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?

  • Vanth@reddthat.com
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    6 days ago

    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

    • neidu3@sh.itjust.works
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      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.

      • Vanth@reddthat.com
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        6 days ago

        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”.

    • markstos@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      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.

  • rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio
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    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.

  • tunetardis@lemmy.ca
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    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!”

  • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
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    5 days ago

    In Spain, my first real long-term girlfriend. American. We are visiting some of my relatives. She speaks passable Spanish. My aunt ask her something. She replies that she’s embarrassed, but she uses a “false -friend”, Embarazada, which means pregnant in Spanish. Me knowing what was going on, let the thing run for a bit. When explanations came there was a hilarious bit of manga size eyes and laughs.

  • lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    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?”

  • Kokolores@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    The other day there was a girl on the train responding to the conductor saying “Nächster Halt, Itzehoe” (next stop, Itzehoe), which sounds exactly like “It’s a hoe”. She went “It’s a what!?” with her companion cracking up immediately.

  • icogniito@lemmy.zip
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    6 days ago

    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

    • tunetardis@lemmy.ca
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      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.

    • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      6 days ago

      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.

      • icogniito@lemmy.zip
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        4 days ago

        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

      • tunetardis@lemmy.ca
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        6 days ago

        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.

  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    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.

    • Daeraxa@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      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.

        • Daeraxa@lemmy.ml
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          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

          • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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            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.

        • Daeraxa@lemmy.ml
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          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

      • NotSteve_@lemmy.ca
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        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

  • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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    It was actually nonverbal - I didn’t understand the so-called “Indian head wag.” Working with a lot of programmers from India, I was often faced with that sort of gyrating head gesture while explaining something. To me as an American it kind of means well yeah sort of, or okay but not really - but in India it indicates understanding, like a simple head nod in America. I couldn’t figure out why so many people seemed to think I was being unclear. I would repeat things or say them in a different way, and sometimes they would do the head gyration even more - turned out they were just saying okay.

  • poddus
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    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.

  • frosty99c@midwest.social
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    6 days ago

    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.”

  • dmention7@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    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!

    • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      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.

      • Bob@feddit.nl
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        5 days ago

        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.

    • UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      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.

  • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    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.

  • Dumbkid@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 days ago

    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.

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    after hours gaming at work with awesome ukrainian colleague.

    we all get regular beers from the fridge. ukrainian co-worker is sitting there and suddenly spits his drink all over the floor and looks utterly grossed out. He reads the label with scrutiny and says loudly ‘guys, vat thee fak is ROOT BEER?!’

    oh how we laughed

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        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.

      • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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        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.