Student: Richard, I can't come to the class next week because I have a formation.
Me: Ooh, does it hurt?
Student: (long pause) I'm sorry I don't understand.
Me: What kind of formation do you have?
Student: The boring kind.
(Formation means "training" or "training session" up here.)
***
Me: You look different this session, have you lost weight?
Student: Oh no, I cut my hairs.
Me: Really, how many did you cut?
Student: (long pause) A few thousand I guess.
***
Me: Did anyone see any good movies over the Holidays?
Student: I saw "No Country for Old Men."
Me: Ooh, I've heard about that. Was there a good plot?
Student: (long pause) It wasn't that kind of movie.
(Plot sounds like a derogatory term for vagina up here.)
18 comments:
It amazes me at times to find the new meaning of a word in slang of a region. Changes the entire view of a statement with lots of laughter usually.
Thank you for adding a smile to my morning.
I think that English would be a very hard language to learn. So many words have two meanings. So many words are spelled different but pronounced the same. So many words are spelled the same but pronounced differently. Job and job one is an Old Testament Book the other is a place to work. Fast, it can mean to move quickly, to not eat, or to hold something tight. So many opportunites for mistakes. Making for a funny Blog. Thanks for perking me up in a good way. Ed
i love the long pauses as people try to figure out how to answer your questions.
You can't make this stuff up, can you?
Thanks for the smile this morning.(It wasn't that kind of movie. lol)
I, too, am fascinated by how our language plays sometimes. The British mother of a friend of mine told me that when she was a new immigrant to Canada about 25 years ago, she once went into a store and told the butcher she'd like a nice joint for their Sunday dinner. Apparently in England, the word joint is used to describe a roast beef. :)
Plot sounds like vagina???? oh, you silly Canadians.
.....hmmm, wonder what people think there of putting corpses in burial plots.... :)
HUGS...
Only in Quebec, though (or Francophone Canada, I suppose I should say). To a unilingual Anglophone, formation would be something planes fly in together and a plot would be a story line or a place to grow vegetables.:-)
I never understood why we didn't treat hair as plural anyway.
Honey, please....WE ALL HAVE FORMATIONs....and it doesn't stop us from doing what we need to.
Oh I adore the plot one! I can just hear it. A former coworker used to describe my boots as 'des bottes de plotte' I can just imagine your student thinking you were a complete perv.
I love your students, they bring you such joy!
Lots of people in south louisiana pluralize that way. Hairs, cut the grasses and tons of others, it's hysterical. They're explanation is that there is more than one of them.
Isn't language fascinating! Thanks for the smiles.
Love these!
Mark :-)
ahaha this made me laugh out loud :)
Spoke by a friend of mine many years ago when she was learning French: "Moi, ce que j'aime, c'est un film avec une belle p'lotte."
No a word of a lie, as they say here in Nova Scotia.
You should have called this Lost in Translation Student funnies.
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