quote:

Originally posted by cheesegrits:
A friend's Japanese mother says "towel papers" instead of paper towels.

We've had many amusing conversations about dish soap and soap dish over the years.

Two that come to mind: the bottom lime (not the bottom line) and monkey monks (for muckety mucks).

While working in Barcelona, one of my co-workers said "First I will pick my children at his school, then I will pick you at the output of your 'otel."

English was not his first language, nor his second, nor his third ... He read, wrote, and spoke fluent Castilian Spanish (of course), Catalan, French, Italian, German, And Russian. And certainly good enough English to communicate with me and to use English language text books and technical reference manuals.

There are those idioms that many Americans can't seem to get. I hear "He has a tough road to hoe" all the time. Indeed, roads are tough to hoe.

My wife is French.
When sick she sometimes "throws out".
After a long tiring work week she wants to "sleep around" , which I hope is a mix of sleep in and hang around the house.

Of course pronunciation is important too. When we visit Europe I often complain if the hotels have duvets only as I like sheets. My wife's version to my parents:

"We had a great trip but James could not have a shit for a week. Finally we stayed at the Holiday Inn in Marseille and he was able to have a king size shit"

The look on my parents' faces was priceless.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
There are those idioms that many Americans can't seem to get. I hear "He has a tough road to hoe" all the time. Indeed, roads are tough to hoe.

Well, many Americans have never had the pleasure of hoeing a row (or several). For those who have, the expression makes a lot of sense. For those who haven't, it is just something to say, often without understanding it.

Not amusing but aggravating, "We need to hone in on something". It isn't 'hone' it's home, like a homing pigeon, like a sidewinder missile. Hone is to sharpen, like a knife or your wit.

I know a girl from Russia, she went to the USA in order to work, so she rented a room. When she asked the owner to give her the keys, it sounded like "kiss". He was confused, but kissed her. The situation was really funny.

We had an Italian guy approach us in Naples and the only English he spoke was summon a bitch.

This is probably the best one I ever heard for this topic:



It is a video of someone's TV, which I hate, but I couldn't find another to post.


Link to original video: https://youtu.be/MPu-3UEGcmo

My wife for awhile thought "sluts" was actually spelled and pronounced "slots."

On the drive to Vegas for the first time together, she was a little put off by all the billboards advertising all of the slots and how great it is to play them in Vegas. I had a good laugh over that.

Another instance was when she worked at Disney World for a year. She had bought this Tigger coffee mug (from Winnie the Pooh) that had written on it "Wired for another day." Her and her German roommate both thought for an entire year that it said, "Weird for another day" until I saw the mug and said I was wired. She looked at me with a confused look and said, "wired? What is that?" I explained its meaning, but to this day we still like to say that we're weird for another day after our morning coffee.

quote:

Originally posted by Patrick-SP2022:

quote:

Originally posted by cheesegrits:
A friend's Japanese mother says "towel papers" instead of paper towels.

My wife, who is not Japanese, says the same thing.

When I work with offshore developers of Indian descent, the phrase "Please do the needful" comes up regularly when they are asking me to do something for them like give them access to a projects source code.

"Please do the needful" is an anachronism for colonial English it's only still used in India.

Probably the result of Chinese grammar: Chinese guys at work often sent emails with nothing but a title: "Go home now". Sounded like a command, but meant: "I'm going home now".

quote:

Originally posted by benny6:

And for the grand finale-
She had nose surgery once to clear a blockage. I told her that in American slang she had a "nose job." She had stints in her nose that were causing her head to hurt really bad. Given this new found information about nose jobs, she assumed that since she wished she could get her whole head fixed, she said "My head hurts so bad. I really need a head job!"

Tony.

It must be rubbing off, as those are "stents."

I worked for a Chinese woman when I was fresh out of college. She said a lot of odd things.

Bannana holders = Manila folders. (They just sounded alike to her.)

She came and asked me if an eyeglasses case she found was my "eyeball box."

She once got a traffic ticket and wanted to appear before the court rather than just plead it out. I told her to call the judge "Your Honor." She thought I was talking to her, but that meant she should use "My Honor" when addressing the court. This still doesn't make sense to me.

And most confusing was one morning when she came in complaining her hair was like a chicken house. It took me a long time to puzzle out that she was trying to say her hair was a mess - that it looked like a bird's nest.

My mother in law is Italian, and after living in the United States for almost 60 years, she still cannot get any preposition correct. But that is just irritating. Not amusing.

Monte Python had a skit about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6D1YI-41ao

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:...My mother in law is Italian, and after living in the United States for almost 60 years, she still cannot get any preposition correct. But that is just irritating. Not amusing.

My mother in law was Peruvian. After 60 yrs in the US, her English sounded identical to her Spanish, I couldn't understand either.

My fiancé is still working on her English, and we converse primarily in Turkish, so I understand many of her English mixups without giving it much thought. However, one thing she consistently screws up is trying to express putting an item in a place. For example, "put the plate in the cupboard" comes out as, "put the plate to the cupboard." Turkish grammar is such that the literal translation is "to" rather than "in," so I cut her some slack...but it gets me every time. I just smile and shake my head because she's so dang cute!

My girlfriends mother constantly can't find the right phrase or word for something. This isn't really a mix-up but it cracks us up.

When she can't figure out the word, she just says "you know dat ting (that thing)". When we look at her puzzled she just says it louder, "you know, dat ting". Finally we say no we don't know. Then she'll say it one last time even louder, "YOU KNOW, DAT TING"!

I once worked with a woman from Columbia. When complaining about a coworker once, she intended to say "all the time" but what came out was "That Bill. He is coming late to work all the days."

My wife and I use the phrase now for fun.