Thursday, July 14, 2011

Has this ever happened to you when speaking a foreign language?

I was speaking in perfect German one time and I said "Wo ist Stephen?" The people I was talking to was aware of my German speaking habits but only spoke English unfortunately and they confused "wo" which means "where" in German to "who." Also I find it funny that it will red underline wo as it mistakes it for a misspelling of who. So the girl replied, "He's a white boy who talks funny and loves to wear shorts." I never found out his location. I marched on home. Maybe I should've spoken in English because "Wer ist Stephen" would've been incorrect but confused for "Where is Stephen?" I find it hilarious that the spell checker confuses the German word "wer" for a misspelling of the English "where." Also is this another example of what someone means about believing you recognize words and parts? Like let's say Fabrik from German and you believe it means fabric but it actually means factory when the actual word for fabric "Leinwand" was hiding someplace else within the language? So if someone was speaking Swedish or Danish to me and I thought a word sounded like German and I replied with the wrong answer because of misinterpretation because of knowledge in German, would they get mad?

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