Flula Borg is German buts lives in Los Angeles and finds that English idioms make no sense. If you are at work, be warned that the audio has the word "bastard." Continue to see more of Flula's videos. -via The Daily What
Rock, Paper, Scissors
(YouTube link)
Shooting Fish in a Barrel
(YouTube link)
You can follow Flula on his YouTube channel or at his blog.
LOOOOOL.....What kind of warning is that?
Is the sky supposed to come down or something?
Ohh noes i heard the word bastard now GOD wont let me in to his eternal kingdom...is that it?
oh my my kid just heard the word bastard, now this is the direct route for him to turn massmurderer!!?
?????? Just wondering?
One Americanism that has always puzzled me is the phrase "I could care less". Over here we say "I couldn't care less", meaning of course that we don't care at all. The phrase "I could care less" implies that you do care, it doesn't even imply that you don't care much. It could even mean that you care a lot. However Americans seem to know it to mean that you don't care at all.
As such that's fine, because the purpose of language is to communicate. So as long as one American English speaker says it to another American English speaker the intent of the phrase is understood. Even if they say it to another person for whom English is their first language they will probably understand by inference. However say that to somebody for whom English is a second language and there is bound to be confusion. There are many coloquial English phrases from around the world (including the UK) that only really make sense to people who know what the phrase means, not to those who only know what the words mean.
Conversely I have met many people who speak English as a second language who have tried to literally translate their own coloquialisms into English and found that they make little or no sense. Every language has these phrases.
As a speaker of Australian English I'm sure you have several such phrases. But then you blokes can't even agree on the size of beer glass that goes with a particular name from one territory to the next.
A long time ago I spent about 6 months in the USA with my German girlfriend, who spoke perfect Oxford English, and she always asking me to 'translate' from USA to English. A lot of the time I had no idea because of the accents (we did a road trip on the B-roads) or sayings I had never heard. She gave up asking once we both realised that she was often being asked to translate what I had just said.
Me? I am Australian.
ps: that guy is bunging it on and the hamminess, to me, makes it unfunny but to everybody has a different chicken.