An example of what I mean:
I, in China, told an English speaking Chinese friend I needed to stop off in the bathroom to “take a shit.”
He looked appalled and after I asked why he had that look, he asked what I was going to do with someone’s shit.
I had not laughed so hard in a while, and it totally makes sense.
I explained it was an expression for pooping, and he comes back with, “wouldn’t that be giving a shit?”
I then got to explain that to give a shit means you care and I realized how fucked some of our expressions are.
What misunderstandings made you laugh?
Me. A white boy teenager.
My best friend. Child of first gen Chinese immigrants. Fluent in Cantonese and English. Compared to his parents, he is very westernized. Can I call him a Twinkie? I mean, we aren’t friends anymore, but that seems like an “our word” kind of word, and that’s not mine.
Anyway…His parents own a Chinese restaurant. He gets me a job there in high school.
One day, my friend calls to me by my full name. One of the chefs hears it and repeats it to confirm what he heard.
It’s at that point, dear reader, that my friend realizes that, if said with a Cantonese inflection, my last name sounds exactly like a common vulgarity of that tongue.
I won’t say what it is, because it’s a pretty uncommon name. But I will say that for several weeks after that, every single time I walked into the kitchen, I’d be greeted by all the cooks like Norm walking into Cheers.
Can I call him a Twinkie
The asian term for it is ‘banana’. Yellow on the outside, white on the inside. (Before the pitchforks come out, I’m one myself).
