Some Misunderstandings of Global Importance

Misunderstanding the idiomatic expressions of other cultures can be embarrassing.

I remember having lunch with a French family in Paris in 1952. Back in those days, Americans as a rule didn’t drink much wine, except on special occasions, so most of us were quite unfamiliar with the mysteries of enology. In fact, only one American in 100,000 had ever heard of enology. For an American like me, whose idea of a Lucullan lunch was a pastrami sandwich and a beer, this Parisian lunch was an eye-opener.

The first course was a soup, with white wine; then fish, with a different white wine. After polishing off the fish, I was about to say it had been a formidable dejeuner when the maid brought out a roast leg of lamb and a bottle of red wine. Then vegetable. Then salad and another wine. Then fruit and cheese.

I felt stuffed, and I’m afraid I said: “ Mon Dieu! Je suis plein !” figuring that meant “I’m full!” Everyone laughed and looked at me in the pitying way the French have toward people whose native tongue is one of the inferior ones. They explained that plein ( pleine , actually) is used for pregnant livestock--cows, sows, ewes, and so on--not for people.

“ Ma vache est pleine “ would mean “My cow is with calf.”

Even in English, we can have some misunderstandings from nation to nation. Norman W. Schurr’s entertaining book, “English English” (Verbatim), has a few paragraphs on “knock up,” which he says “is fraught with danger” when used by Britons in America, where “it is an indelicate expression for getting a lady into a delicate condition,” while in England it simply means to awaken by knocking on the door.

There must have many an American GI during World War II who was astonished to have a delicate young English girl invite him to “knock me up in the morning.” I didn’t get to England until the war had been over for a few years, and by that time all the young ladies must have known that asking a Yank if he’d mind knocking them up was sure to get a reaction. I remember my own stunned disbelief the first time a peaches-and-cream dream asked me to knock her up. In time, I realized that making this request to Americans had become a sort of amusing game among some English girls.

Idiomatic misunderstandings on the international diplomatic level can, of course, have consequences far more serious than minor embarrassments. I think the writers of headlines in the sports sections of American newspapers have inadvertently exacerbated the already precarious relationship between us and the Soviet Union.

The headline-framers decided long ago that they couldn’t go on saying things like “UCLA Beats Stanford” and “Notre Dame Beats Purdue.” They had to liven their language and inject dramatic intensity into their work: “UCLA Stomps . . . “ or “Whips,” “Whops,” “Kills,” “Sinks,” “Skins,” “Downs,” “Nails,” “Clobbers” or “Buries”; and therein lie the seeds of some diplomatic mischief.

When, several years ago, Nikita Khrushchev said, “We will bury you,” Americans, accustomed to the violent implications of “burying” someone, assumed that he meant the U.S.S.R. was, like UCLA, intending to whomp, clobber, skin, kill or otherwise destroy someone, in this case the U.S.A.

The fact is that Khrushchev’s remark was less a threat than a solicitous offer. “I’ll bury you” is, in various languages, a common expression in many European countries, the intent being merely to express the conviction that the speaker will outlive the one spoken to.

Ivan tells Dmitri: “Comrade, feel my muscles. Firm! Solid! That’s because I don’t touch vodka or tobacco or red meat, and I spend an hour a day on my Volga Boatmen Rowing Machine. You, on the other hand, drink like a Cossack, smoke like a samovar, and lie around all day gorging yourself on imported cholesterol. You’re killing yourself on a five-year plan!” Dmitri is sure to rub his paunch contentedly, smile, and grunt, “Comrade, I will bury you.” It’s no more nor less than a disparaging comment on someone else’s way of life.

Khrushchev’s remark has been set forth as the rationale for spending 17 godzillions for discovering new ways to clobber, stomp, whomp and otherwise destroy them before they can bury us, and some of us are getting filthy rich on those godzillions.

What scares others of us is that the squandering of the godzillions might make the Khrushchev prediction a sound one.