Eigentlich ist diese Geschichte vor zwei Wochen passiert, aber Ich denke, dass es interessant ist.
Also, ich war ziemlich spät aufgewacht. Normalerweise wache ich gegen 7 Uhr auf, aber weil mein Wecker nicht funktioniert hat, bin ich um 7.40 Uhr aufgewacht. Meine Gastmutter hat mir gesagt: "Dan, du wirst spät sein!", und ich habe gesagt "Ja, leider hat mein Wecker nicht funktioniert hat, deswegen habe ich ausgeschlafen". Sie hat auf mich geschaut, hat gelacht, und dann hat sie gesagt: "was bedeutest du?"
I was a little confused when she asked me what I meant. The verb "ausschlafen", according to any dictionary, means "to sleep in", so naturally when I slept in I told my host mum "Yeah, unfortunately my alarm didn't work so I slept in". However, I seemed to have forgotten that German-English words (and vice-versa) don't have parallel meanings. Just because the dictionary tells me that "ausschlafen" means "to sleep in" doesn't necessarily mean that I can use it in the same way I would use the English equivalent. To make things slightly more embarrassing for me, I repeated the same mistake to my teacher, who also laughed and looked at me with a bit of confusion. However, she explained to me where I went wrong. The verb ausschlafen means to "sleep in" in the context of actually planning to wake up late, for example on the weekend: "Am Wochenende habe ich ausgeschlafen". The verb verschlafen is what I was looking for; meaning "to oversleep" (I suppose that is actually the correct term, however I have never said that for this situation). So, my experience with a small miscommunication may be a bit of a stupid story, but I think it highlights (at least a little bit) how common and easy miscommunications can be (it's something that of course can even happen within the same language, but between languages the chances are even higher). Ich möchte die Frage stellen: has anything like this happened to you guys during your stay so far?
Also, das it alles für jetzt!
Bis bald!
(P.S. Entschuldigung für meine späte Blog!)
Dan.
Haha Dan that stuff happens to me all the time. It's so easy to make mistakes like that especially when we don't have a great vocabulary. I misunderstand my host family all the time by thinking they said one thing but they actually said something that sounded similar but meant something else. And the other day I said langsamer instead of langweilig *facepalm*
ReplyDeleteI got some weird looks for that because of the context I used it in.