Guy stands in front of rip-off exchange bureau in Prague to warn tourists

You may speak the language but if you’re not from around there, you don’t know what’s normal / cheap and are ripe for the picking, eh.

When I come across people who have learned French in a school that’s in an English er, wasteland(?) from a teacher who spent three weeks in Paris thirty years ago. When you ask them in French, “How are you?”, they reply “Comme ci, comme ça.” Sometimes I’ll tell them that no one in Canada uses that expression.

This is my favorite story about people not realizing that someone speaks the language:

(There are subtitles, but I have no idea if the humor translates.)

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Does anyone in France use that expression, or is it outdated slang? Kind of like saying “nifty, daddy-o” when someone asks how you are in English?

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Reminded me of the classic Eddie Izzard “French” sketch. https://youtu.be/x1sQkEfAdfY?t=38

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Even if the product is pretty much snake oil, Herbalife is a sketch multi-level marketing mechanism, not really a pyramid scheme – there is a real product there and the business, such as it is, doesn’t fundamentally depend on bringing in new people.

Isn’t that somewhat appropriate? One might even say…Kafkaesque. :wink:

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I love this old bit from Henry Cho to the same point:

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Are you kidding? It’s so easy, even a kid can learn it!

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You’re forgetting the Basque. They win, hands down, any discussion about unique language development, especially in regard to Europe.

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1/3 funny business with the letter G.

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nice try but we know better

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I’m respectfully guessing you didn’t watch the vid… which emanates from that fine news source, The Onion :wink:

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No, I did. I thought I was adding to the joke by putting something in writing in this thread. Didn’t work out as planned, I guess.

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My Dutch friends say 1/3 head cold

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In that case, nice work, and sorry if I flattened the meta!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go transform into a beetle…

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An Italian once told me that Dutch sounds like a throat disease. Though flemish is a lot softer.

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To a native English speaker, that’s what the letter ya looks like to me.

AFAICT, it’s in use in France, though the millennials have to be using some argot that’s incomprehensible to older folk - and must surely throw in some Arabic.

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Something that looks like a backwards r and is pronounced ya reminds me of backmasking

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