Jan 09 2007
The worst language mistake in history.
After reading Pachipro’s recent umeboshi language mistake, it got me thinking about my evolution through the Japanese language, and some of the mistakes I made. After a few minutes of pondering Japanese blunders, I came across a blank spot in my memory.
“Odd,” I thought, as I delved further into the memory. My memory dutifully paused, as if to ask “are you sure you REALLY want to re-live this?”. I mentally shrugged. Sure, why not. My memory, with what must pass for a wry grin said “suit yourself, bud.” It all came flooding back, and with a rude shock I remembered why I kept this memory buried away.
Now, whenever I ask someone “Hey, whats the worst language mistake you’ve ever made?”, they will think for a moment. Then I commonly see a lightbulb go off, and they excitedly tell me a story.
“Ok man, so like, once I asked someone for a pencil, right? enpitsu, yeah? But they thought I meant PEN! So I got a pen! HAHAH.”
I’m waiting for the punchline, but after a few seconds of my friends large frozen grin, I realise this was it.
“Oh man, thats pretty crazy,” I say. I often decide to keep this story to myself, since its pretty damn embarrassing, and while people may find it extremely funny, I still wince when I think back on it. All you lucky readers get a free-pass, since you’re on YourJapan.
It was about 5 years ago, and right about when I had learned enough Japanese to slowly begin absorbing Japanese from various sources.
A side note on language. A lot of people come to Japan thinking “Japanese? No problem, I’ll just pick it up. My friend who went to France did the same thing.”
What these people fail to realise is that there are so few points of reference to English in the Japanese language structure, this idea of learning by osmosis is pretty much impossible. However, once you get enough language ability under your belt, you naturally begin to understand more, and the language starts to take form in your head. This is great, in almost all situations.
I came to Japan to study martial arts. So I have all the classic martial arts fixtures, such as classes, a dojo and a sensei. One fateful day, I was at the train station heading to a class. I noticed a sign on a handrail leading up the stairs. I leaned in for a closer look, and it said Rail wo tsukande kudasai. For the first time, I was able to read this. I went through a short mental calculation process. “Hmm, if this sign was in English, it would say ‘Please hold onto the rail”. I mentally filed this away for later usage.
A couple of hours later, I arrived to the dojo. I made my greetings, and got changed into my martial arts clothes. I walked out onto the floor. A group of martial artists were milling around. I then noticed my teacher, who was struggling with a scroll.
Our theme for that particular year was studying traditional techniques, which came on these awkward scrolls written in very complicated kanji. Let me paint a quick picture of my martial arts teacher for you. He is one of the biggest guys I’ve ever met - his muscles’ muscles have muscles that are bigger than yours. He is also a bit poor of vision, which meant he had to wear small glasses to read things like scrolls. Imagine Conan the Barbarian wearing reading glasses struggling with a flimsy leaflet with fat muscle-bound fingers, and you have an idea.
It is the custom in the dojo to show your respect, and assist your teacher every way you can. A common way back then was to assist the teacher by holding the scroll while they read it, and applied the technique to someone who wasn’t fast enough to offer to hold the scroll. I walked over to him with the best of intentions.
“Excuse me, Sensei”, I said in confident Japanese.
He grunted and looked up at me.
I paused. I forgot that I was unable to communicate what I wanted to say. Then, my memory helpfully dug up my experience of the same day. “Hey,” my memory said confidently. “You want to ask Can I hold that for you, right? What about the Please hold onto the rail thing you saw today?”. Brilliant!! I thought. I then applied the correct grammar for offering to do something for someone.
“Sensei,” I said, with my hands out in front of me. “Tsukande ageyou ka?”
He fixed me with a blank stare.
Hmm, I thought. My pronunciation must have been bad. No problem, I’ll try again but clearer and louder.
“Sensei, TSUKANDE AGEYOU KA?”
His blank stare slowly turned to one of shock as his mouth dropped open. “What the hell did you say?” He demanded.
I was taken back, but slowly started to repeat the sentence my brain had kindly constructed for me. He cut me off halfway through, “No. No, no no, no. NEVER ever, ever say that phrase again. You say MOTTE AGEMASHOU KA. NEVER say… the other thing. DAMMIT.”
I was very surprised. This is a guy who hears weird Japanese from foreigners all day - what could I have possibly said that caused such a reaction? I wondered about this the entire trip home. I then went to see my girlfriend.
“Hey, I walked up to sensei and said “tsukande ageou ka” in class, and he gave me a really weird reaction. Why is that?” I asked with genuine curiousity.
Quite some time later, after she stopped laughing, she began to explain it to me.
“See, the word tsukamu, means hold onto something. However there is a special nuance attached to this word - something must be sticking out from something else. In the case of the rail, the rail was sticking out from the wall. In the case of a human however, on a woman, the only thing you could grab would be her tits.” She patiently explained, however I was already turning pale white. “Now if you go up to a man and say this, you’re basically saying ‘Hi there, may I grab onto your erect dick? For you?”
I sat down as the full weight of this explanation hit me squarely in the chest. I offered to grab my teachers dick 3 times, loudly, with my hands out in front of me and a weirdly helpful look on my face. AAAAARRRRRGHHHH. I almost died from the embarrassment, but I never made that mistake again. He made several jokes about it over the next couple of years, and the guys who overheard it NEVER let me forget.
So when people tell me about their language mistakes and say, “so when I asked for a pencil… they thought I meant a PEN!!” I just sip my coffee, grimace, and say “yeah… thats pretty hardcore man.”
So.. did you score with him later or not?
hahaha yeah man, give us the details.
Maybe he actually had a hard-on at that time, hehe.
Ah, but it wasn’t on national TV.
Back in the seventies, Mike Walsh on his TV show broadcast around Australia said to a young Frenchwoman the only French he knew which was from a song popular at the time, “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?” The woman looked quite startled as he had just asked her if she wanted to sleep with him that night.
Hm, so is a guy asking a girl to sleep with him on TV funny, or is it more embarrassing than a guy asking his beefed martial arts teacher in a crowded school if he could grab his dick. A question for the ages.
There is another funny Japanese mistake that is easy to make. In Japan it is common for rain to begin in the evening, a phenomenon known as “yuu-dachi” (yuu = evening, dachi = stand up or start).
From this one might well think you could replace the Japanese word for evening “yuu” with the word for morning “asa” to describe a scenario where rain begins in the morning.
So one time I was on my way to my junior high school job in Saitama Prefecture and it suddenly started raining heavily. I had to go back and get my rain gear or I’d be soaked by the time I got there, but this unfortunately made me a few minutes late.
Now in Japan it is customary when entering the office, or in this case the teacher’s room, to say, “Osoku natte sumimasen” (”Sorry for being late”) upon entering, loud enough for everyone to hear, and then briefly explain the reason.
So I rush into the teacher’s room, while stripping off my rain gear. All eye are on me as I bellow, “Osoku natte sumimasen!” and see everyone really appreciate that I knew the correct Japanese for that situation. Their encouraging looks embolden me, so I go ahead and explain the reason: “Ookii asa-dachi ga arimashita node…” but I can’t finish the sentence because first some students who were about, and then all the staff, suddenly burst into uproarious laughter. I can’t figure out why they’re laughing, so I laugh with them and go sit down at my desk.
Later as I’m on my way to class some students see me in the hall and say, “Sensei! Biiiiig penis!! …Do you asa-dachi???” And I start to get teh frist inkling I said something really embarrassing. Later on I looked it up on Eijiro and found it means “morning wood”.
The students, especially, never let me live that down, and I had to fend off kids trying to grab my cock for the rest of the year.
Oops! I forgot to say what “Ookii asa-dachi ga arimashita node” means. It means, “I’m late because I had giant morning wood”!
Amanojack, that is an awesome story. HAHA.
Seven - didn’t score with him, sorry to disappoint.
Anyone else have any similar stories? I’ll blog the best ones if you like. Amanojack is definitely in the #1 spot right now, however he might want to post that on his own blog.
Thanks, firefly, bit my blog ( http://amanojack.yourjapan.jp ) is dedicated soley to learnign how to get Japanese girls. So it would be off-topic there. Uh, or maybe this could be modified for pickup!?
“Japanese? No problem, I’ll just pick it up. My friend who went to France did the same thing.”
People who learn French manage to make equally embarrassing mistakes, take my French word for it.
Ok no problem! Do you mind if I use it in a later update then?
This is just a guess, but I bet going to France is a TERRIBLE way to pick up Japanese anyway.
At a party in my small apartment, my friends over for dinner commented on how quiet the place was. The lady in the apartment above had unfortunatly suffered a brain hemmorrhage some time back and the apartment was empty. Not knowing the medical terminology in Japanese, I tried to explain her condition by explaining that the blood vessel in her head had expanded putting pressure on her brain. Their eyes widened considerably with looks of incredulity as I explained. Blood = ketsu; Pipe = kan; Blood vessel = Blood + Pipe = Kekkan; the word I used translates as roughly “Ass Pipe” (ketsukan); They were visibly relieved to finally understand the situation…
First time I set a foot in Germany, I was invited to a restaurant with many people. I was sitting next to a young german girl who spoke excellent english. At some point she asked kindly: “do you speak german?”. I wanted to say: “Not well, but I will try with you”. Only thing is: I did not know the word for “try”. Being bold and all, I used an old trick to create vocabulary when you don’t have it: germanize the english word. So “try” became “treiben”, and I promptly told her: “Nein, aber mit Dir werde ich treiben”.
There was a pause in all conversations at that point, and any german-speaker around erupted with laughter immediately afterwards. I blushed beyond anything you can possibly imagine but nobody would translate what I just said.
It took me years to find out, because every time I told the story to someone they would start laughing uncontrollably and refuse to translate. Until I found a dear soul who told me “treiben” is the most vulgar way of saying you want to have sex. Which basically translates my efforts to: “Not well, but I will do you”. Not the nicest thing to say (in public) to a girl you first met 15 minutes ago.
Ahaha all of these stories are great. Keep them coming !!
Since I’d love to use them in a future update, please give me a URL to link to, or a person to credit.
You can email me on firefly.jp@gmail.com.
i bet you sucked his nice little fat japanese dick then didn’t you?
mmmm chow down karate kid
We have our first 12 year old!! Took you a while, didn’t it?
Sure, you can use it in a later update if you want. Japanese has big potential for language weirdness…
Not a blunder of the magnitudes described here, but anyway…
I was selling myself as a professional French to English translator, and doing pretty darn well.
One day a new client (a *huge* agency in New York) called with a first job for me, and I asked casually:
“How much words?”
It still haunts me. Though they gave me the job anyway and I did great.
Firefly that is a really funny story. I laughed my ass off and so did my wife when I relayed it to her.
Amanojack, you should put that story in your blog. Very funny! Put it under the catagory of “Language Mistakes” or something.
Not nearly so funny, and in the opposite direction, but have you ever tried to correct a Japanese school girl’s pronunciation of “penis butter” without bursting out laughing in front of the entire class?
My first year in Nagoya, I wanted to buy contact lense fluid, and found this small, mom-and-pop drug store near my homestay house. It was just me and this grizzled, old guy behind the counter. I looked around awhile for the item, and noticed he was giving me the eye — he had probably never had a gaizin in there before, and I’m white and really tall. In fact, he was old enough and traditional enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if he had never met a gaizin at all.
Anyway, I couldn’t find the fluid, so I asked him if they had any: “Anou, kontakuto ketsueki oite arimasu ka?” His brows furrowed and eyes widened, and he barked out: “Sonna mono wa utt’oran!” (”We don’t have that sort of thing!”) I was taken a bit aback by his violent reaction to my reasonable request, so I just nodded meekly “OK” and left.
Later as I was walking home, I realized my mistake. I had meant to ask for contact lense fluid (”ekitai”) but had asked for BLOOD (”ketsueki”). I had to laugh. I wonder if that guy thinks we sell that sort of thing over the counter in the West; maybe he thought I was a “vampyre”!
This reminds me of the time I went to a restaurant in Quebec City and decided to make my order in French. I wanted the five-fruit pie, and instead of saying, “J’aimerai de tarte au cinq fruit,” I goofed up my pronunciation and said, “J’aimerai de tarte au sang frite.”
The waiter blinked and stared blankly. I repeated myself. He looked shocked, then said, “You would like five fruit pie?”
“Yes, please.”
It was afterwards that my companions informed me I’d asked for fried blood pie.
Firefly and Amanojack, you guys are legendary. Just told these stories to my girlfriend, she laughed her ass off.
Beautiful. The beauty of language. In all honesty, its better to try because you come out a better person.
Why is it, however, that most language mistakes that people make always relate to sex. Morning Wood/Holding Dick/Doing You…
Haha, I might try and say those to someone myself, and pretend it’s an innocent mistake.
Almost a year ago, I lived in Berlin as an exchange student. My guest family was kind enough to feed me all the good German foods every day (you know, bread, meat, cheese, and beer). So, after a particularly filling meal I was slumped into my chair trying to digest all the food I had just consumed, my host mother asked if I had had enough food. I tried to put together the first thing to come to mind, which was “ich bin voll” combined with an emphatic nod.
Host mother, father, brother and his girlfriend, host sister and boyfriend all gave me the strangest look, then glances at each other, and belly laughs all round except my confused self.
A simple enough phrase, but I didn’t know that I had told them I was (sexually) satisfied. Gotta remember “Ich bin satt”.
HAHAHA! I turned red trying not to laugh (since I was reading this at work)
Your’s is a mistake that will live on in infamy!
Wow. That really makes my best mistake (or worst rather) seem lame.
But I will relate it here in case any one needs something less funny to calm them down.
Once, during my 1st year in Japan, I went with a Japanese college friend of mine and another gaijin from our school to visit his relatives and go to onsen.
Well after spending ackward hours stark naked in a hot water pool being stared at by envious wrinkley old Japanese men, we left the onsen and sat down to a delicious home cooked Japanese supper at my mate’s Aunt’s house.
The other gaijin, the Aunt, her son, my Japanese friend and I were all sitting around the table chatting about onsen when I had the bright idea to ask my friend if he had ever been to a “public bath.” What possessed me to ask such a pointless question I don’t recall, it was probably just small talk to fill an ackward silence. As you’ll see it did anything but.
I couldn’t remember the word for public baths (or I didn’t know the word) but I knew it was something like Ofuro (it is ofuroya-san or sento), so turned to my friend and sounded of the my question:
“Wataru,
Ofuro ni haitta koto ga arimasu ka?”
—
Shiiiinnnnnnnnnn…(silence)
The silence seemed to last forever, with his relatives staring, confused, at me.
Then Wataru, turned to me with an pissed look on his face and asked,
“Do you know that you just asked me ‘have you ever bathed’?!”
Just one of many stupid things I’ve done in Japan. So don’t feel bad firefly. We not the only one.
[...] happened to be training at the honbu dojo (head dojo), and our teacher, Togara-sensei (famous from worlds worst language mistake) was teaching a class soon after this class. Ordinarily, we would have to make our own way to the [...]