Your linguistic disasters

[Callaina]

Two stories from when my Opa and Oma (from Germany) immigrated to Canada with my uncle, who must have been about 6 or 7 at that time.

(1) They all walked into a store that served soft drinks, etc. They saw a sign advertising "7-up" and read the "7" as a capital J. So they asked the cashier for "Jup" (pronouncing it "Yup"). She couldn't figure out what they were talking about until they pointed to the sign.

(2) My Opa and Oma went to buy some coffee and the person serving it asked how many sugar cubes they wanted in their coffee. My Opa and Oma NEVER put sugar in their coffee, and so they shook their heads, protesting, "Nein, nein." "NINE?" the incredulous server asked them. "Nein, nein!" they confirmed.
...They couldn't drink the coffee.

 

[Imber Ranae]

An English couple retire to France, where the wife unfortunately dies. Her husband wants to be nicely turned out for her funeral so he heads for a department store. He thinks he can speak the lingo, but he isn't as good as he thinks. He doesn't know the difference between a chapeau (hat) and a capeau (cap, contraceptive) and the following conversation ensues. (Please excuse my French, which is even worse than the first mentioned Englishman's.)

"Je voudriais un capeau noir s'il vous plait."
"Ah oui monsieur, mais pourquoi un capeau noir?"
"Parce que ma femme est morte."
"Ah, quelle finesse!"

I've never understood how common words like that can acquire such particular and rude meanings.


ETA: I quoted the wrong person.

 

[Pacifica]

I've never understood how common words like that can acquire such particular and rude meanings.

See the different meanings of "capote" here. I think it's easy enough to imagine the metaphor originally involved. Something that covers, basically.

 

[Imber Ranae]

See the different meanings of "capote" here. I think it's easy enough to imagine the metaphor originally involved. Something that covers, basically.

Sorry, I actually meant to quote inmperfacundus (why is it that everyone has suddenly decided to confuse me by changing their names and avatars?), but I clicked on the wrong post. I meant bonne in reference to a woman.

 

[Callaina]

Sorry, I actually meant to quote inmperfacundus (why is it that everyone has suddenly decided to confuse me by changing their names and avatars?)

No clue. I'm staying Callaina, and the cat is staying as well.

Though I would urge your frog to follow suit at least a little and change that everlasting "No" of his...

 

[Imber Ranae]

Though I would urge your frog to follow suit at least a little and change that everlasting "No" of his...

He says "No".

 

[Callaina]

He says "No".

Maybe you should expand your talking frog's vocabulary?

 

[Pacifica]

Sorry, I actually meant to quote inmperfacundus (why is it that everyone has suddenly decided to confuse me by changing their names and avatars?), but I clicked on the wrong post. I meant bonne in reference to a woman.

Ah. Well, "bonne" implies something like "bonne à baiser", like she's "good to fuck" as a piece of food would be good to eat or something like that, you could take pleasure with her.

 

[Imber Ranae]

Ah. Well, "bonne" implies something like "bonne à baiser", like she's "good to fuck" as a piece of food would be good to eat or something like that, you could take pleasure with her.

I can see how the sense developed, but it's weird to me that it became so prevalent in the first place as to push out the more general meaning, so to speak. And I'm marvelling more at the tendency for languages to do this than at this particular example, since I know it's hardly unique in that regard.

 

[Pacifica]

I can see how the sense developed, but it's weird to me that it became so prevalent in the first place as to push out the more general meaning, so to speak. And I'm marvelling more at the tendency for languages to do this than at this particular example, since I know it's hardly unique in that regard.

Yeah, I see what you mean. Well, it's still possible to say that a woman is "bonne" without that meaning, but then generally you specify good in what regards (e.g. bonne en anglais). Just "elle est bonne", period, has, say, 95% of chances to be intended as "she's hot".

 

[Lucius Aelius]

There is the time I confused, while discussing onomatopoeia in a Historical Linguistics course, cachinno with caco.

 

[Serenus]

I was once walking with a friend on a late summer day at about 7:00 p.m., when I looked up at the sky and noticed it had suddenly turned all orange and pink. I exclaimed "look, the sky's so beautiful!". However, it seems that I mispronounced the second word, and what I actually said was "look, this guy's so beautiful!". There happened to be a guy walking hand by hand with his girlfriend or wife right in front of us, and they both quickly looked back at me, both with face showing they were totally weirded out. My friend started laughing uncontrollably, and I had no idea why, until she explained it to me.

Years later I learned that lots of people commonly go through this the first time they listened to Jim Hendrix's song Purple Haze and its "'scuse me while I kiss the sky" line.

 

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

I suppose I should continue my rambling. When I reached Venice, I found a hotel room, and went out to explore. Returning that evening, a different man was at reception. He told me in Italian that the hotel was full. I smiled and said in English I had a room there, but he looked blank. I tried it in French, but that didn't seem any better. He took me outside, where a receptionist from another hotel was slightly less monolingual. Unfortunately, she thought I was German, though as her only word of that language appeared to be Zimmer, I couldn't tell if she was offering me one or saying I couldn't have one. In any case, I didn't need one, but as I didn't speak German either at that time, we were at a bit of a standstill.

Meanwhile, a crowd had materialised out of nowhere, as they do on Italian streets. People were saying things I could understand, but had no response to, such as 'what is this girl doing here late at night without any baggage?' At that point I said in English, 'Of course I haven't got any bloody baggage, it's in the room.' The woman turned to my receptionist and said that I wasn't German, but English. This was progress of a kind.

Eventually a boy was found who'd had some French at school, so I explained matters. Not quite the end of it, as the receptionist returned to say the room I'd claimed was mine was occupied by other people – it was number 72, and I could do the sixty-twelve thing, but the boy couldn't. It did get sorted out in the end, and I learnt two valuable lessons: always write numbers down, and never assume people are going to know another language, even if they work in the tourist industry in a place that is virtually nothing but its tourist industry.

 

[Aurifex]

I can't quite work out why you couldn't just bypass the new receptionist and go straight to your room and let yourself in with your key. I sympathize all the same.

Having once arrived at a Chinese airport minus my passport, money, hotel details - you name it, whilst not having slept for 24 hours and coming down with the flu, I can confirm that you sometimes badly need to be able to speak the lingo.

 

[Callaina]

I can't quite work out why you couldn't just bypass the new receptionist and go straight to your room and let yourself in with your key. I sympathize all the same.

Having once arrived at a Chinese airport minus my passport, money, hotel details - you name it, whilst not having slept for 24 hours and coming down with the flu, I can confirm that you sometimes badly need to be able to speak the lingo.

How did this happen?

 

[Callaina]

And how did it all turn out?

 

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

I can't quite work out why you couldn't just bypass the new receptionist and go straight to your room and let yourself in with your key.

You had to leave the key at reception, and there was a large plastic thing attached to it to make it inconvenient for you to be tempted to carry it about with you even if you did manage to sneak out with it. Hotels did that sort of thing back then, but I haven't seen it for years.

 

[Aurifex]

How did this happen?

I was supposed to meet someone when I got off the plane at Beijing, but the plane landed late and, after a last minute change, at a different terminal from the one it was scheduled to. I had no means of contacting the person I was to due to meet because my mobile phone's network didn't operate in China then. After waiting around for an hour, I joined the queue for a bus to the other terminal (a 10 minute ride away) but when I finally got there the arrivals area was completely empty of people apart from airport staff.

This is when the fun really began, with me putting down somewhere and forgetting to pick up the bag with my passport in it, not having the name of the hotel I was staying at on me anywhere, and, after many inquiries and explanations at the airport finding, when I eventually got to the hotel several hours later, that I couldn't stay at the hotel until I'd been to the British embassy and obtained an emergency replacement passport.

It was Christmas Eve. Ringing the embassy I was told that normal business would resume on Jan. 2nd. The hotel wanted me out and said I'd have to report to a police station and announce myself as an alien without ID and take things from there.

Fortunately the person I'd been due to meet at the airport had turned up at the hotel in the meantime, which was lucky because the only money I'd had on me I had used to pay for the taxi from the airport. So we got a taxi to the police station, where I was told that this was not a big enough police station to process me and we needed to go to a bigger one across town. After another hour driving around in a taxi we returned from doing the necessaries at the right police station and started ringing the airport again (as we'd done before we left for the police station) to see if anyone there had handed in my bag with my passport in it. From about two till nine o'clock in the evening there was no luck, and with the hotel insisting that I couldn't stay there with no passport I'd resigned myself to having to find a doorway somewhere to sleep in. It was a temperate -10 Celsius outside so I'd be fine.

Then, around 9.30 pm, our umpteenth call to the airport paid off. Some kind person had handed my bag in and it was at a police station on the periphery of the airport. So we got on a bus for the 2hr round trip to the airport, where I was reunited with my passport, and I got back to the hotel and to bed 36 hours after I'd last slept, where I was allowed to let the worst effects of the illness I was suffering from take its course for the next few days.

It was by no means my worst travel experience, but it was memorable, nonetheless. Travel definitely is travail at times.

 

[Callaina]

It was by no means my worst travel experience, but it was memorable, nonetheless.

Good grief. What was the worst?

 

[Aurifex]

Good grief. What was the worst?

I don't know. There are several contenders, variously involving accidents, illness, hospitalization, and prodigious stints of staying awake and going without a bath. I don't think I really want to talk about them.