language

This makes my head happy. 

Someone on AskReddit asked for people to share their hot takes on those common sayings that are actually total BS. The resulting answers might come across as pretty bleak. 

This guy made a grave mistake. And that mistake was one of him trying to tell a lady asking for money that he didn't speak English, while he very well did the whole time. It's tough to pull off the whole "I don't speak your language" thing when you're literally speaking their language right back to them. 

Somewhere along the way, classic idioms and sayings with two parts got shortened to the first one, and everyone's just been using them wrong for a while. Tumblr gets itself into spirals of informative weirdness, like this Tumblr thread that actually makes history fun.

Someone on AskReddit asked for bilinguals to share their experiences with overhearing other folks that had no idea they could understand them. If there's one valuable lesson in this particular form of "overheards", it's that you never know who's listening! 

In this wide world, we see a lot of hilarious translations and translation fails. Languages are complex and hard to understand completely. These frustratingly interesting observations on language and silly literal translations are a good example of that. This can come to a head when overzealous tourists try to get a tattoo in not only a language they don't understand, but in characters that are also completely foreign to them. Case in point, you don't want to misstep and end up as the "goldfish man"

We know that languages are all weird, and the one we use can be particularly confusing, but that can make it a more fun and nuanced thing to explore. We're all for seeing some creative uses and misuses of the English language. If you just wanna see people totally suck at English, then here are people who failed at using the English language.

Learning the words for things in other languages can be particularly eye opening. From overly literal German translations like "hand shoes" to more poetic euphemisms you'd never think you'd hear, every culture has come up with it's own particular brand of funny words for things. For more, here are non-native English speakers sharing common phrases they wish we had.

Well well, how about that? You learn a new thing every day! Turns out a whole lot of us have been going around dropping the term, "just deserts" in an improper fashion. Seems to be a commonly shared fail. 

Sometimes the language barrier can hurt you more than others. In this case, the guy thought that "gasoleo" would get the job done for him, when he went to fill up his Petrol car. Unfortunately, that actually translated to Diesel, and he found himself in quite the bind, and in need of a mechanic. Fortunately he was able to resolve the issue, and move forward. But you gotta love the fail! 

The English language is frustratingly confusing, and seems to make zero sense at times. The following list of definitions, sayings, terms, etc. serve as a solid testament to the fact. For such a widespread language, it has an uncanny knack for confusing the shit out of people. If you're looking for more language struggles, it's worth checking out the following times people utterly failed at their spelling attempts.

This rude Chinese customer assumed from a point of ignorance that their white cashier wouldn't understand what they were saying, if they spoke in Mandarin Chinese. That's where they couldn't have been more wrong. Don't go judging a book by its cover, and better yet, assume that someone in the room always understands what you're saying. 

Call the burn unit! This linguist took a Tumblr user's post, and absolutely destroyed. And they did it with the cold, hard logic from the linguistics field. A job well done, indeed. 

Wouldn't it be simpler to have a single word that encapsulates the concept of getting drunk in your underwear? Wouldn't it be amazing to be able to call someone an "orthopedic walking cane" out of hate? These options and many more lie waiting to be discovered in the world's many wonderful languages. For some English wins and fails, here are some incredible uses and misuses of the English language.

English is a complex and weird language, made out of sutured together bastardizations of dozens of other languages. It's got confusing tenses and conflicting rules all over the place. Here are some fun applications of English, as well as a few miserable but funny misapplications of the language. For more interesting stuff about the English Language, here's a tumblr thread deconstructing the actual meanings of popular figures of speech.