Misunderstandings
September 18th, 2008One of my friends in grad school gave her students instructions to observe and record a conversational misunderstanding. One of her apparently hapless students gave several examples from his own interactions during the week. In one, he met a girl in a bar and found out they both ran track for the university. After chatting for some time, she said, “We should go out some time”, meaning go out on a date. He thought she meant go out for a run, so answered, “How far do you go?”
In Japanese, the word hai means “yes”, and is also used to indicate that you have heard or are listening to someone. It sounds pretty much like the hi that English speakers use for hello, which made the following exchange common:
Foreign guest: Takemura-san?
Takemura: Hai!
Foreign guest, startled: Oh, hi! [sometimes accompanied by a wave]. I just wanted to ask you…
When I was waiting in the Frankfurt airport for the bomb to be cleared off the train back to Freiburg, several extremely pretty girls and one dude were wandering around with clipboards approaching people. Guess which one came to talk to me? He asked me in German, Do you live in Germany? I answered in English, No. He appeared to interpret that as, No, I don’t understand you/don’t understand German, and mirrored that back to me in pidgin English: You no German? I said, That’s right. Basically he didn’t understand any of the immediate intention behind my responses, but was still able to draw out the full pragmatic value of the exchange, namely that I didn’t want to talk to him.