Two Smelling (or Smelly?) Wives

It's been ages since the last post, but I heard such a good one yesterday that I had to share:

My friend and her husband were having a difficult conversation with their Chinese hosts about how they needed to move out, and the man kept saying, "You can smell with my wife?" and "You and my wife can smell together?"

There were ten minutes of awkward back-and-forth conversation while they tried to figure out what he meant until finally they realized that instead of "smell," he meant "smile." Apparently that was his way of saying that they could agree and be satisfied.

Google Translate Comedy

I can't cease to be amused by this:

Give Crap for Christmas

A few weeks ago, in the car with Michael, I saw this (or some version of it):





Michelle: "Gift wrap wonderland, huh."
Michael: "Huh?"
Michelle: "That's what it said on the ad for The Container Store."
Michael: "Why would they call it that?"
Michelle: "For Christmas . . . ? What do you mean?"
Michael: "Give crap wonderland?"
Michelle: "Ah, no. Gift. Wrap. Wonderland."
Michael: "Yeah, that makes more sense."

Avoid Molesting

My brother served a Spanish-speaking religious mission in San Diego, then moved to Utah. Shortly afterward he was working late one night, and his female manager offered him a ride home since he didn't have a car. He said, "Are you sure? I don't want to molest you." He was mortified and explained about the use of "molestar" as soon as he realized the mistake, but they were very uncomfortable around each other for a few days.

Evil Chinese Dumplings

Once when the missionaries were speaking in church, one talked about the "wanton evilness of the world," except he pronounced it WONTON. Luckily we were sitting in the foyer because I started laughing so hard I ended up coughing and choking thinking about evil Chinese dumplings.

-Jennifer Sauls

Masseuse Missionaries

Getting ready to give a massage.

As a missionary teaching in Portugese:

Me: Temos uma massagem para voce. (We have a massage for you.)
Other missionary: Quer dizer mensagem? (Do you mean message?)
Me: Oh, yeah.

-Dagny Kelsey

Chubby with a Good Constitution

Mixing languages can make for some pretty humorous situations, such as the following from Love Actually (sorry for the bad language in the first clip and the horrible quality of the second):











Thanks to Michael Tsai for the submission.

Singing in Pain

Is Diverticulitis what you get from eating Korean food?

My father speaks Korean, and he taught me to say "baega parumnidah" (내 배가 부르고있다), a cute, folksy expression to say that the food was very good (literally, it means, "My stomach is singing"). One time I was eating at a Korean restaurant with my father. The food was very good, so when the Korean owner asked how I liked the food, I confidently said my phrase. The owner frowned and had a sincere look of concern on her face. Turns out, what came out of my mouth was a lot closer to "baega apahabnidah" (배가 큰 고통입니다), which means, "My stomach is in great pain."

-Joel Roman

To help with our Korean, (Google Translate isn't always the best), email us at blabbergastedblog AT gmail DOT com. Also, sorry for the delay in posts. Hopefully we'll be back up and posting regularly. Please send us your stories or ask your friends for stories to share with us!

TMI

Did you say what I think you just said?

While serving a Mormon mission in the Philippines, I was transferred to another of 80 islands that spoke a different dialect. When I tried to explain that I did not understand their dialect with the one that I roughly knew, I actually said (in a very crude and broken up way) that I had very little pubic hair.

-Sean Holcomb

Show Me Your Fleas

Not a flea.

One day while walking with someone, I decided to do a thumbs up and say, "pulgas arriba." My friend proceeded to laugh and hold up his hands, pinching his index finger and thumb together as if holding an extremely small object while saying, "pulgas arriba." Turns out, the word for thumb is "pulgar," and "pulgas" means "fleas."

-Trent Newman

The Proper Care and Feeding of Old Women

While teaching in Spanish about Peter's conversation with Christ, I accurately said, "Feed my sheep" the first two times, but the third time, "sheep" ("ovejas") came out as "viejas." According to my words, Peter was told to feed "my old women."

-Elder Douglas Higham (thanks to Alyson Morris and Lawrence Severson for clearing up sources)

Only One Way Out of This Mess

Start Looking.

Two missionaries parked their car on a street in Germany before going to a meeting. Upon leaving the meeting, they could no longer find their car and called a local church member in hopes that he could look up the name of the street where they parked and direct them to it. Proud that they had at least taken note of the name of the street, they announced to the local member, "It was on Einbahnstraße." Little did they know that "Einbahnstraße" means "one-way street."

-Michelle Glauser

And a Blabbergasted personal side note: co-founder Autumn is having surgery today. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

Wives Are People, Too

One missionary was talking to someone about the Mormon church and he wanted to say, "We have a lot of people in the church." Instead of saying, "Žmonių" ("people"), he said, "Žmonų," so his claim turned into, "We have a lot of wives."

-Lina Blume

Difficult Child

Either a little devil or a child star . . . 

This girl I knew had a less-than-spectacular grasp of French. Someone asked her a question. She didn’t understand the whole sentence but got that she was being asked what she liked to do, so she answered, "Oh you know, shopping, tanning, going to night clubs and getting drunk.”

“You did that when you were a kid?”

“Ohhhh. no.”

-Joel Roman

Schedule Your Arguments

During my first week as a missionary in northern Argentina, I discovered that the Spanish I learned in five years of Spanish class didn't necessarily line up with colloquial usage. I found this out when I approached a man sitting in front of his house, and asked if my companion and I could share a message with his family. He protested that he didn't have time, and I asked, "¿Podríamos pasar por su casa para discutir el tema más adelante?" I thought I had asked if we could stop by to discuss our message later, but after we left, my companion informed me that the word I thought meant "discuss" meant "argue" instead.      

-Michael H.

Beware of Big Spoons

A companion and I were held up at knifepoint one night in Spain.  My very frightened companion called our district leader (a native Spaniard) to tell him what happened.

What she meant to say was, "Un hombre nos atacó con un cuchillo muy grande!" ("A man attacked us with a big knife!")

What she actually said was, "Un hombre nos atacó con una cuchara muy grande!" ("A man attacked us with a big spoon!")

His response: "So? What's the problem?"

-Melissa Stringham

Nursing Embarrassment Joke

Test results.

A male patient is in a bed in the hospital with an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose and is still heavily sedated from an operation. A young nurse appears in his room to check up on him. "Nurse," he mumbles from behind his mask, "are my testicles black?" Embarrassed, the young nurse replies," I don't know, I'm only here to check your stats." He struggles again to ask, "Nurse, are my testicles black?" Finally, she pulls back the covers, raises his gown, takes a close look, and says, "There's nothing wrong with them!" The man removes his oxygen mask and says very slowly, "Are--my--test--results--back?"

Barf: For Fresh-Smelling Clothes

Barf: for fresh-smelling clothes.

Apparently, Armenian laundry detergent has a Farsi name that is funny in English.

"Barf" means "snow" in Farsi.

Hot Peanuts

The recipe.

The French word for chocolate is chocolat, which basically amounts to saying chocolate in a French accent. This girl in my class had a brain fart and instead of saying "chocolat," said "cacahuette," which led to this interesting exchange:

“I’ll get you something. What do you like to drink?”
“I like to drink hot peanuts.”

-Joel Roman

A New Compliment

In French, "petite bites" means "small dick."

Thanks to John Gough for pointing out this ad.