I am pleased to say I have a free 1 month SuperPass I can give away to someone. So what are the benefits of the Superpass?
- SuperPass is $29 a month (or less than $1 a day)
- $1 one week trial
- With a membership, you get access to unlimited live online teachers.
- In class, you can interact with your teachers / classmates. There are PowerPoint presentations, whiteboarding, note-sharing, polling, and more.
- Hundreds of SuperPass classes, thousands of teachers, tens of thousands of students / peers.
- SuperPass is like an “all you can eat buffet for your brain”
- SuperPass is convenient, higher quality (because students rate and review all the teachers, so you can choose the best teachers available in the world), and live.
- For the shy folk: You don’t necessarily need to have a webcam / microphone, a lot of people just join classes to watch.
Now that you know what it is it is time to get the superpass. However, it isn’t so simple as leave your name and get it. Tiny bit more complicated. So here are the rules.
- Leave a comment, with your valid e-mail
- In that comment tell us a goof you made while learning or speaking japanese. Something funny or serious. Though if serious explain why it wasn’t good
This will run until the end of September so October 1 or 2 I will take all the e-mails and pop them in a random selection application and have it decide between the entrants. You can enter up to 3 times, but it has to be with 3 different comments.
That is it.
Now the why. I like learning from other people’s mistakes good and bad so I figured this would be a fun way to share our experiences and goofs with the Japanese Language. I will start with one I made as an example. This is what I said in class.
私は日本人を食べます (I eat Japanese people)
Oops. This was early on and I was trying to roughly say I eat Japanese food. Needless to say my teacher, whom is Japanese, did a double take.
So I leave the rest to you. What are some mistakes you have made.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
its kind of funny
when i first started i tried to say "watashi no baka no neko desu." which would be something like my stupid is cat
it was before i understood the word order, what can i say
Interesting. So here is mine! Well, it was not really a mystake, but it was hilarious.
When I was learning japanese I don't remember why, but my teacher told the class that in japanese "屁" (He) means "fart". And I just said: " So … Sensei, if I'd said "私の部屋に行きませんか。(Watashi no heya ni ikimasen ka? = Do you want to go to my bedroom?", imagine you're in a romantic date. Could that mean "Do you want to go to my fart store?* " ? " After that my teacher couldn't stop laughing!
*-や(ya) can be used after some words as an marker for stores. For example: "花" Hana (flower) -> "花や" Hanaya (florist's shop)
Ha ha – Martin's made me laugh.
Haha, a thumbs-up to Martin! I've made so many mistakes I've lost track of them all. One of my most embarrassing ones was using son-keigo to describe myself, but that isn't remotely funny to tell as a story. One of those things only the audience present found glee in…
Well, one time I and my friends went to a local sushi store and we're greeted with the usual "Irasshaimase~" by the employees. Some of my friends were confused about the meaning and I proudly explained to them with a loud voice that it's actually "Irasshaimasen" and used to greet customers. They all nodded their head in awe.
A year later I started a course on Japanese, and found out that "-masen" indicates negative verb.
I was a 21-year old college student living in Fukuoka. Some of my friends wanted to meet up later that week and asked me if I wanted to as well. Instead of はい、あいたい (yes, I want to meet) I answered はい、あい したい (yes, I want to love you). They cracked up.
So obviously I would love to get involved with this, but seeing as I am running a similar comp for a SuperPass too, I reckon that's probably against the rules, ne? Oh well.
That doesn't mean you can't post an experience. The purpose is to have a laugh and try to learn from others mistakes.
Sometime during my first year class in college, Sensei had us put together a skit to send to our pen pals (We had regular video correspondence with English students attending a Japanese university). My group had staged an argument between a mother and daughter where the daughter storms out of the house and goes to stay with her friend a few blocks away. I was playing the part of the daughter, so when my friend asked me why I showed up at her door after midnight, I thought I was saying:
お母さんとけんかしました。
What was actually coming out of my mouth was:
お母さんと結婚しました。
My friend stifled a snort when Sensei shook her head at me rather vigorously. I didn’t understand, so I repeated the phrase again. At which point the room simply dissolved into laughter. My friends took great pleasure in informing me that I had married my mother. :p
on face i wanted to tell my friends, that i’m studying (japanese) right now,
so i said: Omid を勉強します.
A few days later a japanese friend told me that i sayed: i’m studying myself.
I don't really knows if my story fits… it's kind of funny though! When I was in 6th grade, during my Geography class, I stared to hiccup. So, I asked my teacher if I could get some water because I had "hikuri". And she was like: Eh?! At that moment, I didn't realize I had used the wrong language, and just replied saying I needed to get some water. She just said go, then.
Observation: I'm Brazilian, but all my four granparents are from Japan, therefore, in my house, we didn't really use the portuguese word for hiccups, only "hikuri"…
Ok I think I'll just have a go
I had a couple of Japanese friends when I was in college, and one day we were chatting about random stuffs – and one of them said to me "Kawaiso nee Karen~" after I told them a story I already forget, they thought I knew the meaning pretty well since I speak Japanese a bit here and there. But instead I replied her, "Oh arigatou!"… And it was followed by silence, then giggles. Finally one of my friends told me that Kawaiso ne means "poor you", and said I must have thought it means I'm cute or something since it's got the word "Kawai" in it like "Kawaii.." Precisely the reason for me to have said "Arigatou". ^^; Good thing they told me what was wrong with my response – instead of holding it back. Phew.
Hmmmm… i usually got the words majide and kajide mixed up. mijide = seriously | kajide = fire so when my Japanese friend asked me "honto!?" i would accidently reply KAJIDE! meaning i was actually yelling fire.
Awweh I seem to have missed this contest. Such a shame.
who won?
it's nice to read those mistakes ^^ it's good to learn from them!
I get made fun of at on youtube when I learn Japanese from youtube. I still learn Japanese from anime.
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