Person A: You know… the thing Person B: The “thing”? Person A: Yeah, the thing with the little-! *mutters under their breath* Como es que se llama esa mierda… THE FISHING ROD
As someone with multiple bilingual friends where English is not the first language, may I present to you a list of actual incidents I have witnessed:
Forgot a word in Spanish, while speaking Spanish to me, but remembered it in English. Became weirdly quiet as they seemed to lose their entire sense of identity.
Used a literal translation of a Russian idiomatic expression while speaking English. He actually does this quite regularly, because he somehow genuinely forgets which idioms belong to which language. It usually takes a minute of everyone staring at him in confused silence before he says “….Ah….. that must be a Russian one then….”
Had to count backwards for something. Could not count backwards in English. Counted backwards in French under her breath until she got to the number she needed, and then translated it into English.
Meant to inform her (French) parents that bread in America is baked with a lot of preservatives. Her brain was still halfway in English Mode so she used the word “préservatifes.” Ended up shocking her parents with the knowledge that apparently, bread in America is full of condoms.
Defined a slang term for me……. with another slang term. In the same language. Which I do not speak.
Was talking to both me and his mother in English when his mother had to revert to Russian to ask him a question about a word. He said “I don’t know” and turned to me and asked “Is there an English equivalent for Нумизматический?” and it took him a solid minute to realize there was no way I would be able to answer that. Meanwhile his mom quietly chuckled behind his back.
Said an expression in English but with Spanish grammar, which turned “How stressful!” into “What stressing!”
Bilingual characters are great but if you’re going to use a linguistic blunder, you have to really understand what they actually blunder over. And it’s usually 10x funnier than “Ooops it’s hard to switch back.”
Finally a list I recognise myself in. Especially the idioms thing. ‘Oh, is that not a thing in (language)? Right, it’s Dunglish. OK’
I pretend to be complex and clever but in reality, nothing has ever made me laugh harder than those bad Chinese subtitles from the bootleg Lord of the Rings DVDs. Tears streaming down my face, core aching, slowly suffocating because I’m laughing too hard.
also (because one can never have too many of these)
and my personal favorite:
I somehow forgot to add my own favorite, which is this one:
I also appreciate the ones that really change the tone and suggest that the characters openly loathe each other…
in tibullus 1.8 (a poem about his boyfriend Marathus) has this line about “pugnantibus linguis” (literally battling tongues) which means that the idea of tongues battling for dominance in homoerotic fiction has been going on since at least the 1st century bce and i think that’s beautiful
somebody here pointed out that i did y’all a disservice, for which i apologize deeply. i did not point out to you that these battling tongues are also accompanied by umida oscula (wet kisses), which are given to the boyfriend as he anhelanti (pants), as well as in collo figere dente notas (making marks on his neck with teeth). so tibullus has been writing harlequin romance-level erotica since before the common era and that’s something i never thought i’d have to say in my life
And speaking of pronouns, flat-out my favorite part of the LOTR Appendices is when it’s revealed that the Gondorian dialect of the Common Speech differentiates between formal and informal second-person pronouns but the distinction’s been lost in the Hobbit’s dialect, so Pippin’s blithely been using familiar terms of address with the Lord of the City, and thus helps to explain both why the Gondorians are so ready to assume he’s a prince and why Denethor finds him so amusing to have around.
not what i expected from a post that began with “speaking of pronouns,” but an a++ show of the versatility and surprise daily available on tumblr dot com
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