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?
it’s worse when you do speak the language, but your laziness in one language affects the other: in spanish, if you leave out the punctuation like it’s english, you could accidentally end up texting people that your potato is into anal gangbangs instead of into how much your dad likes new years parties. lol
mi papa disfruta fiestas por ano neuvo (my potato likes new anal gangbangs)
vs
mi papá disfruta fiestas por año nuevo (my father likes new years parties)
Oh I think we have a winner….
Mi papa disfruta fiestas por año nuevo (My potato likes New Year’s parties)
Vs
Mi papá disfruta fiestas por ano nuevo (My father likes new anal gangbangs)
🤣🤣🤣
Well, in European Spanish it would mean “Pope”, not “potato”, so it’s a worthy contender
As yes, I’ve told someone how many assholes I have before.
To be fair, ñ in Spanish is a whole letter by itself and not just a funny n. As in, it has its own entry in the alphabet, and it has a dedicated key on the keyboard. So even lazy people don’t write n instead :P
not on us keyboards; hence all the anal. i literally have to find a source to find ñ and á to copy/paste it. lol
On smartphones you can tap and hold, and on physical keyboards there’s usually an alt key combo you can put in.
they’re disabled and the last time i needed it was years ago; i also didn’t turn it back on to use it back then as well. lol
even on my phone; it’s more convenient to just switch languages than find that character. jeje