Sunday, June 08, 2008

Poops = poop/fart...burp

This weekend, I learned that the little things we find funny as tweens are hilarious to adults in a second language. Case in point, while driving back from an away game (the drive was about 2 hours) one of my adult teammates asked what the English word for ::insert appropriate sound here:: poops. My first instinct was to say poop which had no comedic value as it is almost the exact same but I also realized poop has multiple meanings in English so I quickly added fart. This led to several pronunciations between the 5 Germans in the car. Suddenly another teamate made a motion with her hands and mouth and asked for the English word. I said vomit and laughed as a third teamate had previously asked me that question and I was now sitting between the two of them but when I turned to her she told me that was not the right word for the action. Aparently the word she as going for was burp. To me fart should have been a funnier word than burb based on the fact that the German verb "to drive" (fahrt) is also pronounced fart but no one made that connection despite the fact that we were currently driving and it seemed so obvious to me. Anyway, the next 5 minutes consisted of the word burp and ended in giggles and tears, it was hilarious. Somehow the conversation then switched to wanting to shower when home, the German word for shower is Dusche (pronounced douche), needless to say I didn't go into the English similarities there.

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