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De Gouden Liniaal - Van Duyststraat house, Antwerp 2013. Photos © Dennis Brebels.

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for chinese new year they get all these famous actors and comedians together and they do a lil show and one of the comedians was like “i was in a hotel in america once and there was a mouse in my room so i called reception except i forgot the english word for mouse so instead i said ‘you know tom and jerry? jerry is here’

beefmilkthings

jerry is here

eruriholic

my chinese teacher once shared this story in class about someone who went to the grocery to buy chicken, but they forgot the english word for it, so they grabbed an egg, went to the nearest sales lady and said “where’s the mother”

cuddlyaxe-deactivated20190218

When I was a teenager, we went to Italy for the summer holidays. We are German, neither of us speaks more than a few words of Italian. That didn’t keep my family from always referring to me when they wanted something translated because “You’re so good with languages and you took Latin”. (I told them a hundred times I couldn’t order ice cream in Latin, they ignored that.) Anyway, my dad really loved a certain cheese there, made from sheep’s milk. He knew the Italian word for ‘cheese’ – formaggio – and he knew how to say ‘please’. And he had already spotted a little shop that sold the cheese. He asked me what ‘sheep’ was in Italian, and of course, I had no idea. So he just shrugged and said “I’ll manage” and went into the shop. 5 mins later, he comes out with a little bag, obviously very pleased with himself. How did he manage it? He had gone in and said “'Baaaah’ formaggio, prego.”

I was done for the day.

ravenpuffheadcanons

This makes me feel better about every conversation I had in both Rome and Ghent.

elodieunderglass

I once lost my husband in the ruins of a French castle on a mountain, and trotted around looking for him in increasing desperation. “Have you seen my husband?” I asked some French people, having forgotten all descriptive words. “He is small, and English. His hair is the color of bread.”

I did not find my husband in this way.

In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”

“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.

The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)

Of course. A fucking sack. And so I did get a sack.

kat2107

I once was at a German-American Church youth camp for two weeks and predictably, we spoke a whole lot of English.

When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.

“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”

“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”

Which is LITERALLY Sleeping sac … The German word is a basically a one on one translation of the English word and I just… I failed it. At my mother tongue. BIG

eridaniepsilon

My former boss is Italian and she ended up working in a lab where the common language was English. She once saw an insect running through the lab and she went to tell her colleagues. She remembered it was the name of a famous English band so she barged in the office yelling there was a rolling stone in the lab…

backonrepeat

I’m Spanish and have been living in the UK for a while now. I recently changed jobs and moved to a new office which is lost somewhere in the Midlands’ countryside. It’s a pretty quaint location, surrounded by forest on pretty much all sides, and with nice grounds… full of pheasants. I was pretty shocked when I drove in and saw a fucking pheasant strolling across the road. Calm as you please.

That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.

Best thing is, everyone understood what I meant.

eridaniepsilon

I love those stories so much…

acleverforgery

Picture a Jewish American girl whose grasp of the Hebrew language comes from 10+ years of immersion in Biblical and liturgical Hebrew, not the modern language. Some words are identical, while others have significantly evolved.

She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.

American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)

Bus Driver: שתי זוזים. (”Two zuzim” – a currency that’s been out of circulation for millenia)

learningftw

that’s hilarious

shiraglassman

I am officially screamlaughing at my desk from that last one OH MY

speakertoyesterday

Does everyone know the prime minister who promised to fuck the country?

So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.

The minister was making a speech while a candidate, bemoning the state of the world. “The Soviet Union is fucking Egypt. Germany is fucking Syria. The Americans are fucking everyone. But who is fucking us? When I am prime minister, I will ensure we are fucked!”

andhishorse

What the hell Biblical Hebrew.

moral-autism

Just guessing: The path from something like “give someone a blade” to “give someone a blade, if you know what I mean ;)” is probably not that difficult or unlikely.

liminalreader

^Given that the Latin word for sheath (like, for a sword) is literally “vagina”, I can verify that this metaphor is a time-honored one.

liminalreader

Oh yeah and one time my Latin professor was at this conference in Greece and his flight was canceled, so he needed to extend his hotel stay by one more night.

Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English. Or French. Or German. Or Italian. (He tried all of them.)

Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years). He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.

She laughed her head off, but she gave him the extra night.

madenthusiasms

Reblogged just for Medea

localshortqueer

@verysadbee

lostboylovestory

My cousin’s mother tongue is English, but she also speaks Spanish, French, and Arabic so you could say she’s pretty good with languages. She also has an extensive English vocabulary. She spent two years in Peru and spoke nothing but Spanish while she was there. For the first few hours after we picked her up from the airport, she was fine and used her crazy advanced vocabulary like she hadn’t left. But we were eating dinner and she was telling a story and said “There something on the…” she said something in Spanish. We’re like “Sorry Meg we don’t speak Spanish. She huffs and says “You know, the /thing/.” She points down and waves other hand in a flat plane. After her struggling like this for another 30 seconds my uncle is just like “Do you mean the ‘ground’, Meg?” She slammed her hand down on the table “YES!”

clarityofhatred

After living in the Netherlands for almost a year I sort of had a grasp on Dutch (not really lol). I saw a woman watching the pigeons and I had some chips I didn’t want to eat anymore. We were both on the same bench so I offered them to her. I suddenly realized I needed to clarify that I was offering them so she could feed the birds since she’d run out of bread. Problem is, I never learned the word for pigeon. My brain, in its infinite wisdom decided to say “kippen Van de stad “.

I asked the woman if she wanted my chips to feed the “chickens from the city”

souramagazine

Expo ‘70 Osaka

Expo ‘70 was a World’s Fair held in Suita, Osaka, Japan between March 15 and September 13, 1970. The theme of the Expo was “Progress and Harmony for Mankind.” In Japanese Expo ‘70 is often referred to as Ōsaka Banpaku. This was the first World’s Fair held in Japan.

The master plan for the Expo was designed by the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange helped by 12 other Japanese architects who designed elements within it. Bridging the site along a north/south axis was the Symbol Zone. Planned on three levels it was primarily a social space which had a unifying space frame roof.

st-swithin

claudiamatossilva

Hilda by Duane Bryers

badkidgorgug

More Hilda!!

themockingcrows

in this family we love and support Hilda.

i-am-the-narwhal

Yes! Hilda!

luidilovins

What i love about this artist’s depictions of women is even the sexualized ones the woman is always genuinely happy and enjoying herself. Frolicking or making funny faces, she’s living her life and looking sexy while doing it, not sitting in a sexual pose for the audience’s view.