Laughing at stupid foreigners.

[Gravity Aided]

Walking round the Kehlsteinhaus and overheard a couple of Americans talking and saying how cool it would be if it could be moved to yank land and opened as a Mac Donalds.

We where ****ing ourselves for hours coming up with the various meal names and Toys that would be available, such as the Mengler happy family meal with Mac Nazi nuggets.

This is why they should have bulldozed that place like they did the bunker in Berlin, so people can't come by to wax rhapsodic about the Fuhrer.

 

[Piemaster]

I now visit Brazil regularly. 10 years ago very few people spoke English (even in Airports etc) and I spoke little Portuguese, so I resolved to learn the language. It is considerably harder than I imagined, and I still wonder if they have invented all the tenses and ending changes just to confuse me. Anyway, now that I can speak a certain amount of Portuguese, I am keen to use my Portuguese and improve. However, it seems in the last 10 years that the whole country has been to English lessons and very keen to try out their skills on a genuine Englishman. So I have had the bizarre situation where the Brazilian is talking to me in English and I am responding in Portuguese..

I'm working in Brazil at the moment, there's 3 Portuguese here as well.It amused me greatly when one of the locals on the phone asked to speak to a Brazilian as he couldn't understand the Portuguese guy he was speaking to. There can be a fair bit of difference between the two versions.
I'm in a similar position as I was here around 10 years ago and would agree on the prevalence of english now. Unfortunately prices seem to have matched, and often exceeded the UK too.

 

[Piemaster]

I was working with a Swedish guy in Norway the other week and I asked him about whether Swedish is understood in Norway, he said it is if they want it to.

I had a Swede working with me a couple of months back - easy to forget english wasn't his first language. He made a similar comment on Norweign. He also could claim passable Spanish, Portuguese and French.

Bizarrely he too skiing holidays in Japan! Reckoned the slopes are better for downhill than Sweden and it worked out cheaper than the usual european resorts.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

...As for front loading washing machines, you guys must have some really interesting Americans over there, never to have seen a front loading washing machine.

I think they're all from Iowa.

 

[oldfatfool]

This is why they should have bulldozed that place like they did the bunker in Berlin, so people can't come by to wax rhapsodic about the Fuhrer.

claptrap.

 

[hopless500]

There are loads in Norfolk - my favourite is Wymondham - pronounced Win-dom...

Win-dum actually

 

[hopless500]

Deffo Hayz-bruh when I lived in Norfolkshire!

Still is too

 

[hopless500]

I went to California for a month many years ago - folks asked me if it was Australia or New Zealand I was from. It didn't seem to enter their heads that I was English.

We were there a couple of years ago and had the same thing. Couldn't quite figure that out

 

[MisterStan]

More like Win-dhum I reckon but what would I know.

Us NINs like our place names and the confusion on the faces of foreigners.

Win-dum actually

TMN to @Saluki

 

[hopless500]

One of the drs I used to work with spoke fluent German.

He recounted a story about being on holiday over there for a couple of weeks and the first night he rearranged the itinerary which was pinned to the wall and sat back and enjoyed the resultant confusion over the next few days.

Also on the first day he suffered from the 'towel reserves sun lounger' concept, so that night he wandered out and put a 'broken, do not use' (in German) sign on one of the loungers. And each day he went out to the pool and set himself up on it while everyone eagerly waited for it to collapse under him.

And his final coup de grace was when a group of them were happily slagging him and all English folk off, and he turned round and spoke to them in perfect German.....

He had a whale of a time

 

[hopless500]

TMN to @Saluki

Yes. I had spotted that

 

[swee'pea99]

I had a similar experience with some bloke in a Spanish shop trying to buy salt. Yelling at the poor girl wasn't getting him anywhere so I asked, quietly and politely, if I could help him. He asked if I spoke "this bloody awful dago language" (charming man that he was) and I took him to the salt. It was clearly marked 'sal' and was between the pepper and the vinegar so I figured that I had a fighting change of it being right.
Lady on the checkout was very grateful to me and asked if I was English, I told her that I was Scottish. Which is technically true, I was just brought up in England plus a smattering of other countries.

Many many moons ago, touring the backwaters of Greece with a schoolfriend (on bikes, yes, of course) and we decided we'd like some olives. Bizarrely enough, they didn't appear in the tiny pocket dictionary we were carrying, so my friend drew a little picture for the lady in the shop. 'Ah - avgar!' she said, along with lots of head-shaking, to confirm that she didn't sell them. We then spent the better part of an hour going from one back street shop to another, without success, until finally we hit gold. 'Avgar,' said the man, and nodded enthusiastically, before asking us how many we wanted. Slightly nonplussed, we said maybe 100g? He looked baffled. After a bit of bafflement to and froing, he reached over to a shelf and produced...an egg.

 

[Cycling Dan]

'And just around the next corner, we have paint drying....'

I also like watching paint dry

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P2XzcF2m8sU

 

[Gravity Aided]

claptrap.

Yes, that may be better, he would be lighter than a bulldozer, and walk around implanting dynamite there.

 

[Ganymede]

One of the drs I used to work with spoke fluent German.

He recounted a story about being on holiday over there for a couple of weeks and the first night he rearranged the itinerary which was pinned to the wall and sat back and enjoyed the resultant confusion over the next few days.

Also on the first day he suffered from the 'towel reserves sun lounger' concept, so that night he wandered out and put a 'broken, do not use' (in German) sign on one of the loungers. And each day he went out to the pool and set himself up on it while everyone eagerly waited for it to collapse under him.

And his final coup de grace was when a group of them were happily slagging him and all English folk off, and he turned round and spoke to them in perfect German.....

He had a whale of a time

The Germans have that thing where when they say "halb vier" they don't mean half past four, they mean half before four, so all the English people I know who've been to Germany have lots of stories of their own itineraries being messed up by this misunderstanding.