Misunderstandings
He had uncombed hair, dirty clothes, and only 35
cents in his pocket. In Baltimore, Maryland, he got on a bus and
headed straight for the restroom. He thought that if he hid in the
restroom, he could ride to New York without paying. But a passenger
at the back of the bus saw him. She tapped the person in front of
her on the shoulder and said, "there's a bum in the restroom, Tell
the bus driver." That passenger tapped the person sitting in front
of him. "Tell the bus driver there's a bum in the restroom," he
said.
The message was passed from person to person
until it reached the front of the bus. But somewhere along the way,
the message changed. By the time it reached the bus driver, it was
not "There's a bum in the restroom" but "There's a bomb in the
restroom." The drive immediately pulled over to the side of the
highway and radioed the police. When the police arrived, they told
the passengers to get off the bus and safe far away. Then they
closed the highway. That soon caused a 15-miles-long traffic jam.
With the help of a dog, the police searched the bus for two hours.
Of course, they found no bomb.
Two similar -sounding English words also caused
trouble for a man who wanted to fly from Los Angeles to Oakland,
California. His problems began at the airport in Los Angeles. He
thought he heard his flight announced, so he walked to the gate,
showed his ticket, and got on the plane. Twenty minutes after
takeoff, the man began to worry. Oakland was north of Los Angeles,
but the plane seemed to be heading west, and when
he looked out his window all he could see was ocean. "Is this plane
going to Oakland?" he asked the flight attendant. The flight
attendant gasped. "No," she said. We're going to Auckland-Auckland,
New Zealand."
Because so many English words sound similar,
misunderstandings among English-speaking people are not uncommon.
Not all misunderstandings result in highways being closed or
passengers flying to the wrong continent. Most misunderstandings
are much less serious. Every day people speaking English ask one
another questions like these: "Did you say seventy or seventeen?"
"Did you say that you can come or that you can't?" Similar-sounding
words can be especially confusing for people who speak English as a
second language.
When a Korean woman who lives in the United
States arrived at work one morning, her boss asked her, "Did you
get a plate?" "No...," she answered, wondering what in the world he
meant. She worked in an office. Why did the boss ask her about a
plate? All day she wondered about her boss's strange question, but
she was too embarrassed to ask him about it. At five o'clock, when
she was getting ready to go home, her boss said, "Please be on time
tomorrow. You were 15 minutes late this morning." "Sorry," she
said. "My car wouldn't stat, and ..." Suddenly she stopped talking
and began to smile. Now she understood. Her boss hadn't asked her,
"Did you get a plate?" He had asked her, "Did you get up
late?"
English is not the only language with
similar-sounding words. Other languages, too, have words that can
cause misunderstanding, especially for foreigners.
An English-speaking woman who was traveling in
Mexico saw a sign in front of a restaurant. The sign said that the
special that day was "sopa con jamon y cebollas." She knew that was
Spanish for "soup with ham and onions." That sounded good. As the
woman walked to her table, she practiced ordering. She whispered to
herself, "sopa con jamon y cebollas. Sopa con jamon y cebollas."
Then she sat down, and waiter come to take her order. "Sopa con
jabon y caballos," she said. "What? the waiter asked. No wonder the
waiter didn't understand. The woman had just ordered a very unusual
lunch: soup with soap and horses.
Auckland and Oakland. "A plate" and "up late."
Jamon and jabon. When similar-sounding words cause a
misunderstanding, probably the best thing to do is just laugh and
learn from the mistake. Of course, sometimes it's hard to laugh.
The man who traveled to Auckland instead of Oakland didn't feel
like laughing. But even that misunderstanding turned out all right
in the end. The airline paid for the man's hotel room and meals in
New Zealand and for his flight back to California. "Oh, well, " the
man later said, "I always wanted to see New Zealand."
New words:
- bum: a person
with no job, moves from place to place / lazy
person
- among: part of
a group/class
- announced: to
say something to police / notice a presence
- misunderstanding: confused
- uncombed: not
comb hair
- suddenly:
something happens unexpected
- gasped: a sound
of shock or surprise
- whispered: talk
quietly
- wonder: to
think about something
- cause: to make
somethinghappen
- seemed: to
notice something
- embarrassed:
you face turn to red / feel bad (ashamed)
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