Through sheer happenstance my beloved and I both speak German. They’re significantly more fluent than me, having done a year abroad and double majoring in it. But both of us have stories passed down to us of the hilarious cultural misunderstandings present in learning a new language.
One of my German teachers had also spent a year abroad. He had a good grasp of the language but not the nuance. So when he’d closed on his first apartment and his lady got him a good deal he said, “Oh mein Gott, ich liebe dich!” (“Oh my god, I love you!”)
Now in English I love you is a multi-use term applied to friends, family, and for emphasis that you’re very happy, like someone just got you your first apartment.
In German however that phrasing is very specifically romantic. Not even casually romantic, it’s Serious Love. Parents tell their kids “Ich habe dich gern” or “Ich habe dich lieb” (literally “I have you gladly” or “I have love for you”) rather than “Ich liebe dich.” (This is as it was explained to me, don’t @ me it was public school)
So this woman was horrified and creeped out that this strange man, who she was alone in a room with, had pulled the cultural equivalent of declaring his undying love for her and asking her to have his babies.
He was equally horrified to have made such a faux pas when he realized how upset she was and profusely apologized. She understood better when he explained he was American.
A silly bonus story was that in that class we pranked one of the girls into thinking “Baum” was slang for cool. It just means tree. She’d be like “Das ist so Baum!” (“That is so tree!”) It went on for a few months before the teacher corrected her.
The next story is one of my favorites. My beloved heard from her teacher of a woman who had hosted a German exchange student for a while. At one point the girl came up to the her host mom to ask, “Where can we go buy a rubber? My sister collects them.”
“A rubber? She collects them??”
“Yes, can we buy her one?”
The woman was shocked that her exchange student was asking for a condom. But, she told herself, cultural norms were different, and she knew that German teenagers were given more sexual freedom. So, trepidatious but determined, she drove the girl to a local sex shop.
The girl, in turn, was horrified when they arrived. Most German student learn British English instead of American English and they call erasers rubbers.
The translation error made her host mom think she was asking for condoms when she just wanted a cute eraser and they both ended up embarrassed, surrounded by dildos.
