Say what???

by Leslie Abbott on March 19, 2009 in General and Music. Comments

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It can be odd to open your mouth and not know what is coming out.  I’m learning Chinese. The words can be problematic. As you may know, Chinese is a tonal language. Tones rule.   In English, if we say “good”, it doesn’t matter what our accent is; we all understand what it means. This isn’t the case with a tonal language. The same word has countless meanings and it depends on its tone and the context.

Your mama

Yo Mama

The most common example is the word “ma”. Each word can be either Tone (I) high level, (2) high rising; (3) low rising, (4) high falling to low. ma means in tone one “mother,” ma2 means “hemp,” ma3 means ”horse,” and ma4 means “to curse.” Oy vey!

I get together once a week with two Chinese friends at different times to practice my Chinese and help  them with their English.. Sometimes there is a look on their faces like “Huh??” They get some good chuckles too. Recently I thought I was telling Hua it’s “the same” which is “yiyang.” I didn’t use the right tone so  he thought I was saying “It’s a sheep”.  I have had some good laughs too. Last week LingLing told me, “I prepare dinner in the chicken”. As that might be true, she meant “I prepare dinner in the kitchen”.  Good clean fun!

Cannes France

Cannes France

While living in France I got a job as “au pair” which is basically a live in baby sitter. I met the parents for dinner and then was flown down to be with  the grandparents. They were very wealthy. Their enormous summer villa was near Picasso’s home. Grandma and her grandkids picked me up from the airport. I wanted to make a good impression and she was rather formal. I decided to tell a story about meeting her daughter. I said, “Your daughter made a delicious duck”, in French. Votre fille a fait un canard délicieux . But instead of saying “canard-duck” I said “connard” “Your daughter cooked a delicious “bastard”. Mon Dieu! That was a good start.

For some more romance I studied some Italian and Spanish. In Pisa, Italy, I saw a traffic accident. They’re some crazy drivers! I wanted to describe the accident to my roommate. As you know, many words sound like English but with an “i” or “o” or “a” at the end. I proceeded to talk about the “accidenti” over and over. Turns out that “accidenti ” in Italian happens to mean “Damn!”, although you might be yelling that after an accident.

Many have made the mistake of saying in Spanish,”Soy embarrassada”  when wanting to say”I’m embarrassed”. .It could lead to a little  red faced moment and a good laugh.  Men,  look out especially for that one! It means”I’m pregnant”.

I bet you have some stories too. Let us know.

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  • Toni
    I'm learning Mandarin Chinese and Japanese as well. I've never been able to put it to use yet except maybe at a Restaurant or Convenience Store. On a couple of those occasions I was told "no no, thats Chinese, I'm Korean!" or "no no, I'm Vietnamese! That can be embarrassing also.
    I think its great you're learning Chinese.
    TC
  • unclebob
    while not exactly a "foreign" language misunderstanding. when I was stationed in England my landlord's 13 year old daughter wanted to show me her rubber collection. when she showed them to me I said "oh, erasers" and chuckled. Her mom suddenly caught it and started laughing too. She then let the rest of the family in on it telling them "In America rubbers mean condoms". everyone had a good laugh.
  • Hi Lynn, Thank you. Don't be too impressed with me trying to learn Chinese. It's like anything. One step at a time. I've got a lot of steps until I could hold my own in a real conversation for any length of time.
  • That's very funny Russell. I love it. Thank you!

    I went to a talk at UC Davis on religion during the Renaissance. It was by a very distinguished visiting professor from Italy. He had a thick accent too. All was going well until he started talking about the Catholic monkeys. He of course meant monks. I thought I'd die from holding back my laughter.It was in front of a lot of people. That is the only thing I remember of the talk.
  • Russell from New York
    Thanks for your humorous adventures in foreign languages! Wars have been started as a result of faulty grammar, and if everyone followed your example, we’d all take time to have fun with it, and we might avoid such things. Speaking of “sheep” that double “ee” sound is somehow tough for Chinese speakers. Once when a friend of mine was disappointed with a martial arts performance of his students, he shook his head and told me they were all “slipping”. I was about to check the street for ice when I realized he felt that they lacked the proper energy, and meant they were sleeping. This is the same reason why my grandmother used to laugh at herself whenever she had to say the word, sheets (as this is a family website, I'll just let you say it yourselves at home instead of spelling it out). One of the funniest things I’ve ever heard had nothing to with pronunciation at all, but word order. I was meeting up with my uncle for a gig, and when I arrived on the scene, he said, “Everything’s okay, but I’m one short person.” Of course I knew he meant he was one person short, but owing to his earnest tone and the fact the he is indeed one short person, I couldn’t stop laughing
  • Good stories, Leslie, and I am in complete awe of your learning Chinese!

    I have nothing to offer on this topic though. I am completely monolingual. I took Spanish for 5 years in junior high and high school, but I flunked and spent a lot of class time outside the classroom in the hallway because I acted out. Which was unusual for me since I was a very quiet and good student usually. I do remember my translations from Spanish to English got a lot of laughs! On my first year Spanish final I got an 11. Yes, out of 100. Yikes! I'm just grateful that I can speak English a little.
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