I made a cute little mistake in Japanese today and I just want to share it.
It is my day off today so I went to the Japanese bookstore near my house to get some Japanese storybooks meant for Japanese junior school students to expand the variety of my Japanese reading materials.(Been so motivated to study Japanese recently )
I met a Japanese acquaintance whom I have not met for years there and we started browsing the shelves for books. I found a book that I really like and I wanted to say this to him :
この本は、内容(naiyo: content) がとても面白くてよくまとまっていて、とても気に入っています。(I really like this book because the contents are so interesting and well organised)
But I said this instead : この本は、内緒(naisho: secret)がとても面白くてよくまとまっていて、とても気に入っています。(I really like this book because the secrets are so interesting and well organised)
He looked at me and laughed but I didn’t know what he was laughing at until he corrected me. What a way to learn new vocabulary
I usually learn languages by immersion and exposure through films and TV series, which works great until it comes time to make basic conversation. I learned “ciao”, “ci vediamo”, “grazie” through films, but never once did the word “please” come up in a film I watched. So the first time I asked someone for a favor in Italian I said “ti prego” which I heard in a film. Turns out “ti prego” is used more like “I beg you” as in “ti prego di non uccidermi/I beg you to not kill me” and sounds very weird when used normally. The other person knew what I meant but I still got laughed at.
I hate my creativity today… Reply posted again from another conversation
My Nahuatl is poor, but these are some words or phrases I know in Nahuatl wich most Spanish speakers do never forget.
Suffix pan = at / in / place of ≠ pan = bread, in spanish. notoka = my name ≠ no toca = sth doesn’t touches or sth doesn’t reaches sth, in Spanish. Cochi / Kochi = to sleep ≠ el o la cohi o cochin@ = the pig or Mx slang = filthy, in Mexican Spanish. Huei / uei = big ≠ Wei / uei / guei = comrade / Mr. nobody / stupid (depending the context in Mexican slang). Tomahuac = fat ≠ toma agua = drink water, in Spanish.
Joke: A pushes B being agressive, thus…
B- Hey!!! uei tomauak be careful!
A- What?, what for? Ew…
B extends his arms with irony and an angry face while A feels stupid…
My favourite mistake learning Arabic when I tried to find the Al Jazeera documentary channel in Arabic so I tried to write it in Youtube search, but I made a mistake so instead of الجزيرة I wrote الجزرة and I found this video:
Still have no idea what those aliens want from that poor carrot, but it wasn’t exactly I was looking for.
)
