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?
My favorite anecdote revolves around the many meanings of shit, which is hardly surprising, since the way this word is used in English is in no way forthcoming to a non native speaker.
So I was sitting in this call between my company (a medium size German tech company) and a big US corporation, discussing the development of a tool that we were doing for them. The people on both sides all knew each others at least in passing, and one of the people asked if one of my collegues was in the call, too.
Them: “So, is mr. X here, too?” Us: “No, mr. X had another appointment.” Them: “Ah okay. Mr. X really is the shit.” My collegues: wait…what? did they just…? Me, to my collegues: it’s good, it’s good, it wasn’t an insult! My collegues, getting more and more aggrevated: “Did you just call mr. X ‘shit’?” Them, not understanding: “What? NO!”
The Americans did not understand what the problem was, because they did not really think about what they said and that it might not be understood the way it was meant by a non native speaker.
It took a lot of explaining from my side after the call to cool my people down. They were completely bewildered, and they could not believe that calling someone “the shit” could possibly be a compliment. Me, I had a big big laugh the entire time.