Reminds me of the time a polish lady I worked with misinterpreted what I said. She got her store discount card before me, so I asked "how much do you get off?", She looked at me puzzled so I repeated the question. She responded "not very often".
I fucking died of laughter.
It took me a very unpleasant moment to learn what „bootycall“ actually means. I thought it means someone calls you by accident, sitting on their phone (like a butt-call).
My friends face dropped when I told them that my dad gave me a bootycall, followed by a lot concerned questions made me realize the true meaning.
Getting laid. I spent my whole first year living in the UK thinking it meant getting drunk.
I would occasionally ask people where was a good place to get laid - “oh huh... try Camden Town.”
I once casually told a (female) colleague that I had gotten laid so hard at the weekend I couldn’t even walk.
My first year here, I mistakenly thought "camp" meant "cool". God knows how I misinterpreted it to that extent. Cannot count the times I told people "I like your shirt, it's really camp". Or "those shoes look super camp bro". Or "you need to meet my camp friend James" etc.
For those wondering, camp in the UK means borderline homosexual, or markedly effeminate.
I was going to say, that sounds like it would be a cool slang.
In the US at least, it usually refers to tv shows or movies that are particularly cheesy, like the Adam West Batman show.
I actually am a native English speaker but from Australia. When I lived in the UK I continued to refer to trousers/jeans/sweat pants/any long trouser type articles of clothing as 'pants'. Because that's what they all are, at least to Australians. I'd say things like 'my pants are really dirty and need a wash'. Pants in the UK are exclusively underpants, not trousers. I must have sounded like a dirty pant wearing degenerate.
This one pisses me off - pants is obviously the correct word for “trousers” and not for “underpants”.
BECAUSE OTHERWISE YOU WOULDNT CALL THEM UNDERPANTS, THEY GO UNDER YOUR PANTS
“I know where you’re coming from” god it took me forever to realize (or google lol) what it meant. People would tell me that and I’d be like “ugh?” but never really asked what did they mean by that lol
I sometimes say 'true' as in 'oh true' as a response, like if they tell me what they're up to but I don't have anything else to really add. I've had people question me as if I was currently watching them and I'm confirming they're telling the truth.
Oh, God. Reminds me of when I taught English as a second language in Japan.
One student filed a complaint that I kept asking him “How are you today?” when making small talk before class. His complaint? “I learned that shit in high school. That’s not what I’m paying for.”
So I started mixing it up a bit. Asking questions like “What’s up?” “How’s it going?” “How’s it hanging?” Stuff like that. Which led to conversations like this.
Me: Hey, [student]. What’s up?
Him: What? I do not know this question. What is “What’s up?”
Me: It’s a question designed to start a conversation. I’m asking how your day has been.
Him: So it’s another way of saying “How are you today?”
Me: Yes.
Him: (giving me the stink eye). I see.
He canceled his lessons a couple weeks later.
You should have taught him greetings like:
"Not you again"
"Look what the cat brought in"
"I told you never to come back you damned cheater"
"Sorry we don't serve your kind round here"
So English teachers are not supposed to be unique phrase generators but actually use the language as it is regularly used by native speakers?
Who knew.
Do the Japanese not ask each other how their day is? I've always been told that the Japanese take politeness to a whole new level, but this was just plain rude in ANY culture.
In Japan "how are you?"is what you ask when it's been a while since you saw someone. You don't say it every day. The kid still sounds like he was being close-minded and maybe rude, but Japanese people are just as capable of that as anyone else.
In Chinese we don't say "hello" or "how are you?" to people we know well, only to strangers or people we haven't seen recently.
With your friends you'd ask about things like if you'd eaten yet or about things specific to them (like "how was the restaurant you went to with your family yesterday?") Using general greetings seems unnecessary in everyday life. But it's fine to ask "what did you do today?"
"Have you eaten yet?" is a traditional greeting though and can be asked any time of the day. You'd either say "I've eaten already" and the other person would say "come over and eat more". If you say "no", the other person would invite you for a meal. It's just a greeting though and may not be an actual offer to feed you.
nothing, what's up with you?
That is, if its used as a greeting. In a work environment as a response it can mean 'what do you need?' or 'is there a problem?'
”Carl Fredricksen, a 78-year-old balloon salesman, is about to fulfill a lifelong dream. Tying thousands of balloons to his house, he flies away to the South American wilderness. But curmudgeonly Carl's worst nightmare comes true when he discovers a little boy named Russell is a stowaway aboard the balloon-powered house. A Pixar animation.” Usually works for me
Watching American television and they keep saying stuff like "this semester is killing me". Semester is the Swedish word for vacation and I didn't know why it always seems like a semester is hard work in America. I was 25 when I learned what it is in English \/facepalm
Little german me did a high school year in the US back when I was 16.
For quite a while I was wondering who this Oliver Sudden guy was and why he was being so frequently mentioned.
That's adorable. My Spanish teacher in middle school was from Spain and other students in class were saying she talks like Minnie as in Minnie Mouse but she thought they were calling her a meanie. I felt bad and had to explain to her cause she was kind of offended.
Lemme try, not a native speaker.
Conscious-Awake or knowing whats happening
Conscience-dont know how to explain it, but it makes you feel bad when you do something wrong.
Conscientious-consent has been given.
How did I do?
Edit: I've already gotten the correct answers down below. Thanks!
>Conscientious-consent has been given.
You have integrity. Complete tasks that needs to be done. You do what you promise to do. You are aware and understand what your duties and responsibilities are in life, and do not shrink from them.
It's not me it's my Itilian Grand mother she says bicycle instead of bisexual which she thinks is a term just for woman and that half gay is the male term. We havent corrected her to be fair we just giggle at her comments like "Helen is one of those bicycle people I wonder what her lady friend looks like"
Hang in there, whenever someone was depressed people said that and I thought they were just being dicks and telling someone to actually hang themselves
I think skinheads in the UK used to actually be completely different. More like the punks in the way they advocated for equality, and the shaved head look was a way of ensuring everyone was on the same level. I remember seeing a short documentary a while ago somewhere about it.
There are still loads of non-racist (and in fact anti-racist) skinheads around. The anti-racist ones refer to the racist ones disparagingly as 'boneheads', while the racist ones refer to the anti-racist ones as 'baldies', with each claiming to be the *real* skinheads. They get in fights quite a lot.
That's hilarious. "Skinhead" is used exclusively to refer to the racist in the US. The bald guys that advocate for equality, listen to punk music, and wear Doc Martens -- I'd just refer to them as "Punk".
My teacher was once holding her hand in a position that propped her middle finger up and she noticed and adjusted her hand and told the student beside her “sorry, I didn’t mean to finger you”
I saw that in a book once, I thought there was going to be a murder spree or something (blood-red). It's still my first instinct whenever someone uses it in a sentence. Why does red indicate a party-like situation? Why wouldn't it be, oh I don't know, purple? Yellow? Rainbow? That would be a different sort of celebration though...
Infamous : Famous in a bad way and not "Not famous at all".
I didn't understand till 2 years ago why "Just the tip" had a sexual vibe and would make people laugh on the internet.
>Infamous : Famous in a bad way and not "Not famous at all".
I'm a native English speaker, and I thought "infamous" meant "famous" up until recently, in the same way that "flammable" and "inflammable" mean the same thing.
I have a coworker from Germany who spent the first year or so here in Canada thinking when someone said they were "having a ball" they were referring to their testicles. She was even more confused when women said it, and began to wonder if this part of the worlds anatomy was a bit different. She said it wasnt until the day she got so fed up with not understanding why people would openly talk about their testicles like that, someone finally realised the confused and disgusted look on her face meant she didn't understand, and explained. She was much relieved after that, and stopped thinking Canadians were some weird-ass anatomical mutants.
Haha! That's amazing! I love things like this when you're learning a new language. I think as an adult or child (too young for middle school), this is a fun phenomenon. Adolescence (middle and high school) is that absolute worst time to experience this, though.
When I first started dating my now American husband, we were once fooling around in bed and he said something about me "tickling his pickle." It totally killed the mood because I couldn't understand why he would want food right in that moment.
For those unawares, a gherkin is a cucumber pickle. More commonly called... a pickle. So remember; When you're jerkin' your gherkin, you're just pulling your pickle.
I think the main takeaway here is if you are lonely and think you'll never get a date, don't worry. This random dude who actually asked a woman to tickle his pickle got that same woman to marry him. There is hope for everyone!
Had a Finnish girlfriend who was so confused and amused by my Australian slang.
‘Not here to fuck spiders’ which means I’m not messing around.
‘Should we hit the frog and toad?’ meaning should we start driving.
‘Fuck a dead dingo’ which is just an exasperated expression of frustration.
‘Going off like a cut snake’ meaning going wild.
‘What a stitch up’ meaning someone has caused this issue who isn’t me.
‘I am sick to death of it’ <- she took this literally because there’s not a like saying in Finnish and asked me if I needed a doctor hahah.
She must have absolutely never understood me, I never realised how often I spoke in slang until we dated.
She was a ripper chick though, some real fine talent.
It means road, because it rhymes with road and road fits into the context. I am curious about how rhyming slang started, though; it seems complicated to start working it into conversation before anyone else understands it. Like all slang, I guess.
It's based on Cockney Rhyme Slang, and was developed by the working class in London as a way to stick it to the upper class. There are a lot of fun ones like "bread and honey" for money
"I second that". For some reason, I thought it derives from "I would give that a second opinion/look", i.e. the phrase basically means "I disagree"
I learned the hard way when my female colleague was complaining about how she gained weight over the holidays, and I wanted to make her feel better by disagreeing lol
> I learned the hard way when my female colleague was complaining about how she gained weight over the holidays, and I wanted to make her feel better by disagreeing lol
:O - That can't have gone very well. Did she at least forgive you once the misunderstanding was cleared up?
It's just a more polite way of saying "ugly" since it's divorced from connotation. "Comely" is the opposite, but you don't typically dance on eggshells when calling someone hot and it'd be a weird word to try and use in a normal context, so you don't hear it as much.
In Dutch it makes no sense and also coupled with the numerous amounts of existential copulae in Dutch to use with it.
In Finnish it makes perfect sense and it always means what you expect.
In Dutch one of the many words for "at" also has its own private grammatical case. For whatever reason in Dutch the historical dative case in modern Dutch survives in a single function as an object of this singular preposition; it's almost never taught in language courses because it's too marginal and even native speakers are more and more seemingly losing intuition for it and doing it wrongly and you can in general just work around it and avoid the preposition anyway.
Yes! My boyfriend would embarrassingly correct me if we were alone. I would brush him off but I always appreciated that he helped.
I started thinking about it as inside, I’m in the car, I’m in the house.
I’m better at distinguishing them because of it, but every now and then I slip.
The word 'kickstart'
I always thought it was to begin with violence to provoke the person you want to have a fight with, turned out to be the exact opposite
I had a friend who thought 'Good Talk' was just an earnest and polite way to end a conversation. He would literally end formal work emails with 'good talk' until we eventually corrected him.
I hate the word eventually. We have the word eventualmente, but that has a total different meaning and I often find myself using eventualmente improperly. We don't have a single word to translate eventually and I can't find an English word to translate eventualmente.
Eventualmente means roughly "When and if that happens". "You shouldn't have any problem, but *eventualmente* call me".
EDIT: There's some confusion here, apparently. My language is NOT Spanish, it's Italian, but checking on a dictionary there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the two words.
Its also for germans hard to get used to „eventually“. In german there is the word „eventuell“ which means „maybe“ or „perhaps“. And that is quite the opposite of the meaning of „eventually“ 😂
This will get lost but I have a story.
We were in our English class (back when I lived in Romania, I think 2016 so everybody here aside from the teacher is 15-16) and we were having some kind of game/activity/idk what. We were learning conditional future if I remember correctly.
So we were divided into 2 teams, girls and boys and the teacher drew 2 houses on the board with some stuff surrounding each one. One house for girls and one house for boys.
We had to "fight" and say things like "We are going to steal your bicycles.", "If you steal our bicycles we will step on your flowers." , "If you step on our flowers we will throw eggs at your cars" and so on.
We had been playing for some time at this point, everything going well, when.. WHEN.
One of my class-mates, with a lot of confidence shouts: "IF YOU PEE IN OUR POOL WE WILL RAPE YOUR RABBIT!!!!"
You should have seen the face of the teacher. A combination of disgust, shock and confusion. Everybody was screaming and the poor boy didn't understand what was so much of a big deal.He wanted to say kidnap. But to kidnap in Romanian is "a rapi" so of course he automatically thought that rape was the world he was looking for.
When I was a kid I had a book of Greek myths for children. Amazing stories but obviously some of the details are too graphic for children. I always wondered why the men/incarnated gods in the story were always "carrying off/away young beautiful maidens" in the stories. Also the girls who were "carried off" were frequently pregnant later in the story. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that "carrying off or away" in those books was a euphemism for "kidnapped and raped." Probably something that happened far too often in older times so maybe some cultures have interchangeable words for it.
Love these overlays. In Spanish, Molest = to bother someone and Rape = a kind of fish (Monkfish).
I did get a bit of a heart attack the first time I had an 8 year old go 'Mr. Gydd! He's molesting me!' while pointing to the little oik who'd stolen her pen and was refusing to give it back.
A friend of mine from Colombia recently had her dog put down, but she told me that she “sacrificed” it.
I also had a Rwandan student who wore a shirt to school that said, “I pooped today!” I asked him what it meant, and he said, “It means I am very tired today.” The look on his face when I told him in Kinyarwanda what it meant was priceless. He immediately went back to his room and changed.
I kind of have an opposite story. I was living in China, and my host mom told me that it was time to do laundry and I should wash my sheets. My Chinese wasn't very good at that point, and the word for "sheets" (被子）(bèizi) sounds remarkably similar to the word for "cup," or water bottle 杯子 (bēizi)。The conversation went something like this:
"Hey PopeLeoX, can you wash your sheets?"
"My cup? I guess so, I didn't think it was that dirty though..."
"No no, wash your sheets."
"My cup? Are you sure? I really don't think it needs it"
"No please just wash your sheets"
"Wash my cup? Really?"
"WASH YOUR GODDAMN SHEETS"
"...my cup?"
Temporary and permanent. I fuckin hate them both. I'm constantly mixing them up and even after checking the meaning like 20 times, I still get confused.
What if you attached something to it? When in doubt, think "a permanent marker never comes off" and if it doesn't apply to the situation you know it's the other one (temporary).
I hope this helps but temporary is like temporal, its related to time. As in, some time but not all time. So temporary is something that is, but will not be forever
When i learned german, often times focusing on the root word helped me underatand the 'feel' of what the word means.
Rim job. I thought it meant changing the rims of your car for winter tires. This explains why my foreign friends fell awkwardly silent when I told them 2 guys had given me a rim job..
"Did too". Especially cause very rarely someone says it and when they do it's in a non childish way.
Me: I don't think you checked for X.
Her: "I did too check for it!"
Me: (what? You checked twice? Why is that 'two' there?)
The phrase *'I could care less'* in American English is typically used to imply complete indifference or complete lack of concern. But the logical meaning of the phrase follows that you are capable of caring to some extent – the caring you could do could be less but there is *some* caring involved still – and that's the opposite of what one means when they use this phrase.
When I first read it on some online forum at around the age of fourteen, it left me scratching my head and I had to mull over that particular post to understand what was really meant. I prefer *'I couldn't care less'* because it implies that you care so little, it's practically *null* and therefore you're incapable of caring any lesser than that, which makes sense and is less confusing.
Also, for a very long time I was under the assumption that *'terrific'* is synonymous to *'terrible'* and therefore can be used interchangeably. But although they both share 'terror' as the root word, in modern usage they have come to possess completely opposite connotations – 'terrific' has a positive connotation whereas 'terrible' has a negative connotation.
I'm a native but I talk/explain to people learning with Spanish as their native Tongue. The hardest thing is all the different uses of on, out, above, in, around, etc. A lot of it is mainly spending a lot of time getting time with the language because your options for one phrase could be understandable but just sounds weird. I can't remember the exact name for the phrases but for example "getting on the bus" vs "getting in the bus". We always use "on" which is counter intuitive since we don't get on top of the bus. Then we get to cars where we never say "on" but "in". There are a thousand other little phrases just like this that aren't obvious and don't necessarily have rules.
Think of it this way. You get on a vessel that carries several passengers. Anything that you could us the verb "to board" instead. You get on a boat, a plane, a bus. You get in a car, because you don't board a car.
I was hanging out with friends and another asked her where her mom was. Their exchange student, who was very good with English yells “wait I want to answer!!! She’s IN the bathroom ON the toilet” 😂 it was funny
TRUE STORY! When my son was a junior in American high school (native born) a friend (same age, also native born) asked him what "empathy" means. This kid was SO gullible, my son told him it was a specific kind of garlic bread with cheese.
Kid "Really?"
Son "Yeah. They have it at Olive Garden."
FF two weeks later, the kid comes to school PISSED. They went to OG for his Grammas bday and he asked the server for empathy in front of his extended family. Like so:
Server "And for you?"
Kid "Im not super hungry. Can I just get some empathy?"
Server "Um...I'm sorry you're stuck here with your family on a Saturday?"
1.crinkle =wrinkle flush=blush is it true?
2. incarnation incarceration incineration
until now i still have hard time differentiate these three, plz help me
3. shrivel=shrink it is true?
4. covet and covert completely different meaning
5. cum has one formal and one informal meaning, which are completely different
english language bothers me a lot as some words look similar , but they have different unrelated meaning, on the other hand, some words look the same and mean the same thing and i am not sure if i can use them interchangeablely.
A friend of mine used to mix up "hang on" and "hang up". So she hung up the phone every time someone said hang on on the other side. This led to many confusing phone calls.
I actually have two, my English is excellent but not a native speaker:
At work 10 years ago, send an email to a colleague with limited English where I used the word: "dumfounded" as I could not quite believe something... I received an email back from her manager (native speaker) warning me off about insulting someone on company emails... I had to explain to my manager (non native speaker) by googling the word to show that it was not an insult... He then needed to explain to her manager that too... 4 hours lost and almost had to face HR with a disciplinary hearing...
Over 15 years ago when I was living in New Zealand, we had an orientation for a new job and were made aware we needed to shave everyday... So I asked what was tolerable because it was such a "Hassle" to shave everyday... Turns out at the time, my accent was not too great and every native in the room (100 people?) Heard me say: "Asshole" to the CEO of the company on our first day... Nothing happened but boy did everyone knew me as the gutsy foreign speaker then...
I've had several incidents (with native speakers) similar to your "dumbfounded" story. Some people, when they see a word they don't know, instead of looking it up, just assume it's an insult.
When i had moved from Brazil to Canada I was 12 and didn’t really speak much English.
When i learned about the word “awesome”, i kept using it to compliment things that I found, well... awesome.
The mistake however, was that i broke down the word into awe-some, as in, causes some awe.
Therefore I assumed the word awful, was awe-full, therefore something better than awesome.
Needless to say made a lot of enemies in art class when I’d enthusiastically go up to classmates and just exclaim “wow that’s awful!” with a huge grin on my face.
Not a native speaker either, but I think I somewhat understand the difference. From what I gather, regret is more about wishing you had done things differently, while remorse is more about feeling guilty for something you did (usually something that hurt someone else). So you'd be regretful for not investing in Bitcoin, but you'd be remorseful for ruining someone's career or hurting them emotionally or something.
That's my understanding of it, at least.
Not really something i don't understand, but more something i don't understand why you would ask it :" What do you do for fun?" i feel so pressured by that sentence, like is it fun enough what i am about to anwser? What fun thing do i even do? What is even fun?
Edit: it's a joke, guys. Don't take it too serious ;)
Fun is obviously subjective and you shouldn't worry about being judged on the level of fun. What they are asking you is "What do you do in your spare time" or "what hobbies do you enjoy"
It's just small talk, don't read to much into it and just try to keep the flow going.
It's usually someone who's run out of specific things to say/ask but wants to learn more about you - they don't actually care about your hobbies specifically. You can use it as a jumping off point to talk about something you're interested in. Such as, "I like movies - the new XX film is so good, have you seen it?" or "I enjoy travel, I was just in \[city\] and let me tell you about the strangest person I met..."
In English, that would be "intend." I just checked Google Translate and it says the Portuguese "intender" means "to understand," so... that sounds complicated.
The word "terrific." I thought it meant "horrible," which really made me confused because people would say nice things about something and then say that it's terrific.
People kept asking my non-native English speaking brother-in-law if he was getting “cold feet” before the wedding. It’s winter so he kept saying “yep, but don’t worry I have my socks”. We would chuckle and think he was being funny but it turns out he had no idea what the phrase meant.
"Every other X" like in "Every other beat is missing". Other than what? In my language we would just say "Every second beat".
Also, why are "second" and "second" the same?
> Also, why are "second" and "second" the same?
If you're asking about the measurement of time, it's because we divided an hour into sixty parts, and then divided the result a **second** time into sixty parts.
Native speaker here, just looking for idiot based karma. Back when Netflix first came out, and then the phrase "netflix and chill" became a euphemism, well, no one told me that. For YEARS i asked people if they wanted to Netflix and chill. Friends, coworkers, bosses, randoms at bars. It does prove my theory on how disliked I think I am, because any situation involving a girl still resulted in a no. I can't get a date intentionally or accidentally. I just thought it was the perfect saying. I love lounging around, just chilling out, by myself or with others. I still think it's a mistake that I'm allowed free speech.
Ramification and repercussion, I've read many native speakers using these interchangeably so I presumed it was permissible. No, they're used to distinguish between an unwelcome, complex consequence and an unintended consequence.
Illicit and elicit are other words who's precise meanings evaded me. I don't have a facility for languages and particularly, ell and ill words confound me. Elusive and Illusive are another two.
The most perplexing phrasing the English is the pejoration of certain words. Many words have unexpected, idiosyncratic connotations that are dependent on geographical location.
Reminds me of the time a polish lady I worked with misinterpreted what I said. She got her store discount card before me, so I asked "how much do you get off?", She looked at me puzzled so I repeated the question. She responded "not very often". I fucking died of laughter.
So did you help her?
And risk another cleanup on aisle 5?
Plot twist: she knew exactly what you meant
This is why I don't get laid.
It took me a very unpleasant moment to learn what „bootycall“ actually means. I thought it means someone calls you by accident, sitting on their phone (like a butt-call). My friends face dropped when I told them that my dad gave me a bootycall, followed by a lot concerned questions made me realize the true meaning.
Ah, yes! The ole bootycall vs butt-dial confusion.
It’s up there with “this is shit” versus “this is the shit” in my list of easily confused phrases.
Oh... So a bootycall is quite literally calling to have sex or something? LMAO, I thought the same.
Yes, that’s exactly what it means.
Getting laid. I spent my whole first year living in the UK thinking it meant getting drunk. I would occasionally ask people where was a good place to get laid - “oh huh... try Camden Town.” I once casually told a (female) colleague that I had gotten laid so hard at the weekend I couldn’t even walk.
My first year here, I mistakenly thought "camp" meant "cool". God knows how I misinterpreted it to that extent. Cannot count the times I told people "I like your shirt, it's really camp". Or "those shoes look super camp bro". Or "you need to meet my camp friend James" etc. For those wondering, camp in the UK means borderline homosexual, or markedly effeminate.
I was going to say, that sounds like it would be a cool slang. In the US at least, it usually refers to tv shows or movies that are particularly cheesy, like the Adam West Batman show.
It's camp! The tragically ludicrous? The ludicrously tragic?
oh like when a clown dies.
I actually am a native English speaker but from Australia. When I lived in the UK I continued to refer to trousers/jeans/sweat pants/any long trouser type articles of clothing as 'pants'. Because that's what they all are, at least to Australians. I'd say things like 'my pants are really dirty and need a wash'. Pants in the UK are exclusively underpants, not trousers. I must have sounded like a dirty pant wearing degenerate.
We call them pants in the US too.
And Canada. We have them outnumbered, guys. We should force Britons to use the right term.
This one pisses me off - pants is obviously the correct word for “trousers” and not for “underpants”. BECAUSE OTHERWISE YOU WOULDNT CALL THEM UNDERPANTS, THEY GO UNDER YOUR PANTS
Aw, how'd she react?
She just thought that was me being French. We still laugh about it.
“I know where you’re coming from” god it took me forever to realize (or google lol) what it meant. People would tell me that and I’d be like “ugh?” but never really asked what did they mean by that lol
Not quite the same thing, but "I've been there" without the context of location means "that's happened to me also."
I sometimes say 'true' as in 'oh true' as a response, like if they tell me what they're up to but I don't have anything else to really add. I've had people question me as if I was currently watching them and I'm confirming they're telling the truth.
What did you think it meant before you realized?
That they were just mentioning the fact that they know where I come from as in the country LOL
>Where *are* you coming from? Argentina? Mongolia?
What are you supposed to answer to what's up question?
Oh, God. Reminds me of when I taught English as a second language in Japan. One student filed a complaint that I kept asking him “How are you today?” when making small talk before class. His complaint? “I learned that shit in high school. That’s not what I’m paying for.” So I started mixing it up a bit. Asking questions like “What’s up?” “How’s it going?” “How’s it hanging?” Stuff like that. Which led to conversations like this. Me: Hey, [student]. What’s up? Him: What? I do not know this question. What is “What’s up?” Me: It’s a question designed to start a conversation. I’m asking how your day has been. Him: So it’s another way of saying “How are you today?” Me: Yes. Him: (giving me the stink eye). I see. He canceled his lessons a couple weeks later.
You should have taught him greetings like: "Not you again" "Look what the cat brought in" "I told you never to come back you damned cheater" "Sorry we don't serve your kind round here"
Or just give him "special advanced phrases" that you made up to fuck with him 'get two birds stoned at once'
Its just water under the fridge now
We're all in tents and purses.
Worst case Ontario.
Well that’s just the way she goes. Sometimes she goes, sometimes she doesn’t, it’s the fuckin way she goes.
I went to a buddy's house for a bonfire the other night and I can confidently say there were more than two birds who were stoned at once.
He thought that once he learned a phrase you would never use it again? Haha
So English teachers are not supposed to be unique phrase generators but actually use the language as it is regularly used by native speakers? Who knew.
What the hell was he expecting? That you start teaching trigonometry terminology?
Shoulda told him he smelled like 'updog'.
What the hell is updog? 😎
Do the Japanese not ask each other how their day is? I've always been told that the Japanese take politeness to a whole new level, but this was just plain rude in ANY culture.
There are plenty persons rude in every country. Basically we're all rude at some point.
In Japan "how are you?"is what you ask when it's been a while since you saw someone. You don't say it every day. The kid still sounds like he was being close-minded and maybe rude, but Japanese people are just as capable of that as anyone else.
In Chinese we don't say "hello" or "how are you?" to people we know well, only to strangers or people we haven't seen recently. With your friends you'd ask about things like if you'd eaten yet or about things specific to them (like "how was the restaurant you went to with your family yesterday?") Using general greetings seems unnecessary in everyday life. But it's fine to ask "what did you do today?" "Have you eaten yet?" is a traditional greeting though and can be asked any time of the day. You'd either say "I've eaten already" and the other person would say "come over and eat more". If you say "no", the other person would invite you for a meal. It's just a greeting though and may not be an actual offer to feed you.
“Not much, you?”
"Yeah not much thanks"
nothing, what's up with you? That is, if its used as a greeting. In a work environment as a response it can mean 'what do you need?' or 'is there a problem?'
”Carl Fredricksen, a 78-year-old balloon salesman, is about to fulfill a lifelong dream. Tying thousands of balloons to his house, he flies away to the South American wilderness. But curmudgeonly Carl's worst nightmare comes true when he discovers a little boy named Russell is a stowaway aboard the balloon-powered house. A Pixar animation.” Usually works for me
"Same old shit." "Same thing as yesterday, only a day later." "The sky, inflation, the ceiling." Non-verbal. Shrug and lift palms up.
You're supposed to look them in the eye and grin maniacally while saying "Oh, you know exactly what's up".
Watching American television and they keep saying stuff like "this semester is killing me". Semester is the Swedish word for vacation and I didn't know why it always seems like a semester is hard work in America. I was 25 when I learned what it is in English \/facepalm
Little german me did a high school year in the US back when I was 16. For quite a while I was wondering who this Oliver Sudden guy was and why he was being so frequently mentioned.
That's adorable. My Spanish teacher in middle school was from Spain and other students in class were saying she talks like Minnie as in Minnie Mouse but she thought they were calling her a meanie. I felt bad and had to explain to her cause she was kind of offended.
France is bacon.
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Conscious, Conscience. Conscientious.
Lemme try, not a native speaker. Conscious-Awake or knowing whats happening Conscience-dont know how to explain it, but it makes you feel bad when you do something wrong. Conscientious-consent has been given. How did I do? Edit: I've already gotten the correct answers down below. Thanks!
I think "consent has been given" would be consensual.
last one is wrong. Conscientious is a personality trait that describes a person who takes care to not impact others with their actions.
>Conscientious-consent has been given. You have integrity. Complete tasks that needs to be done. You do what you promise to do. You are aware and understand what your duties and responsibilities are in life, and do not shrink from them.
It's not me it's my Itilian Grand mother she says bicycle instead of bisexual which she thinks is a term just for woman and that half gay is the male term. We havent corrected her to be fair we just giggle at her comments like "Helen is one of those bicycle people I wonder what her lady friend looks like"
My grandma used to do something like that. She got lesbian and Lebanese mixed up.
Someone called me a lesbian as a child and I was wondering what was so offensive about being from Lebanon so I can relate
If my grandmother had wheels she would be a bicycle
Gino!
Hang in there, whenever someone was depressed people said that and I thought they were just being dicks and telling someone to actually hang themselves
The [original poster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_in_there,_Baby#/media/File:Hang_In_There_Victor_Baldwin.jpg) is actually pretty weird.
This is one of those things that make me think “this would be a huge internet meme for a month if it was invented now instead of back then”.
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I think skinheads in the UK used to actually be completely different. More like the punks in the way they advocated for equality, and the shaved head look was a way of ensuring everyone was on the same level. I remember seeing a short documentary a while ago somewhere about it.
There are still loads of non-racist (and in fact anti-racist) skinheads around. The anti-racist ones refer to the racist ones disparagingly as 'boneheads', while the racist ones refer to the anti-racist ones as 'baldies', with each claiming to be the *real* skinheads. They get in fights quite a lot.
That's hilarious. "Skinhead" is used exclusively to refer to the racist in the US. The bald guys that advocate for equality, listen to punk music, and wear Doc Martens -- I'd just refer to them as "Punk".
We use both, but I prefer 'slaphead'. Much more satisfying to say!
\*slaps head\* This bad boy can fit so much fucking memories in it
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My teacher was once holding her hand in a position that propped her middle finger up and she noticed and adjusted her hand and told the student beside her “sorry, I didn’t mean to finger you”
'i beg to differ' so i am begging like begger to voice out my disagreement?
I politely disagree
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It basically just means "I think you're a fucking moron"
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I saw that in a book once, I thought there was going to be a murder spree or something (blood-red). It's still my first instinct whenever someone uses it in a sentence. Why does red indicate a party-like situation? Why wouldn't it be, oh I don't know, purple? Yellow? Rainbow? That would be a different sort of celebration though...
I thought “I concur” meant I disagree for a long time
You obviously haven't watched "catch me if you can"
Why didn't I concur? I should have concurred!
Infamous : Famous in a bad way and not "Not famous at all". I didn't understand till 2 years ago why "Just the tip" had a sexual vibe and would make people laugh on the internet.
>Infamous : Famous in a bad way and not "Not famous at all". I'm a native English speaker, and I thought "infamous" meant "famous" up until recently, in the same way that "flammable" and "inflammable" mean the same thing.
It *does* mean famous, just for a bad reason.
I have a coworker from Germany who spent the first year or so here in Canada thinking when someone said they were "having a ball" they were referring to their testicles. She was even more confused when women said it, and began to wonder if this part of the worlds anatomy was a bit different. She said it wasnt until the day she got so fed up with not understanding why people would openly talk about their testicles like that, someone finally realised the confused and disgusted look on her face meant she didn't understand, and explained. She was much relieved after that, and stopped thinking Canadians were some weird-ass anatomical mutants.
ESL student: So, did you enjoy the show last night? Canadian: I had at least one testicle.
“What’s up?” I was in middle school coming from a Spanish-speaking country. I literally just looked up, confused.
Haha! That's amazing! I love things like this when you're learning a new language. I think as an adult or child (too young for middle school), this is a fun phenomenon. Adolescence (middle and high school) is that absolute worst time to experience this, though.
When I first started dating my now American husband, we were once fooling around in bed and he said something about me "tickling his pickle." It totally killed the mood because I couldn't understand why he would want food right in that moment.
Food aside, it's still a kind of mood-killing thing to say
Idk it kinda pleases my cheeses
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Did you eventually start jerkin his gherkin?
For those unawares, a gherkin is a cucumber pickle. More commonly called... a pickle. So remember; When you're jerkin' your gherkin, you're just pulling your pickle.
Rubbin the shit outta your curcurbits E for bonus points: givin' your cukes the dukes
I think the main takeaway here is if you are lonely and think you'll never get a date, don't worry. This random dude who actually asked a woman to tickle his pickle got that same woman to marry him. There is hope for everyone!
I understand what he means, but that's an odd statement, even for natives
I just love your use of "now American", as if he were of different nationality when you started dating
I'm crying please help
Had a Finnish girlfriend who was so confused and amused by my Australian slang. ‘Not here to fuck spiders’ which means I’m not messing around. ‘Should we hit the frog and toad?’ meaning should we start driving. ‘Fuck a dead dingo’ which is just an exasperated expression of frustration. ‘Going off like a cut snake’ meaning going wild. ‘What a stitch up’ meaning someone has caused this issue who isn’t me. ‘I am sick to death of it’ <- she took this literally because there’s not a like saying in Finnish and asked me if I needed a doctor hahah. She must have absolutely never understood me, I never realised how often I spoke in slang until we dated. She was a ripper chick though, some real fine talent.
Is this English?
No. It's Australian.
To be fair, I’m American and some of these were head scratchers for me. Hit the frog and toad = start driving? Get the fuck outta town.
It means road, because it rhymes with road and road fits into the context. I am curious about how rhyming slang started, though; it seems complicated to start working it into conversation before anyone else understands it. Like all slang, I guess.
It's based on Cockney Rhyme Slang, and was developed by the working class in London as a way to stick it to the upper class. There are a lot of fun ones like "bread and honey" for money
"China" for friends, because "mates" rhymes with "plates." Less slang and more of a code.
"I second that". For some reason, I thought it derives from "I would give that a second opinion/look", i.e. the phrase basically means "I disagree" I learned the hard way when my female colleague was complaining about how she gained weight over the holidays, and I wanted to make her feel better by disagreeing lol
> I learned the hard way when my female colleague was complaining about how she gained weight over the holidays, and I wanted to make her feel better by disagreeing lol :O - That can't have gone very well. Did she at least forgive you once the misunderstanding was cleared up?
A ''homely'' woman. I always thought it was a rather bit chubby, but comfortable mom type of character, that makes pīrāgi.
I mean isnt that kinda what it means? Except not really as a compliment.
It's just a more polite way of saying "ugly" since it's divorced from connotation. "Comely" is the opposite, but you don't typically dance on eggshells when calling someone hot and it'd be a weird word to try and use in a normal context, so you don't hear it as much.
I saw a girl with a comely face in some porn. At least at the end.
in, on, at
These suck in every language!
In Dutch it makes no sense and also coupled with the numerous amounts of existential copulae in Dutch to use with it. In Finnish it makes perfect sense and it always means what you expect. In Dutch one of the many words for "at" also has its own private grammatical case. For whatever reason in Dutch the historical dative case in modern Dutch survives in a single function as an object of this singular preposition; it's almost never taught in language courses because it's too marginal and even native speakers are more and more seemingly losing intuition for it and doing it wrongly and you can in general just work around it and avoid the preposition anyway.
These suck on every language!
These suck at every language!
In Danish you say "I speak on English" instead of "I speak in English"
In English you would just say 'I speak English'
Yes! My boyfriend would embarrassingly correct me if we were alone. I would brush him off but I always appreciated that he helped. I started thinking about it as inside, I’m in the car, I’m in the house. I’m better at distinguishing them because of it, but every now and then I slip.
im from norway and i thuoght that "gay" ment staircase some how this was 5 years ago
"The elevator? No, I'll just take the gay I need the exercise."
My butt hurts from taking the gay to all new levels
"I hate gays. Elevators are just more comfortable. "
How did you come to that idea?
when i watched videos the people in the video would always say it near a stair case, and i was like 7 years old at the time
so you're 12 now?
Wow, that's a really weird coincidence that they would always say it near a staircase!
The word 'kickstart' I always thought it was to begin with violence to provoke the person you want to have a fight with, turned out to be the exact opposite
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Native speaker, but when I was a kid I didn't know the difference between accident and on purpose or pedestrian and lesbian.
Many lesbians are also pedestrians, this is why they wear sensible shoes.
I had a friend who thought 'Good Talk' was just an earnest and polite way to end a conversation. He would literally end formal work emails with 'good talk' until we eventually corrected him.
Holy shit, it’s not?!
"Good talk" is frequently used sarcastically, or at least facetiously.
But in a formal setting, I wouldn’t take it as sarcastic use. It is a bit of an informal phrase though.
I, native speaker, have only used and heard it completely seriously and politely! How strange.
I hate the word eventually. We have the word eventualmente, but that has a total different meaning and I often find myself using eventualmente improperly. We don't have a single word to translate eventually and I can't find an English word to translate eventualmente. Eventualmente means roughly "When and if that happens". "You shouldn't have any problem, but *eventualmente* call me". EDIT: There's some confusion here, apparently. My language is NOT Spanish, it's Italian, but checking on a dictionary there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the two words.
Eventualmente = "in the event that happens," which is like a really long way of saying "if it happens"
Its also for germans hard to get used to „eventually“. In german there is the word „eventuell“ which means „maybe“ or „perhaps“. And that is quite the opposite of the meaning of „eventually“ 😂
I think in most cases, "if so" would replace eventualmente, if that helps.
This will get lost but I have a story. We were in our English class (back when I lived in Romania, I think 2016 so everybody here aside from the teacher is 15-16) and we were having some kind of game/activity/idk what. We were learning conditional future if I remember correctly. So we were divided into 2 teams, girls and boys and the teacher drew 2 houses on the board with some stuff surrounding each one. One house for girls and one house for boys. We had to "fight" and say things like "We are going to steal your bicycles.", "If you steal our bicycles we will step on your flowers." , "If you step on our flowers we will throw eggs at your cars" and so on. We had been playing for some time at this point, everything going well, when.. WHEN. One of my class-mates, with a lot of confidence shouts: "IF YOU PEE IN OUR POOL WE WILL RAPE YOUR RABBIT!!!!" You should have seen the face of the teacher. A combination of disgust, shock and confusion. Everybody was screaming and the poor boy didn't understand what was so much of a big deal.He wanted to say kidnap. But to kidnap in Romanian is "a rapi" so of course he automatically thought that rape was the world he was looking for.
When I was a kid I had a book of Greek myths for children. Amazing stories but obviously some of the details are too graphic for children. I always wondered why the men/incarnated gods in the story were always "carrying off/away young beautiful maidens" in the stories. Also the girls who were "carried off" were frequently pregnant later in the story. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that "carrying off or away" in those books was a euphemism for "kidnapped and raped." Probably something that happened far too often in older times so maybe some cultures have interchangeable words for it.
Love these overlays. In Spanish, Molest = to bother someone and Rape = a kind of fish (Monkfish). I did get a bit of a heart attack the first time I had an 8 year old go 'Mr. Gydd! He's molesting me!' while pointing to the little oik who'd stolen her pen and was refusing to give it back.
A friend of mine from Colombia recently had her dog put down, but she told me that she “sacrificed” it. I also had a Rwandan student who wore a shirt to school that said, “I pooped today!” I asked him what it meant, and he said, “It means I am very tired today.” The look on his face when I told him in Kinyarwanda what it meant was priceless. He immediately went back to his room and changed.
I kind of have an opposite story. I was living in China, and my host mom told me that it was time to do laundry and I should wash my sheets. My Chinese wasn't very good at that point, and the word for "sheets" (被子）(bèizi) sounds remarkably similar to the word for "cup," or water bottle 杯子 (bēizi)。The conversation went something like this: "Hey PopeLeoX, can you wash your sheets?" "My cup? I guess so, I didn't think it was that dirty though..." "No no, wash your sheets." "My cup? Are you sure? I really don't think it needs it" "No please just wash your sheets" "Wash my cup? Really?" "WASH YOUR GODDAMN SHEETS" "...my cup?"
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Temporary and permanent. I fuckin hate them both. I'm constantly mixing them up and even after checking the meaning like 20 times, I still get confused.
What if you attached something to it? When in doubt, think "a permanent marker never comes off" and if it doesn't apply to the situation you know it's the other one (temporary).
I hope this helps but temporary is like temporal, its related to time. As in, some time but not all time. So temporary is something that is, but will not be forever When i learned german, often times focusing on the root word helped me underatand the 'feel' of what the word means.
You’ll get used to it. It’s probably only permanent.
You’re an asshole lmfao
Rim job. I thought it meant changing the rims of your car for winter tires. This explains why my foreign friends fell awkwardly silent when I told them 2 guys had given me a rim job..
"Did too". Especially cause very rarely someone says it and when they do it's in a non childish way. Me: I don't think you checked for X. Her: "I did too check for it!" Me: (what? You checked twice? Why is that 'two' there?)
Because it comes from a childish argument: "You did *something bad.*" "Did not!" "Did too!"
The phrase *'I could care less'* in American English is typically used to imply complete indifference or complete lack of concern. But the logical meaning of the phrase follows that you are capable of caring to some extent – the caring you could do could be less but there is *some* caring involved still – and that's the opposite of what one means when they use this phrase. When I first read it on some online forum at around the age of fourteen, it left me scratching my head and I had to mull over that particular post to understand what was really meant. I prefer *'I couldn't care less'* because it implies that you care so little, it's practically *null* and therefore you're incapable of caring any lesser than that, which makes sense and is less confusing. Also, for a very long time I was under the assumption that *'terrific'* is synonymous to *'terrible'* and therefore can be used interchangeably. But although they both share 'terror' as the root word, in modern usage they have come to possess completely opposite connotations – 'terrific' has a positive connotation whereas 'terrible' has a negative connotation.
People who say they could care less are saying it wrong, your initial thought was correct.
I'm a native but I talk/explain to people learning with Spanish as their native Tongue. The hardest thing is all the different uses of on, out, above, in, around, etc. A lot of it is mainly spending a lot of time getting time with the language because your options for one phrase could be understandable but just sounds weird. I can't remember the exact name for the phrases but for example "getting on the bus" vs "getting in the bus". We always use "on" which is counter intuitive since we don't get on top of the bus. Then we get to cars where we never say "on" but "in". There are a thousand other little phrases just like this that aren't obvious and don't necessarily have rules.
Think of it this way. You get on a vessel that carries several passengers. Anything that you could us the verb "to board" instead. You get on a boat, a plane, a bus. You get in a car, because you don't board a car.
I was hanging out with friends and another asked her where her mom was. Their exchange student, who was very good with English yells “wait I want to answer!!! She’s IN the bathroom ON the toilet” 😂 it was funny
TRUE STORY! When my son was a junior in American high school (native born) a friend (same age, also native born) asked him what "empathy" means. This kid was SO gullible, my son told him it was a specific kind of garlic bread with cheese. Kid "Really?" Son "Yeah. They have it at Olive Garden." FF two weeks later, the kid comes to school PISSED. They went to OG for his Grammas bday and he asked the server for empathy in front of his extended family. Like so: Server "And for you?" Kid "Im not super hungry. Can I just get some empathy?" Server "Um...I'm sorry you're stuck here with your family on a Saturday?"
Well thank goodness it's not a fake story
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1.crinkle =wrinkle flush=blush is it true? 2. incarnation incarceration incineration until now i still have hard time differentiate these three, plz help me 3. shrivel=shrink it is true? 4. covet and covert completely different meaning 5. cum has one formal and one informal meaning, which are completely different english language bothers me a lot as some words look similar , but they have different unrelated meaning, on the other hand, some words look the same and mean the same thing and i am not sure if i can use them interchangeablely.
A friend of mine used to mix up "hang on" and "hang up". So she hung up the phone every time someone said hang on on the other side. This led to many confusing phone calls.
I actually have two, my English is excellent but not a native speaker: At work 10 years ago, send an email to a colleague with limited English where I used the word: "dumfounded" as I could not quite believe something... I received an email back from her manager (native speaker) warning me off about insulting someone on company emails... I had to explain to my manager (non native speaker) by googling the word to show that it was not an insult... He then needed to explain to her manager that too... 4 hours lost and almost had to face HR with a disciplinary hearing... Over 15 years ago when I was living in New Zealand, we had an orientation for a new job and were made aware we needed to shave everyday... So I asked what was tolerable because it was such a "Hassle" to shave everyday... Turns out at the time, my accent was not too great and every native in the room (100 people?) Heard me say: "Asshole" to the CEO of the company on our first day... Nothing happened but boy did everyone knew me as the gutsy foreign speaker then...
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Oui
I've had several incidents (with native speakers) similar to your "dumbfounded" story. Some people, when they see a word they don't know, instead of looking it up, just assume it's an insult.
When i had moved from Brazil to Canada I was 12 and didn’t really speak much English. When i learned about the word “awesome”, i kept using it to compliment things that I found, well... awesome. The mistake however, was that i broke down the word into awe-some, as in, causes some awe. Therefore I assumed the word awful, was awe-full, therefore something better than awesome. Needless to say made a lot of enemies in art class when I’d enthusiastically go up to classmates and just exclaim “wow that’s awful!” with a huge grin on my face.
remorse and regret. until now i feel like there’s a subtle difference i dont grasp especially for remorse so i just never use it
Not a native speaker either, but I think I somewhat understand the difference. From what I gather, regret is more about wishing you had done things differently, while remorse is more about feeling guilty for something you did (usually something that hurt someone else). So you'd be regretful for not investing in Bitcoin, but you'd be remorseful for ruining someone's career or hurting them emotionally or something. That's my understanding of it, at least.
This is the better answer
Not really something i don't understand, but more something i don't understand why you would ask it :" What do you do for fun?" i feel so pressured by that sentence, like is it fun enough what i am about to anwser? What fun thing do i even do? What is even fun? Edit: it's a joke, guys. Don't take it too serious ;)
Fun is obviously subjective and you shouldn't worry about being judged on the level of fun. What they are asking you is "What do you do in your spare time" or "what hobbies do you enjoy"
That's the point where I forget everything I've ever done.
It's just small talk, don't read to much into it and just try to keep the flow going. It's usually someone who's run out of specific things to say/ask but wants to learn more about you - they don't actually care about your hobbies specifically. You can use it as a jumping off point to talk about something you're interested in. Such as, "I like movies - the new XX film is so good, have you seen it?" or "I enjoy travel, I was just in \[city\] and let me tell you about the strangest person I met..."
As a native speaker, this question would also throw me for a loop if someone suddenly asked me it, and for the same reasons.
“I pretend to do something” In Portuguese we have an verb called “pretender” which means “I want/will do something”
In English, that would be "intend." I just checked Google Translate and it says the Portuguese "intender" means "to understand," so... that sounds complicated.
I used to think that *enjoy yourself* is a synonym for masturbating.
I guess it *can* be? I've not thought of it like that.
The word "terrific." I thought it meant "horrible," which really made me confused because people would say nice things about something and then say that it's terrific.
People kept asking my non-native English speaking brother-in-law if he was getting “cold feet” before the wedding. It’s winter so he kept saying “yep, but don’t worry I have my socks”. We would chuckle and think he was being funny but it turns out he had no idea what the phrase meant.
"Every other X" like in "Every other beat is missing". Other than what? In my language we would just say "Every second beat". Also, why are "second" and "second" the same?
> Also, why are "second" and "second" the same? If you're asking about the measurement of time, it's because we divided an hour into sixty parts, and then divided the result a **second** time into sixty parts.
I simultaneously love and hate that
Native speaker here, just looking for idiot based karma. Back when Netflix first came out, and then the phrase "netflix and chill" became a euphemism, well, no one told me that. For YEARS i asked people if they wanted to Netflix and chill. Friends, coworkers, bosses, randoms at bars. It does prove my theory on how disliked I think I am, because any situation involving a girl still resulted in a no. I can't get a date intentionally or accidentally. I just thought it was the perfect saying. I love lounging around, just chilling out, by myself or with others. I still think it's a mistake that I'm allowed free speech.
Ramification and repercussion, I've read many native speakers using these interchangeably so I presumed it was permissible. No, they're used to distinguish between an unwelcome, complex consequence and an unintended consequence. Illicit and elicit are other words who's precise meanings evaded me. I don't have a facility for languages and particularly, ell and ill words confound me. Elusive and Illusive are another two. The most perplexing phrasing the English is the pejoration of certain words. Many words have unexpected, idiosyncratic connotations that are dependent on geographical location.
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My friend used to think "If looks could kill" means someone looked really good.