THE NERDS

One of the moments that stick with us as language learners are the mistakes we make while we try to speak a second language. It's undeniable that you can't speak a language without making mistakes here and there, and that's how we learn after all. But, sometimes we make some really embarrassing mistakes that haunt us for the rest of our lives. It is for this reason that you are reading this article. Because we've asked our followers at The Language Nerds about the embarrassing mistakes they have made while speaking a second language and they provided responses that will make your day. Have a great read 😋! Tom I was speaking Spanish on the phone. I asked the caller how things were going. He said, ''Muy Bien, gracias a Dios.'' I thought it was strange and said ''Adios,'' back and hung up.  Martijn  I'm currently living in Brazil. they speak Portuguese here. In Portuguese pâu means "bread' and pau means "dick". This…

Our languages are incredibly diverse and it is highly unlikely to find a word or a handful of words that sound the same in all languages. Except that there is a word that is shared by all human languages,  according to research. Surprise, surprise the word is 'huh'.  Weird, huh! Well, it turns out that this is probably a universal word. 
Let's explain first how this word works in more detail. Consider the following made-up conversation:
A: We decided to move to New York. B: Where? A: To New York.
Speaker A makes a statement, and Speaker B follows up on that by asking the question “Where?” which targets only a portion of the original statement, i.e., it is possible to infer that Speaker B had no trouble comprehending the message that they decided to move somewhere, but s/he presumably missed the final word. So, s/he requested a repetition of this information by asking “where?” and Speaker A supplied this information in his/her next turn. And this is what is termed by conversati…

Words really don't have any logic to them. You can't just work out the meaning of words based on the sounds that make them up. That's because words are arbitrary.  So if you don't speak Chinese, you can't possibly figure out the words for, say, "breakfast" or "fridge". Different people agree to give different combinations of sounds different meanings. Considering that people are scattered around the globe and speak different mutually unintelligible languages, it is unlikely that they would all have the same words for the same thing. However, there are some select words that sound pretty much the same across so many languages. They flit across language barriers either through trade, the internet or because people just like the sound of them. Here are some of them: CoffeeAfrikaans: koffie | Albanian: kafe | Arabic: قهوة (qahua) | French: Café | Azerbaijani: qəhvə | Basque: kafea | Belarussian: кава (kava) | Bengali: কফি (kaphi) | Bosnian: kafa | B…