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?
Not exactly a misunderstanding but… my dad (a professor here in the U.S.) had a close friend and colleague, a Spaniard, who would go off to an intensive language summer school thing every year to teach American college students whatever esoteric Spanish literature was his specialty and only spoke Spanish the entire time.
Whenever he got back, he would spontaneously start talking to us in Spanish, suddenly realized we didn’t speak Spanish, then restart again in English. It didn’t embarrass him or anything, but it amused me when he did it.
Oh man this happens to my mom all the time, in both languages too. She’ll speak English to people in mexico and Spanish to people in Canada. Cracks me up every time, but sucks when we’re trying to pass as locals in mexico.
I had a similar experience when I was learning English where I was trying to give something to my friend, eventually I realized I was just repeating a number (10) at her. Ten means “take this” in spanish.