When talking about geographic minorities, in comparison to ethnic minorities, in Germany someone brought up Zigeuner, gypsies, as a geographic minority and Dr. Martin said something along the lines of:
"Es gibt nicht eine Menge Zigeuner in Deutschland, also versuchen wir, sie zu schützen."
Excuse any errors I may have made there (not that many of my readers speak German, but still). Anyway, basically he said, "There aren't that many gypsies in Germany and we [the German people] want to protect them."
QUICK GERMAN LESSON (and something necessary to understanding the comedy of this situation):
- Cognates are words that are similar in both languages.
- Example: Kultur, Baby, Bier, Karotte und Auto (respectively: culture, baby, beer, carrot, and car. It should also be noted that I'm not really sure if car is considered a cognate or not, but just the same, it's one of those words that if you know English you can probably figure out what "auto" means in German).
- The verb to protect is schützen in German.
- Schützen is phonetically similar to saying "Shoots-sen".
- Go ahead, try to say "Shoots-sen"... it sounds like it looks... shoot, right?
When Dr. Martin said, "Es gibt nicht eine Menge Zigeuner in Deutschland, also versuchen wir, sie zu schützen," or "There aren't that many gypsies in Germany and we [the German people] want to protect them," I mistook the verb schützen for a cognate and personally translated it as:
There aren't that many gypsies in Germany and and we [the German people] want to shoot them.
Obviously, I was incorrect. Luckily for me this was by no means the worst mistake I've made when learning the German language. It's the third.
Runner-up dates back to last semester, the morning after the shooting that occurred in Westroads Mall in Omaha, during a Konversation course when we were talking about current events in our home areas. (It's now that I should quickly note that foreigners, more specifically Europeans, seem to have a odd fascination/highly enjoy talking about or criticizing the United States and it's history of school/public shootings. In addition, a school shooting attempt had been recently foiled in Köln, which is near Dortmund and in the coming weeks, Finland would experience it's first school shooting in like twenty years, not to mention it's most deadly). That being said, I was trying to explain what had happened, and not knowing the verb for "shooting", quickly looked it up in my handy-dandy electronic dictionary. The verb was "Schießen"... pronounced phonetically as, "She's-Zen," because in German the second vowel (in this case is the 'e' highlighted in green) is pronounced, rather than the 'i' like it would be in English. Anyway, I was trying to tell them that there was a large shooting in Omaha, Nebraka but instead I pronounced the 'i' instead of the 'e' which changed my verb from shooting to shitting and ultimately changed my sentence into, "There was a large shitting in Omaha, Nebraska." People laughed, I was embarrassed.... end of story.
The Grand Champion of language goof ups goes to the same verb. This happened at the beginning of this semester (early April) during a Literature, Culture, and Language course. We were reading William Tell aloud in class when I was asked to read. More specifically, I was asked to read the part where Mr. Tell shoots the apple off his sons head. I made the exact same mistake I'd made before and said that, "He shit the apple off his head," instead of shooting it off his head.
Well here they are, my top three language goof-ups. If you're not satisfied, have no fear, tomorrows another day and inevitably another dozen or so chances for me to butcher the German language.
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