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General discussion (archive)English and your funny mistakes(87 posts)(87 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted February 12, 2013
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tinyE: "My hovercraft is full of eels!"
My nipples explode with the light!
Posted February 12, 2013
Surprisingly, I rarely make typos online (I mean, I don't have to use auto-fix). It's when I have to write a paper for college that I make a bunch of mistakes. When I started going on forums, my grammer was terrible, but now typing is second nature to me.

Also, typing on my Android usually messes up my spelling a lot.
Posted February 12, 2013
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tinyE: "My hovercraft is full of eels!"
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Gunsang: My nipples explode with the light!
Thank god someone got that. That could have come off as trolling to another level had there been no other Python fans here.
Posted February 12, 2013
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Telika: "Protagonist" used as "the good guy" or "the hero" of the story. A protagonist is just any character of a story (or of any interaction), in french. And "the antagonist" doesn't mean anything. The good guy and the gad guy, in a story, are both antagonists. Antagonism is symetrical, it's a relation of conflict. Neither words have a moral value.
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bevinator: Technically most of this is true in English as well, but only people who have studied literature know about the distinction. In English the protagonist is (one of) the acting characters the story focuses on, but there is no need for them to be good or heroic. The antagonist is simply a character that opposes the protagonist... again, no morality here. The most interesting character in Minority Report, for instance, is a good antagonist (Colin Farrell).

It's really not an English thing, it's just an ignorance thing.
For the sake of argument, usually in American media, the antagonist is the "bad guy" because most stories in American media are about the "good guy" who is the protagonist of the story.

That gets thrown for a loop though when you consider movies like.. Wanted: There's a protagonist... but no good guy. Law Abiding Citizen: The protagonist is seeking vigilante justice against those he perceives as part of a corrupt system (really good movie, by the way). No Country for Old Men: This is an odd movie to go in to the 'protagonist/antagonist' debate on anyways. Some argue the protagonist is Tommy Lee Jones' character.. Others say it's the hitman, and others still say it's the guy who found the money. Of those 3, only 1 is a good guy (Jones).
Posted February 12, 2013
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tinyE: Speaking of a rough translation, with the permission of the forum...
Oh, and I have a shit load more of these. :D
I believe I'd already seen that at Engrish.com.

When I was working as a lecturer teaching English, I used to use that website to close up a lesson on a lighter note.

Edit: Seems those signs are mass produced...
Post edited February 12, 2013 by jamyskis
Posted February 12, 2013
Yet another beautiful translator work
The second half of the top line...

Courses (plural!) is spelled exactly the same as Denmark in Polish
Post edited February 12, 2013 by Ghorpm
Posted February 12, 2013
It took me some time to realise that I don't really know what "pet peeve" means and that caused some confusion.

I think the funniest language mistakes I made were when I was in Venezuela and slowly learned Spanish.
Asking for a pig (cochino) when I wanted a knife (cuchillo), asking for ham (jamón) when I needed soap (jabón) - this resulting in a really embarrassing conversation about my hygienic preferences...
Posted February 12, 2013
When someone says my favorite (or favourite) game is "the shit" or "balls", I may be unsure whether I should agree with him.

I presume my mistakes in English are mostly translating some Finnish phrase directly to English, like "pitää kokous" => "hold a meeting" or even "keep a meeting". I have no idea if that is proper English, probably not (maybe "arrange a meeting" or "have a meeting" is a better way to put it), but I hope it gets the point across.

And since in Finnish "hän" means both "he" and "she", I many times catch myself writing about my gf using words like "he" and "his", which I presume causes confusion.

I also always get confused with "borrow" and "loan", as here we use only one word for both, "lainata".
Post edited February 12, 2013 by timppu
Posted February 12, 2013
And here is a picture I took in Nagoya, another fine example of Engrish.
Attachments:
nearosukannon.jpg (313 Kb)
Post edited February 12, 2013 by Piranjade
Posted February 12, 2013
My English is horrible that's the reason why I keep mostly quiet.




And because most of the time I also haven't something useful to say.
Posted February 12, 2013
Two words that always piss me off in English are "actual" and "eventual", because we have similar-sounding words in German (aktuell and eventuell) that mean something completely different. Worse still, French, Spanish and probably a few other Romantic and Germanic languages have similar problems.

Aktuell actually means "current(ly)" or "present(ly)", while eventuell really means "possible/possibly". The word in German for "actual" is "eigentlich" or "tatsächlich", and we don't really have a direct translation for "eventual" (we skirt around it by talking about something happening at the end (letztendlich, "irgendwann mal").

So whenever I see a fellow European talking about something that is "actually" the case or "eventually" happens, I have to think twice (a) about whether the writer means what he/she says and (b) whether my German linguistic sensibilities are getting in the way of comprehension.
Posted February 12, 2013
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Gunsang: My nipples explode with the light!
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tinyE: Thank god someone got that. That could have come off as trolling to another level had there been no other Python fans here.
Python fans, eh? True fans don't misquote ;-p

"My nipples explode with delight!"

Drop your panties, Sir William, I cannot wait 'til lunchtime!
Posted February 12, 2013
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jamyskis: Two words that always piss me off in English are "actual" and "eventual", because we have similar-sounding words in German (aktuell and eventuell) that mean something completely different. Worse still, French, Spanish and probably a few other Romantic and Germanic languages have similar problems.

Aktuell actually means "current(ly)" or "present(ly)", while eventuell really means "possible/possibly". The word in German for "actual" is "eigentlich" or "tatsächlich", and we don't really have a direct translation for "eventual" (we skirt around it by talking about something happening at the end (letztendlich, "irgendwann mal").

So whenever I see a fellow European talking about something that is "actually" the case or "eventually" happens, I have to think twice (a) about whether the writer means what he/she says and (b) whether my German linguistic sensibilities are getting in the way of comprehension.
As I wrote above we have exactly the same problem in Polish ;) Actually it's fair to say that it's English that has this problem since it seems it's the only language that has those words defined differently.

And the other English word that makes me laugh every time is "pineapple". Every single language that I know has "Ananas" or something similar. But noooo... in English it's "pineapple". What's that suppose to mean?!
Posted February 12, 2013
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Ghorpm: And the other English word that makes me laugh every time is "pineapple". Every single language that I know has "Ananas" or something similar. But noooo... in English it's "pineapple". What's that suppose to mean?!
It's a fruit that looks like a pine cone. I guess that's what it's supposed to mean. But in Danish, it's also "ananas" ;-)
Post edited February 12, 2013 by Wishbone
Posted February 12, 2013
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Ghorpm: And the other English word that makes me laugh every time is "pineapple". Every single language that I know has "Ananas" or something similar. But noooo... in English it's "pineapple". What's that suppose to mean?!
We like to stand out, what can I say.

But I often back off on discussions when I think I might be using/understanding a word wrong, and in truth agree with the other person. Sadly, no particular example comes to mind right now.
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This is my favourite topic
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General discussion (archive)English and your funny mistakes(87 posts)(87 posts)
(87 posts)