Ask Lemmy

I've never had that sort of thing while personally interacting with people who speak other languages. However, when deployed I used to hear people speaking other languages regularly. So it wasn't that they were communicating directly with me, but I used to love overhearing what they were saying and "bad translating" it to english. And that was hilarious.

My work once sent me to Madrid. I only have some high school Spanish.

I had a cold at the time and soon ran out of cough drops. My coworker told me where I could buy some more, and what to ask for.

When I got to the store, apparently I misremembered what he told me to say. I said to the woman, "quiero caramelos de mentales."

She looked at me confused. I tried again, slower: "caramellos...de...mentales?"

She seemed a bit alarmed. She said something in Spanish. I said "lo siento, no comprendo."

She called over her coworker, who asked me "what are you looking for?"

I said, "cough drops." She looked confused. "Cough...drops? What is it?" I tried "caramelos de mentales" again, no success, just confusion.

Then I remembered I had some wrappers in my pocket so I pulled one out and showed her. Suddenly they both beamed with understanding. "Ohhh! Caramelos mentolados! You were asking for 'brain candies.' She thought you wanted something illegal."

I've had a few weird exchanges with my wife, although we both are native french speakers.

Turns out the word we use in Switzerland for prune (the fruit) is only used for the dried version of the same fruit in France. Perfect set up for a strange conversation about baking until we found out.

Asking for a specific dish at a restaurant in Japan whose name was also the name of that very dish. They thought we were asking if we were at the right place, but we were actually just trying to order some. Or vice versa, I can't quite remember.

I think it was anagomwshi, on Miyajima island

I was surprised that my Japanese online friend couldn't differentiate sit and shit... sorry