This is really funny. I assume those people had a good laugh? But why did nobody tell you?
Because people are super accommodating in non-WASPy countries. I’d try to speak Spanish and if they saw I was struggling too much, they’d say “let’s speak English.”
What’s “WASPy”?
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
It’s a term for awkward Northern Europeans.
Thanks! As a white Northern European in a protestant area I concur that we are awkward.
Well to preface this, 6 months ago I moved to Japan to study Japanese.
During a trip to Tokyo I randomly ended up talking to a group of salarymen on the way to the same restaurant at me in akihabara. After a while they asked me if I live in Japan and I answered yes and then proceeded to say 日本にしんでいる instead of 日本に住んでいる, for those who don’t speak Japanese, I accidentally said I am dying in Japan instead of I am living in Japan which is surprisingly close pronounciation wise lol. This was met with loads of laughs
My favourite story like that is from my dad, who was WW2 vet. After the war, he wound up in Japan and attended a conference where someone stepped up to the podium and introduced himself as General McArthur’s Chief Advisor. Or at least he thought he did…
The word for advisor is komon. The word for asshole or anus is koumon. Basically, you just hold out the first o out slightly longer and it switches to the other word.
I feel like this is too coincidental to be a coincidence.
koumon
My parents forced me to attend after school tutoring when I was a kid, at a place called “Kumon” 🤔
Haha i am just starting to learn Japanese and I gotta say its challenging but so fun. I love the grammar, at least as far as I understand it at this point. Like Yoda’s grammar it is.
I used to have trouble with RPN calculators until I realized it’s better to think in Japanese.
For example, when I go:
3 enter 5 plus 2 divide
I’m thinking:
san to go tasi-te ni-de waru
It just feels more natural.
The yoda grammar thing never really worked for me, the Japanese grammar is so different from the other languages I speak that I just could never translate in my head.
When it comes to Japanese, either I know how to say something naturally or I don’t, I can’t do convoluted English (or other languages) to Japanese translation in my head and then speak
To live and die in Japan, that’s the place to beeee…
