An example of what I mean:
I, in China, told an English speaking Chinese friend I needed to stop off in the bathroom to “take a shit.”
He looked appalled and after I asked why he had that look, he asked what I was going to do with someone’s shit.
I had not laughed so hard in a while, and it totally makes sense.
I explained it was an expression for pooping, and he comes back with, “wouldn’t that be giving a shit?”
I then got to explain that to give a shit means you care and I realized how fucked some of our expressions are.
What misunderstandings made you laugh?
This is super interesting and I often wonder how differences in thought patterns, as they relate to a language, affect the culture of the language speakers themselves.
Do those speaking that dialect have like a cultural feeling that they need to “take” or “receive” or otherwise “acquire” a thing (like RDP) to make a connection? This as opposed to what I see as a very american way of looking at things (again using RDP as an example here), where “we’ve already got it, so will give it to you to make the connection.”
It feels like, and I could be very wrong, one comes from a place of not being accustomed to already having what they need, vs taking for granted the things they have and “sending it forth” or whatever.