Linguistic mishearings and mishaps

I spent almost three years of my adolescence in Montreal learning both English and French at once in my everyday life. Of course at home I spoke Japanese so language-merge occurs inside your brain, funny thing happen even now.

Recently I made a goof using "habitually" under my personal image of French adjective "habituellement", which is "usually" in precise English, with no nuance of "habit".
And "habit" in French is "clothings" in English!

Anyway, linguistic misinterpretations, mishearings and mishaps do occur.
In Formula 1 car racing, when Senna crashed into the concrete wall in San Marino, he was still alive for a while after the accident. The race organizer Ecleston told Senna's relatives while he was spending his last moments in the hospital, "He was injured in the head." The relatives misheard this as "He was injured and dead." Ecleston almost got sued for hiding the fact for the purpose of continuing on the race. It took a long time to resolve this mishearing.

But sometimes happy mishearings occur.
Miki misheard "banaa", a transplant of the English "banner", as "baanaa", a transplant of the English "burner".
She still miscomprehends that those banners in the arena are "burners" that are meant to burn up your courage and motivation, which is quite a reasonable mishearing!!
It's so cute that I still havn't told Miki her mistake, should I tell her, or should I leave it as she understands?

If you know any other funny linguistic miscomprehentions, I'd like to hear.

Interesting topic! There are some funny one between Italian and Spanish and between French and Italian.

-"Torta" in Italian means "cake", in Spanish means a "slap in the face"
-"Burro" in Italian is "butter", in Spanish is a "donkey"
-"Aceto" in Italian is "vinegar", in Spanish "Aceite" is "oil"
-"Officina" in Italian means a "workshop", in Spanish means "office, bureau"
-"Topo" in Italian is a "mouse, but in Spanish is a "mole"
-"Vaso" in Italian is a "vase", in Spanish is a "glass"

And many more

BTW, in Japan the skaters say their jump "punctured" instead of "popped".

Fascinating topic! Thanks for sharing!

I once had a funny situation in my elementary school where I teach ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages). We were talking about the foods we liked in the beginner class. The student said, "Do you like 'miel de abeja'? (he didn't know the English word for 'honey' -'miel' means 'honey' in Spanish, 'de abeja' means 'from a bee'). Well I thought he said 'mierda' - which means 'sh**'! This was a well mannered kid, so I thought he was joking. I laughed and said, "Of course not!" A few hours later I realized that his comment was totally innocent - that he was talking about honey from a bee.

One that I experienced personally: as an undergrad, I spent a semester at Southern France. Many of the students in the program frequented the same corner market and I suspect they were used to American students coming and going. My last week there, the proprietor was ringing up my lunch and asked if I had a "beau souvenir." My English-speaking mind thought: "Goodness, I still haven't finished my shopping!" and I replied (in French, of course) "no, not yet." I was greeted with a perplexed look as I completed my transaction. It wasn't until I was walking home that translation-mode finally kicked in and I realized that he asked if I had good memories of my time in France -- the answer to which was, of course, yes! No wonder he was confused!!

gio, when you pointed out the various translations of the word "vaso," it made me think of the book "A Woman Unknown" by Lucia Graves. It is a fantastic read for anyone who is interested in language and multi-culturalism. I always remember a scene toward the end of the book where the author (the book is autobiographical) is struggling to translate "vaso" to the English while maintaining the nuances of meaning found in the Spanish.

Lastly, this very topic was discussed on one of my regular blogs today!

This just reminds of one thing that happened to me. This one lady wanted to name her unborn baby Gemma Claire... and I couldn't stop giggling because Gemma sounds exactly like "gema" which is Portuguese for egg yolk. And Claire is the same as "clara" in Portuguese and it means egg white. I thought it was the funniest name ever.

My cousin lives in Quebec and has two kids. The kids hear English at home, and French at their daycare. The three year old still hasn't realized they are two separate languages. I love talking to her, because every sentence is a jumble of both.

She confused English-only speakers when she first started talking. She was always saying "donne", which the English speakers mistook for "finished". She actually meant "give", as in "gimme!".

ToePick said:

gio, when you pointed out the various translations of the word "vaso," it made me think of the book "A Woman Unknown" by Lucia Graves. It is a fantastic read for anyone who is interested in language and multi-culturalism. I always remember a scene toward the end of the book where the author (the book is autobiographical) is struggling to translate "vaso" to the English while maintaining the nuances of meaning found in the Spanish.
Lastly, this very topic was discussed on one of my regular blogs today!

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Thanks for the info and the book advice.

BTW, there are a lot of false friends among Italian-French-Spanish-Portugues-Romanian. These languages are very similiar (sharing from 70% to 90% of lexical similarities), but have many traps if you don't pay attention enough when learning and trying to speak.