What English expression made you laugh when you learned it? I’m not asking which expression you had trouble understanding, or which is different from in your language, or anything like that. I just want to know what expression you found downright funny when you first learned it, even if it wasn’t a joke.
Here’s a word I learnt 4 or 5 years ago…[size=150]asymptote[/size]…ka ka ka :lol: believe me, malay students find this word fuuuunnnyyyy. I remembered my professor had to replace it with a malay word “anu” so the students won’t laugh everytime she referred to the thing.
“strategery”
hi guys
You are giving words here not expressions: My word would be whatyamacallit or thingymabob or Ugymaflip.
My expression would be “that tickles my fancy” or “whatever shakes your tree”.
it’s a candy bar: Whatchamacallit
hersheys.com/products/detail … callit.asp
Here’s another good one:
“whatever floats your boat”
Hello Mr.Tunncilff,
Would you mind explaining the meanings of the coiled words?
Thank you in advance,
Nina
p/s: This is the first time I’ve come across the surname you have, how do I pronounce it? “Toon-kilf”?
The first time I heard someone say “My bad.” I laughed in horror. 8)
Pls do call me Stew, Nina.
Mr Tunnicliff sounds like my Dad.
The coiled " " apostrophed phrases mean.
tickles my fancy means gets my interest or excites me depending on context.
Ands shakes my tree is like float my boat so I leave that to prezbucky to explain.
Yankee
My bad is almost as naff as “thats is so gay (original meaning of bad)”
The “boat” expression does sound funny, I thought I heard it before in some tv shows and I guess it means “whatever agrees with you”.
And Stew, “Mr Tunnicliff sounds like my Dad” is very funny. I laughed my heart out when I read it :lol:
I have a terrible time with that one, because a lot of my ESL students have picked up ghetto English in high school or at work before they come to my classes. They usually don’t know there’s anything wrong with their English, because American high schools praise them for almost anything they do.
There was a family Tunnicliffs down the street from me when I was growing up, and we always called them the Tunafish family.
That was far from the worst nickname anyone on my block had. One kid was called “Foamy” because of his tendency to drool. There was another kid with a nickname I won’t print here, and his problem was that people knew only his nickname and didn’t know his real name. There was a girl who was a state swimming champion in the butterfly stroke who had a horrible nickname that we boys gave her out of admiration for her perfect physique. It basically meant “girl of steel”, but it involved a part of her body and was quite embarrassing to her. Kids are really mean, huh?
Many Americans laugh the first time they learn the German word for “rental car”. It’s “Mietwagen”, and it sounds like the English expression “meat wagon”, which is very bad slang for an ambulance.
Why is this word funny to Malays?
I think it’s the Malay accent that made it funny, with the exaggeration at the third syllable, aseemtottt :lol:
Jamie
ROFL @ “Foamy”. That is just waaaaaaaaaaaaay below the belt. Poor kid!
Do you remember the fun we had with “fahrvergnugen” in those old VW ads? That was a blast in junior high and high school.
Nina, you were right in your appraisal of “whatever floats your boat”.
It would be akin to saying (I suppose) “whatever tickles your fancy”.
That kid got through it okay, but the girl of steel got so embarrassed by the nickname we boys gave her out of admiration for a very firm part of her anatomy that she actually quit competitive swimming. I felt ashamed when she quit, and tried to talk her back into her sport, but no luck.
There were those bumper stickers that showed the Fahrvergn?gen guy dancing around, and they said, “F?nkingr?vin”. I was an adult when those VW ads came out, so I don’t know what kids did with the word.
I do, however, remember other faux German words that kids often repeated, such as “stopsemfromfloppin”, which we said was the “German” word for a certain ladies’ undergarment.
Most Americans I know laugh at the German word for ‘Exit’ (Ausfahrt) when they first encounter it on the German Autobahn. I had a friend visiting me in Germany once who insisted on hanging out of the car window (while we were going at the usual dare-devil Autobahn speed) just to get the best possible photo of that word on the sign. :shock:
I think one of the funniest German words is the one for exhaust, which is “Auspuff”. Just as funny is one of the words for exhaust pipe, which is “Auspuffrohr”, which sounds like “out poof roar”.
:lol:
In Spain, a pseudo-German term for the underground goes: “subanempujenestrujenybajen” (the Spanish ‘j’ is pronounced as the German ‘ch’ in ‘ach’) – literally: “get on, push, squeeze and get off”.
There’s also a pseudo-Arabic expression: “bajamelajaulajaimeb?jamela” (“get the cage down for me, James, get it down”).
I’ve just thought of another popular fake Arabic term: “jam?sjamar?sjam?n” (“you’ll never scoff ham”).