English is Tricky

[C&TL2745 (imported)]

My hubby mentioned the other day that when he learned the US national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, in early grade school, he had no clue what it meant. "I didn't know what spangled meant," he said, "and the phrase, 'José, can you see by the donzerly light' meant nothing. Nobody would tell me what donzerly light was or who José was. And what parts of a ram were they watching over?"

It got me thinking about the old joke about the kid who goes to Sunday school. When he comes home after singing Gladly the Cross I'd Bear, his mother asks what they did. "We sang some dumb song about a cross-eyed bear named Gladly," he says.

So I'm wondering what misadventures other EA members have had learning English, whether it's their native tongue or not.

Sandi

[tugon (imported)]

What I find interesting are my friends who speak English as a second language but speak very properly due to learning it in college. Others think they do not speak well due to an accent but they are actually more correct. I am a native English speaker and I do try to speak it correctly. I know some folks who are native to this country and speak something akin to English.

[Arab Nights (imported)]

I have vague memories of the sort of thing you talk about, but they have become lost to the fog of time (at least for the time being). There were other things like Father, Son and Holy Ghost which I could pronounce correctly but never understood and always was too embarrassed to ask.

Spanish is my second language and those things have happened to me. Many words are similar in both languages and you can take a stab and usually get away with it until the time that you tell someone that you are embarazada (pregnant, not embarrassed). Early on when my mouth got on a roll I sometimes would substitute words when they began with the same letter or sound. I was at a company dinner and meant to asked the other end of the table to pass the miel (honey), but instead asked them to pass the mierda (shit). That one was a bit of a show stopper. I always had to be very careful of mixing up drawers and testicles and I once in drug store told the young lady that I needed a penis instead of a comb. I had asked a Venezuelan friend how you say, "Give me a break" in Spanish and was told "sacamelo." I used that at another company dinner. The problem is that it is used when a guy has an orgasm that just leaves him collapsed and he will tell the girl 'sacamelo' which means "Please take my dick out for me. I don't have the energy to move." What can I say. Another company dinner, another show stopper. At least I am sure chiropractors got work from all the heads that snapped around to look at me.

[Paolo]

That stunned moment when, as a child, you realize that there is no letter called "LMNOP", or "elemenohpee"...

[C&TL2745 (imported)]

....

Spanish is my second language and those things have happened to me....

Spanish has a lot of land mines waiting for the unwary English speaker who's trying to learn, both from false cognates (like emarazada) and from regional differences in slang among Latin American countries. I understand that words that are perfectly acceptable in polite conversation in one country might be considered coarse or even obscene in others. In particular, there seems to be no end of slang terms for boobs, all of which can also refer to other things, depending on the country: chiches (=knick-knacks), limones (=lemons), melones (=melons). There are so many Spanish words that are simply the English word with an "a" or "o" on the end, but it's easy to get too confident.

Sandi

[Riverwind (imported)]

Bruce Willis in the 5th element when he says I speak two languages, English and Bad English.

English has so many funny rules that really don't apply all the time, like I before E except after C which works some of the time but most of these rules of English are foreign to me.

See what I mean?

[Paolo]

That was why I liked studying German. It was so much more structured and orderly of a language. It has its flaws, I think they all do, but more of it made sense than English.

[tugon (imported)]

Bruce Willis in the 5th element when he says I speak two languages, English and Bad English.

English has so many funny rules that really don't apply all the time, like I before E except after C which works some of the time but most of these rules of English are foreign to me.

See what I mean?

I before E except after C or when sounded like A as in neighbor and weigh. Even knowing the full rule there are still exceptions. So many struggle with your and you're, then and than, there, their and they're, two, to and too. We could go on about English. Of course as difficult as it is we do expect everyone to be able to speak it.

[Dave (imported)]

When my Father and Mother took a vacation to Mexico (Mazatlan) they wanted to look up a friend. My Father decided that he would use his Italian (which he spoke) and when that didn't work, he started adding "o" to the end of words. The Mexican at thefts off and my Mother realized what was happening and they both started to giggle. I ow;d have love to have seen it. He asked the Postal Fellow where his friend lived and the Postal fellow though he ask what his name was (those two phrases are mixed between Spanish and English) and the man answered "Vittorio Cortex" and my mother busted up laughing. My Dad didn't take that well.

The absolute worst I eve saw in "learning another language" was the Chinese Scientists who were visitors in the mid and late 1980's. They were at our research center to study coal gasification and flue gas cleanup. They were given a 6 week course in immersion English and then flown over to the USA, given apartments in the middle of the Universities in Pittsburgh and directions to the bus that came out to our facility in the South Hills. They survived but their English was a disaster for a month or two. They each had papers from their research associates back in China to publish in the USA. They had no directions for restaurants. No idea what a supermarket was. No idea of what American foods were incompatible with their bodies (oh yes -- you can't eat everything in a foreign country) ... Pronouns were disasters. Writing was insane. At that point in time they had no photocopiers and I swear they worshipped our xerox machines as gods... The Fellow I know the best had never driven a car. He commuted by bicycle, and he wore soft-slipper like shoes that nearly all the Chinese wore. I could read his graphs in Chinese because they adopted western mathematical symbology for things like Reynolds Number of Avogadro's Number with arabic numbers for the axes. And they were expected to take university night classes.

[C&TL2745 (imported)]

When my Father and Mother took a vacation to Mexico (Mazatlan) they wanted to look up a friend. My Father decided that he would use his Italian (which he spoke)....

I hope he didn't decide to order penne pasta. Pene (with one 'n') is Spanish for penis. My hubby has a coworker who speaks Spanish and tried using it in Italy. He gave up after several confused Italians asked (in English) whether he spoke English.

Sandi