What funny/annoying/interesting features have you found in your target language?

For me, thinking or complaining about these little details is a lot of fun, for example:

There's no word for "girlfriend/boyfriend" in German. They call them "friend" ("Freund"), and whether you are talking about one or another, is inferred through context. I think it is cute but also inconvenient. I had a lot of German people thinking my best friend was actually my boyfriend because we weren't that fluent and couldn't explain properly. 

I wouldn't joke about that issue so much if I wasn't talking about the same language that has the word Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung. If they have a word that long for "automobile insurance", I want to be able to call my special other lol.

They also say "two coffee" instead of "two coffees" and that's also cute.

Does your target language have funny phrases or idioms?

Considering Spanish as one of my target languages, I thought about "venga!". I understand it as a way to show agreement, but every time I hear it I ask myself "donde vamos?"

I also find Portuguese spoken in Portugal funny sometimes. They call a breakfast "pequeno almoço" ("small lunch"), bathroom "quarto de banho" (which is the exact translation to English: a room to bath) and many other things in a self explanatory way. In Brazilian Portuguese we tend to form nouns with suffixes, instead of this obvious names, for example, the bathroom is "banheiro" (a word derived from "banho" = bath).

Valeria.Fontes wrote:

Considering Spanish as one of my target languages, I thought about "venga!". I understand it as a way to show agreement, but every time I hear it I ask myself "donde vamos?"

As a native Spanish speaker, I am aware that many slang terms are super weird. I never thought too much about "¡venga!" but yes, it sure it's kinda tricky. I also think about "¡aguas!" when saying "be careful!" as it literally means "water", or about how fancy is that we have so many bad words (that I won't list because I like to keep it family-friendly). 

I personally really love Spanish and it's very fun to find weird expressions in it, there are a lot!

ZairaI.Uranga wrote:

Valeria.Fontes wrote:

Considering Spanish as one of my target languages, I thought about "venga!". I understand it as a way to show agreement, but every time I hear it I ask myself "donde vamos?"

As a native Spanish speaker, I am aware that many slang terms are super weird. I never thought too much about "¡venga!" but yes, it sure it's kinda tricky. I also think about "¡aguas!" when saying "be careful!" as it literally means "water", or about how fancy is that we have so many bad words (that I won't list because I like to keep it family-friendly).
I personally really love Spanish and it's very fun to find weird expressions in it, there are a lot!

I love Spanish too! I find the different accents amazing and local expressions as well. I was married with a Peruvian guy and it was really hard to follow a conversation when I visited his "barrio" in Lima, but I was smarter at the end of the trip. That's when they made me lose my "vale" and replace it with "venga".

I personally really love Spanish and it's very fun to find weird expressions in it, there are a lot!

I'm trying to learn Spanish and I find assigning gender, "la" and "el" to objects and animals. :) Like, who decides what's their gender? 

My first learned language is English and right now I cannot think of anything that annoys me very much in this way (I'm pretty sure there is something, but nothing comes to mind right now). 

And my second learning language is Italian and I do not know it well enough yet to point out any of these annoyances, but maybe, just maybe, in the future, if I will learn this language (I hope) I will be able to answer this question. 

Faye.Vitan wrote:

I'm trying to learn Spanish and I find assigning gender, "la" and "el" to objects and animals. :) Like, who decides what's their gender?

I think La is for feminine words and El is for masculine words. Nah. Just a guess, I was thinking of La Nina and El Nino. hihi. Haven't started learning Spanish right now but I can still remember some Spanish words Dora the Explorer taught me when I was a kid. hihi