When I was living in Japan for a few years, I ended up dating a Filipino lady for a while. But she had no concept of colloquialisms; she took everything I said 100% literally. I quickly discovered that the English language is riddled with colloquialisms and we use them constantly.
One evening, she had called me maybe 6 times over the course of a couple hours. On the next call, I picked up and said, “Damn, you’re killing me!”
She immediately broke down crying. She wailed, “Why would you ever say that?! I would never want to kill you!”
It took maybe a half hour to calm her down and get her to understand that this is an English expression and not meant to be taken literally. She finally agreed that I didn’t mean it, but she told me I’m not allowed to use that expression again, because it hurts her heart to hear me accuse her of wanting to kill me.
That’s fascinating, I’m gonna hunt for more stories on filipino-english miscommunication now. Like, do none of them get colloquialisms or was it just a “her” thing ? Lol.
When I was living in Japan for a few years, I ended up dating a Filipino lady for a while. But she had no concept of colloquialisms; she took everything I said 100% literally. I quickly discovered that the English language is riddled with colloquialisms and we use them constantly.
One evening, she had called me maybe 6 times over the course of a couple hours. On the next call, I picked up and said, “Damn, you’re killing me!”
She immediately broke down crying. She wailed, “Why would you ever say that?! I would never want to kill you!”
It took maybe a half hour to calm her down and get her to understand that this is an English expression and not meant to be taken literally. She finally agreed that I didn’t mean it, but she told me I’m not allowed to use that expression again, because it hurts her heart to hear me accuse her of wanting to kill me.
Very interesting, I have had the same experience working with autistic co workers taking everything literally
Her heart is literally hurting‽ You monster!
That’s fascinating, I’m gonna hunt for more stories on filipino-english miscommunication now. Like, do none of them get colloquialisms or was it just a “her” thing ? Lol.
There are colloquialisms in Filipino. This is not a normal Filipino-English thing.