Although this blog isn’t about travel, per se, I had to post it as throughout my travels I’ve encountered some interesting misunderstandings in language. As a rule, I always try to learn at least a handful of words in the local language, however sometimes situations warrant more than a few words, and other times, a local person wants to practice their English. Here are my top 5 language foibles:

Tokyo, Japan – The Best Rejection
I was shopping in the Harajuku district of Tokyo in a clothing store, however I am not the small stature of most Japanese women (thus realizing not much would fit me). I did find a shirt that I really liked and while holding it up a salesgirl came over to me asking if I needed help. I told her that I was trying to figure out if it would fit me and her reply was “No, you are much too glamorous for that shirt”. Now that’s the kind of rejection that suits me just fine.

Brussels, Belgium – Shrinking Clothes
My husband and I had the opportunity to live in Brussels on a 9-month work assignment, and were living in a very French area of the city, in an apartment with a French landlord who did not speak English. Growing up in Canada, our French skills are passable, but certainly not fluent. One day our clothing dryer broke, so my husband had to call the landlord. He told the landlord that the ‘dessicateur des vetements’ was broken. The landlord chuckled and promptly arrived to complete repairs. A few weeks later over dinner we were talking and a lightbulb went off ... the correct word for clothes dryer is ‘secheuse’; he had told the landlord that our ‘clothing dehydrator’ was broken.

Paris, France – Undead at an ATM
Continuing with French, I was in Paris with friends and needed to use and ATM. A group of us were standing in the vestibule although I was the only one in need of the machine. As I was finishing up, a lady came in and stood behind everyone, lining up. As I completed my transaction I said ‘Nous sommes fini’, intending to mean 'We are finished’ so she would know it wasn’t a big line. She looked at us very strangely as it dawned on me that I had told her we were all dead. ‘Nous avons’ is the correct way to say ‘We have’, instead of ‘Nous sommes’ which means ‘We are’; a colloquial meaning for someone being dead.  

Tripoli, Libya – Time Puzzles
We have the fortune of visiting Tripoli for a day, and as a tangent to the language story, I will note that it was a fantastic visit. With it not being a very tourist focused location, we decided the best way to see the city in a limited amount of time would be to hire a taxi to drive us around. We quickly found the taxi stand, although found that no one spoke English, and our Arabic is almost non existent. After some miming and writing on the dust of the car window, we were on the same page as far as needing a taxi. The driver then asked us ‘How many o’clock?’ Puzzled we looked at our watches, and it was around 10am. Noticing we didn’t understand he continued on asking ‘You want 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock?’ until we finally realized, it was his way of asking how many hours we wanted the taxi for. To this day we still joke about o’clock being hours.