Learning Natural Languages

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Or the first-year-student type error in Spanish of forgetting that "pedir" -- to order, is an -ir class verb, and conjugating in like an -ar class verb.

This gets you "pedar" -- to fart. Hell of a way to try and get a vermouth from a waiter, as he'll be doubled over laughing and quite incapable of going for your vermouth.

You have to be careful the same way in Russian, with writing and with pissing. Use the wrong conjugation (pisat' is irregular in the present tense, piset' is sort-of regular) with regard to getting a letter written, and the usual comment is that the envelope corners must have hurt terribly, and how did you get the stamp to stick?

French got 'em too: I heard tell of a guy in search of thumbtacks in a stationery store ask where he might find the prostitutes. Punaises, putaines... yeah, I can see it.

Though for severe operator malfunction in French, it's hard to beat the chorus of "Lady Marmalade." The correct answer to the question it poses is, "Not until you master a better grade of French, sweetie." That sentence was written by some first-year student (and a bad one) of the language who didn't know that Frenchmen put themselves to bed with a reflexive form of the verb coucher and who did not recall that addressing someone by the formal vous is as out of place as can be imagined for inviting somebody to jump in the sack with you. Who was Lady Marmalade bedding, the king of France? The worst pity of it is that a grammatical French sentence could have scanned: Veux-tu te coucher chez moi, ce soir?...