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Is there an English word or phrase that native speakers don’t blink at that sounds odd/funny/rude/repulsive to ESL students?
by quickthrower2 3y ago
Is there an English word or phrase that native speakers don’t blink at that sounds odd/funny/rude/repulsive to ESL students?
- pyridines 3y ago"Understand" comes to mind. What are you standing under??
- Natsu 3y agohttps://www.etymonline.com/word/understand https://www.etymonline.com/word/understand It's an older version of "under" I guess. The weird thing is that the word "substance" has such a similar looking construction, because it literally means that which stands beneath. English in general uses a lot of seemingly random direction words in phrases, like "party down", "man up", "buckle up", etc.
- charcircuit 3y agounder in old english can mean among. You are standing among the knowledge.
- jason-phillips 3y ago> "Understand" Which comes to English from Old English and its Germanic origins. 'Unter' and 'Standen' are the Germanic equivalents today, signifying the original intent, to stand together on something. 'Comprehend' from the Normans' French (and Latin before that) is much easier to grok für Ausländer in this case.
- userbinator 3y agoI remember someone once saying "listen carefully so you don't overstand this". Took a second to get the pun.
- ilamont 3y agoA friend who is non-native speaker was a bit surprised by the other colloquial meanings for "pissed" (UK=drunk, US=angry)
- 3-cheese-sundae 3y agoI've been doing my part to bring "taking the piss" to US slang for some time now.
- canadianfella 3y ago[dead]
- solardev 3y agoWhat does it mean? Is it like taking the bar?
- vore 3y agoEven among native speakers, "bum a fag" means truly very different things depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on.
- qup 3y agoNo it doesn't. I've never heard "bum" to mean the verb you imply, in America. It can still mean borrow. "fag" obviously has different meanings, but the phrase just wouldn't parse for most Americans.
- Twisol 3y agoI've heard "bum a ride" here in America, although it's a rare word in a rare phrase.
- qup 3y agoSure, that's what I mean. We use it the same way (to borrow) and not the way he implied. I'll disagree about it being rare; I hear the phrase at least a few times per week (I work in a place where people frequently ask other people for rides, so perhaps that's relevant)
- vore 3y agoIf you've never heard the phrase before as an American, it would sound extremely vulgar! What else would you infer the meaning as in context?
- qup 3y agoI don't think you could infer any meaning, that's why I said it wouldn't parse.
- Twisol 3y agoAh, sure. Well, I've asked to "borrow a tissue" many times, and neither interlocutor expected the tissue to be returned. Maybe it's regional.
- jacobsenscott 3y agoCertainly there are english words that are homophones for offensive words in other languages. There's something that always triggers my Armenian wife, but the word escapes me at the moment...
- paj 3y ago"Babysitting" sounds awful if you interpret it literally.
- FireInsight 3y agobaby sitting, cute (speaking as a non-native here)
- AdmiralAsshat 3y agoNo, this one is by design. There are absolutely children that can only be prevented from destroying everything in sight by sitting on them.
- scubbo 3y agoConversely, Waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay sounds awesome if you don't know what either of those things are.
- soneca 3y agoHot dog doesn’t sound tasty (curiously, in Brazil, we translated it literally from the term in English).
- quickthrower2 3y agoThanks, I rate this the best example so far. As a native speaker, if I weren’t used to it, it would be super weird! Especially as dogs are supposed to be our closest pets.
- bamfly 3y agoI don't think "hot dog" naturally sounds tasty to native English speakers, either. Like, I think if you could somehow find an adult native English speaker who didn't already know what a hot dog is, and told them you'd invented a new meat food product and planned to name it "hot dog", they'd be like "WTF, ew, no, gross". I think we just usually learn it early enough that we don't tend to think much about what the words mean individually. More like it's one word that just means the meat product, or same product on a bun.
- quickthrower2 3y agoYour points are why it is a perfect example.
- ChrisClark 3y agoWhen my son was little and eating a hot dog I asked him what animal it was from. He cheerfully announced, "puppies!"
- avgcorrection 3y agoShining city on a hill.
- qup 3y ago"Bread" might solicit some surprise (in America) given how sweet bread tends to be here compared to elsewhere.
- masfuerte 3y agoNot to be confused with sweetbread.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y agoIrn Bru comes to mind. Not exactly a name that screams "drink me". It's questionable as to whether it's nice or not.
- alistairSH 3y agoI'm a Scottish transplant (to the US). I have a can when I visit Scotland. But just one. For those that have never had the "pleasure", it's sort of a combination of cream soda, citrus cola, and bubblegum. Maybe it's more of an acquired taste, but I don't find it particularly refreshing or good, and only drink it for the nostalgia (which is really just nostalgia of family vacations - I only lived in Scotland as a toddler). I don't drink a ton of Coke (depending on year, Coke and Irn Bru alternate top soda sales in Scotland) either, but on a very hot day, after a long bike ride or run, a small Coke hits the spot.
- dghlsakjg 3y agoHave you ever had Inca Cola from Peru? It's in the same neighborhood as Irn Bru.
- alistairSH 3y agoOh yeah, forgot about that one. We visited Peru a few years ago and had a few. I thought it was a bit better than Irn Bru.
- seized 3y agoIt's basically orange soda. I've had it a few times, not much different than other carbonated drinks.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y agoThat's an interesting take given there's not a jot of orange in it - it's actually full of banana, not that you can really tell with all the other stuff mixed in. I'd say it's more of a light energy drink and more similar to Tizer and other "made up flavour " carbonated drinks.
- hnlmorg 3y agoSo many weird names for food in British English: - Toad in the hole - bangers and mash - bubble and squeak And that’s before we even move on to Cockney rhyming slang nor other of the more extreme colloquials.
- KineticLensman 3y ago(Brit here) > - Toad in the hole Sausages in batter. Not sure where the sausage==toad equivalence comes from - its not used anywhere else. > - bangers and mash Sausages with mashed potato. This one has the most meaningful name, assuming you know that bangers == sausages (which is a common equivalence). > - bubble and squeak Left-over potatoes and other veg, fried up. Again, this term is only used in this context. All of these are classic Brit cuisine.
- allarm 3y ago- Is British food really that bad? - If made correctly, yes. )
- hnlmorg 3y agoThese aren’t considered delicacies. Every culture has good food and lower end “working man” type dishes.
- KineticLensman 3y agoBubble and squeak occupies a similar niche to hash browns, or at least did 30 years ago
- avgcorrection 3y agoThe thing is that no ESL looks into British cuisine.
- gjm11 3y agoYou forgot arguably the best one: "Spotted dick". (It's a sort of steamed pudding.)
- silisili 3y agoEnglish speaker, but I have to imagine things like 'almond milk', 'corn dog', and 'po(or) boy' would be confusing. I'm sure there are better, these are just the first 3 to come to mind.
- NoNameHaveI 3y agoThere is actually a movement in the US dairy industry to only allow milk extracted from mammals to be called milk. Calling it almond "milk" would be illegal.
- yannyu 3y agoLet's not pretend that's driven by anything except protectionism of an existing industry. They simply don't want almond milk anywhere near cow milk in the grocery store.
- Jack000 3y agoI had a tough time with "Man eating shark" Why would a man eat a shark? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
- asveikau 3y agoThe shark is man-eating. Like the popular song by Hall & Oates, she's a man-eater.
- powersnail 3y agoNon-native speaker here. Can't think of any rude ones, but here are some odd ones: "Sperm whale" always sounds a bit funny to me, but I don't know whether native speakers find it funny, too. "You can't have your cake and eat it, too." I understand the underlying logic, but it always seems a bit weird, since 1). you can eat half a cake; 2) if you don't eat a cake, you will no longer have a cake in a few days anyway; 3) it's a very long phrase for a short idea; and 4) the fact that "have" can also mean "eat". "blow job": seems to be the opposite of what the job entails. "first off": Why the "off"? "ladyfinger": I understand the finger part, but "lady" finger? A bit cannibalistic, isn't it?
- knome 3y ago* sperm whale: yes, this can also exact puerile giggling from native speakers * "You can't have your cake and eat it, too": might be better phrased as "can't eat your cake and have it, too". The idiom is stuck in its given form, however. * blow job: I have read this etymologically arose from "below job". there are occasional humorous anecdotes related to native speakers misunderstanding it as well * first off: never really thought about this before. I would suppose it comes from metaphorically popping the first of many arguments off of the speakers mental list. * ladyfinger: it meant long like fingers, the lady part meant to indicate slender or delicate. there was a plant called ladyfingers as well
- nathansherburn 3y agoI would have thought "first off" came from "first of all". I.e. of all the points I'm about to make, this is the first.
- hnick 3y agoThere is a saying “first cab off the rank” or “first off the mark” (as in running races) so it may be a shorter version of something like that.
- gumby 3y agoI was confused for decades by the americanism "lucked out" which always seems to me to imply an unfortunate situation. Also "could care less" actually means "couldn't care less" which is just as easy to say so why make the change? And how?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- scubbo 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw
- shalmanese 3y ago“Shit on a shingle” would not be the first choice of anyone unfamiliar with the dish.