Have you created an embarrassing moment for yourself with the wrong translation or pronunciation? Please add your stories here!
My best one is when i was a beginner chinese learner and i asked my husband “i always hear these words in class… wo3 gang4 ni3” what does that mean? He looked horrified and said gang4 means f*ck. I later found out the words i heard in class were “我跟你”。(i follow you)
I dont have other stories as i find mandarin and english really different. But french and english have tons of similar sounding words. I had a 5 min conversation in french. She was taking sign language class (langue de signe) and i thought she was taking a monkey communication class (langue de singes).
Many years ago, back in the USA, somebody asked my Chinese language teacher (a Taiwanese woman, married to an American) if she knew how to swim. She replied, “Yes, but I can only do it doggy-style.”
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This one isn’t related to Chinese, but it happened in Taiwan. My wife was at a company dinner, and one of the higher-ups from France stood up to give a little speech in English. The speech itself wasn’t remarkable, but he ended it with the following line: “I’d like to thank you all from the heart of my bottom!”
Well, there’s a story about cows in this thread…
A famous French woman once allegedly told a room full of people she was looking forward to happiness. The room went silent, and then her husband explained to her that the emphasis should be on the first syllable, not the second, and you kind of do need to pronounce the h.
Haha. Reminds me of one time my francophone friend said to a stranger on the escalator. “I like your coq”. He was wearing a shirt with a rooster (coq) on it.
After I joined the local cycling group I was hit with an enormous amount of local slang mostly with usage of numbers to substitute words. Like how 94 = 就是/Jiù shì.
I thought 80 = 八十/Bā shí = to pull one to their limits. This made plenty of sense in cycling terms because we often try to follow someone in front of us to gain momentum, but eventually get dropped.
I was getting my bike serviced by the captain one day and telling him how joining the club has helped me learn some local slang. He asked me what I learned and I said “八十/Bā shí”
He laughed. “You know it’s suppose to be 霸凌/Bà líng right?”
80 = 霸凌/Bà líng = to bully
I once knew an english teacher who introduced herself as “hi, I’m Sheena, I’m a mouse”
Lao3shu3 is mouse
Lao3shi1 is teacher