False Friends
Here are some amusing examples of when language barriers cause problems!
“A friend of mine went to France armed with a basic grasp of the French language. He needed some household goods but was stumped as to the correct word for pillows. Trying (as we Brits do) to cross the language barrier by speaking slowly in English with an attempt at a French accent he proceeded to repeatedly ask a store assistant “je voudrais un ‘cushion’ pour mon lit”. The store assistant was not at all impressed, and it was only upon consulting his dictionary at home did he realise that the English word ‘cushion’ sounds awfully like the French word for ‘pig’, cochon. Needless to say, we soon understood the store assistants’ disgruntlement at his repeated requests for a pig for his bed!”
“I spent a few weeks on work experience in France, and at the end I was expected to type up the inevitable report. I knew that French for to type was ‘taper’, so I couldn’t understand the red faces when I announced I was going to spend the weekend doing ‘tapinage’. It took a very embarassed colleague to explain afterwards that this was in fact prostitution!”
“When I was trying to explain to a rather grim Cuban customs official why I was setting off the airport metal detector, I didn’t do myself any favours by telling him it was the metal on my Mexican revolutionaries (zapatistas) rather than on my shoes (zapatos). Another time I was slightly confused why my hosts were not more impressed by my rapturous tales of my lovely afternoon horse-riding. Perhaps it would have helped if I had told them we were riding horses (caballos) rather than gentlemen (caballeros).”
“I was working in Spain for a while and after about a year, I developed a very painful sty in my eye. I looked up the word for ’sty’, and went off down to the pharmacy. I walked up to the counter and said the phrase I had pulled from the dictionary. The staff in the Spanish pharmacy were almost clutching their sides with laughter. It was only until I had just walked out and met up with a work friend when I realised I had told the pharmacy nurses that I had una pocilga, a pig sty, in my eye. Oh the shame…”
“I was purchasing a schnapps flask, and told the salesman it was a gift for my son. The man looked horrified; I didn’t know Gift in German meant poison”.
“I emailed my German penpal telling her in German what my dream job would be. I told her I wanted to join the RAF, thinking she knew it was the Royal Air Force, but in Germany RAF stands for Rote Armee Fraktion, the Red Army Faction, which was a German left-wing terrorist group in the 70s, 80s and 90s”.
“Staying in Rimini for the first time I asked to use the shower at a relative’s home. I was shown the way to the flat where we were to stay, next to the main house. Here I commenced to prepare for my shower and started to run the hot tap. After a few minutes no hot water appeared so I returned to the main house and inform them there was no hot water. One of the boys went to check and returned with a smile on his face announcing there was plenty of hot water. Sono inglese, sono stupido, I had mistaken caldo for cold and freddo for hot. Never again”.
“Five years ago, I was staying with my stepmum’s friend in Italy. The friend is English but she has lived there over half her life. Me and her older Italian husband got on okay so one night when we were all having tea I decided to tease him a bit by telling him he was ‘old’. I didn’t know how to say it in Italian so I looked in my dictionary which gave me about 20 different words for ‘old’. Most of them were unpronounceable (to me), so I decided to go for the easiest one to pronounce. I chose “antico”. I wondered why everyone around the table burst into laughter. Later I found out I called him an ‘antique’!”
“I was visiting a Polish friend who had offered to cook me lunch. As I was still learning Polish and she English our conversations used to be ‘duo-lingual’. When she told me she was cooking one of my favourite dishes, I said “Wow! Super dooper” – and got a slap! ‘Super’ in Polish is the same as in English but dupa, which sounds similar to ‘dooper’ means ‘bottom’!”
Unfortunately these situations are often unavoidable, but for those that want to be saved from embarrassment be sure to give Wolfestone a call to help break down language barriers!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/yoursay/false_friends.shtml