I would be interested to know if my book 'knows what it's talking about'. It also warns of going into a shop & asking for eggs 'Huevos' or milk 'Leche' as these are colloquialisms for 'Testicles' & 'Semen'. Packet ( such as a pack of cigarettes ) becomes a derogatory term for a male homosexual ! IE it would be possible to go into a bar & order "a hubcap of beer & a queer of cigarettes" ? (apologies to any gay readers !). For instance the verb 'Cojer' - 'to get' apparently means 'to f**k' in some SA places. I can only speak 'un poco Espanol' but I possess a book of 'Colloquial Spanish' that asserts that certain very respectable words ( in Spain ) acquire very different meanings in certain parts of Latin America. Now here's a question for all you Spanish speakers out there: Using a common phrase that means very different things depending which side of the Atlantic you're on Mr Niven replied "That's OK, I'll come round and knock you up" ! His friend expressed concern that she might not be able to get up so early in the morning. Mr Niven was arranging an early morning date with a female freind. Could be tasty, I suppose, but probably not what he meant.įrom 'The Moon's a Balloon' by David Niven. Yesterday I was reading one of our fellow Fodorite's recommendation to someone to order grilled sword peach instead of sword fish. My mother told her she would take care of it and sent her on her way.įinally, as several people have pointed out, a very minor change in a word can make a big difference. A few minutes later, an attractive, young housekeeper showed up and tried to convince my mother that there was someone in the bathroom that needed assistance. So when he was in the bathtub in our hotel in Paris, he pulled the little cord hanging there. My father was fairly unsophisticated and curious. My parents took us to Europe when we were quite young. I am sure, since they were still telling the story 25 years later, that they all found it very amusing.Īnother one is more a matter of not always understanding foreign customs. Nevertheless, they were out grocery shopping with his father and she asked him to pass her some fiche (as Karen said, a rather un-ladylike euphism for a female body part) rather than figs. They hit it off and she moved there and they have been married for 25 years, so sometimes what you say isn't as important as how you convey meaning. His wife met him when she was a student on vacation and spoke no Italian. My cousin is a Roman and speaks no English. She looked up, smiled, and began conversing with me in perfectly comprehensible English, but spoken with a heavy Glaswegian accent! She said she was so happy I'd sat down there, because "that young man was friendly, but he didn't speak English, and I so love meeting new people."įunny how something that was started 2 1/2 years ago is still timelessly funny. I knowĪ few other little bits of unusual languages, but not many, so I braced myself and sat down. He tried Spanish, French, German, even Italian but she just kept smiling at him. ![]() My husband had been attempting to reply to her friendly conversational gambits with every language he knew, but she was just looking at him oddly in response, and smiling a lot. ![]() The other seat was next to a large family party, with an elderly lady in the last seat. Our toddler with us, so we decided to take turns, one would sit with him while On our last flight back from Heathrow, our seats were split slightly, Not quite the same, but hilarious, anyway.
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