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If you've ever interacted with someone who speaks a different language, what is the funniest misunderstanding you've had?

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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  • I was in a sign language class (ASL) around Halloween and the instructor asked if we had ever encountered a ghost. We thought he signed tornado so we signed about times we were near tornadoes while he’s looking on with disbelief and shock and awe about all of our supernatural encounters. We had a good laugh when we figured out the confusion.

  • When I was living in Japan (about 20 years ago now), I was dating a Filipino woman who spoke very good English. But I quickly learned that she didn't understand colloquialisms.

    There was one day when she kept calling me multiple times throughout the day. After the 5th or 6th call, I picked up the phone and said, "Jeez, you're killing me!"

    She immediately started crying and asked, "Why would you ever say that?! I would never kill you!" Which got a laugh out of me and just made her cry even harder.

    I quickly realized she didn't understand English expressions. I explained it to her, but she said she didn't want me to ever say it again, because just hearing the accusation hurt her, even if I didn't literally mean it.

    While dating her, I became hyper vigilant to the amount of expressions we use in English. I had to continually rephrase everything I said because I caught myself using so many colloquialisms that she just didn't understand. She took everything so literally!

  • I was resolving a conflict once and, instead of saying "make up or breakup", I said "make out or breakout". The fact I screwed that up probably helped the conflict cease though.

  • 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.

  • I once tried to say “I don’t fuck about” in Italian to my Italian friend. I ran it through DDG and replied to him with something along the lines of “Non cazzetto”.

    He was a little surprised that I’d admitted to him that I don’t fuck, but treated me with sympathy all the same.

  • Guy I worked with when younger, at a restaurant, primarily a Spanish speaker. He kept telling me that another one of our co-workers "won the race"... I had no idea what he was talking about. "He win the race, he win it!"

    What race? Eventually he expands to say it was easier to say in Spanish, but basically if there was a race to be fat and ugly, this guy would win that hypothetical race.

    He was very pleased with himself.

260 comments