Lost in Translation

There is often a substantial language barrier here between native English speakers and native Thai speakers. It can sometimes make for some funny misunderstandings. I was buying a pair of pants the other day and after haggling the price down, felt like a jerk when I had to ask the store clerk to break a 1,000 Baht. I asked him, "how do you say 'I'm sorry'?" He replied, "Nepal". I'm not Thai but I'm pretty sure that's not correct. My best guess is he thought I was asking where the pants were made.

Earlier today a man was offering henna tattoos on the beach. The girl next to us (who I think may have actually been American--which is way less common than you'd think!) accepted and picked out a design. As the man was sitting down to start on her tattoo he looked over at me and said "you want?" and then pointed to his adorable 7 or 8 year old son. I shook my head and he laughed and started work on her henna tattoo. I turned to Caitlin and asked "did he just...?" and she goes, "offer you his son?" We had a good laugh. Our best guess was that he was offering to let his son give me a henna tattoo...I think I'd prefer he'd have offered me the kid! Haha.

There is this wonderful fruit here that they sell along the beach. It's sweet and sour and has a waxy feel and look to it. We wanted to know what it was called so that we would know how to ask for it in the future. When Caitlin asked the woman selling it, however, she replied "grapefruit". Once again, there's no way that's correct. Haha. Although it could be in the same family! It's substantially sweeter though.

(Update: I learned it's called Pomelo!)

And then there are the common misspellings when they write in English. For example this sign we saw on our way out of Patong:

The best part about this is that this sign was about 10 feet long and 5 feet high. Hard to miss. Another word they commonly misspell is burger, which they often write as "burgur". My favorite so far, though, is this pillow we saw in the mall:

Please, don't distrub.

The most ridiculous, though, by far has been some of the T-shirts that we've seen Thai people wearing. It's common here for Thais to wear shirts in English, even if they don't actually know what it means. For example, one of my first days here Matt and I saw a woman in Homeworks (think Bed, Bath and Beyond) wearing a shirt that read "I F*** for Love"...Seriously, can't make this up. And even more inappropriate, there was a pregnant mother who came to Matt's school wearing a shirt that read "I F*** on the First Date"...she was called into the principal's office and was MORTIFIED when they explained to her what it meant. I'm certainly going to think twice before buying a shirt in Thai.