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when another language sounds like your language, it can be difficult to understand


Alpo

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I was just watching a YouTube video. This Scots comedian is telling the story of when his 11 year old daughter came running out of the bedroom in panic. She had just had her first period.

 

So he tells her to just stand right there, and he'll go get something from the shop.

 

What he meant was he would go down to the store and buy whatever was needed for a young lady who was menstruating.

 

But to me, the word "shop" brings to mind the tool shed. So when he said he would go get something from shop, I was thinking he was going to go out to his workshop and bring in some shop rags.

 

I'm thinking, damn dude.

 

Apparently they do not have pads, in Britain. They have towels. You know, like they do not have elevators, they have lifts. So the lady in the shop asked him if he knew what was needed, and he said no, so she suggested towels or Tampax, and asked him if he knew the difference. He said that one was worth more points in Scrabble. :blink: But aside from that, no.

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My nephew married a Scottish lassie.  After 23 years I can finally understand her....if she talks slowly enough, but when they got married I would get about one word in every two dozen.

 

She's a wonderful lady and it's unfortunate that she married such a................Oh, Hell.  Never mind!

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It happens in other languages too.  Years ago my cousin Billy and I enrolled in a French class at Georgetown University.  The insturctor was a lady from Marseilles, France.  When she asked the students why they were taking the class I told her that I had been going to Quebec Province on vacation and i wanted to learn French better for when I was up there.  The instructor said she couldn't understand the Quebec dialect either.

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Speaking of French.

 

There's a little girl who was born and raised in France, and they have moved to the states, and she is in the third grade. The term shows up in a story in their reading class, and this little boy asked the teacher what you do with a bidet.

 

Before the teacher could figure out how to explain that, the little girl pipes up and says, "you ride it".

 

This greatly annoys the teacher, and she wishes to punish the little girl for her crudity.

 

But it turns out that the little girl was correct. Bidet is French for pony, and they named the plumbing fixture that because you straddle it, like you're riding a horse.

 

Isn't that a cute story?

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