Parisian faux pas
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Another situation where tiny mistakes make a huge difference is in production of Braille books. Braille is such a bulky ... um... orthography that many abbreviations are used, for example each letter of the alphabet also stands alone for a common word (a, but, ca, do, every, from, go, have, etc.) and more unusual words work out from there like "lower d" which is a d shape placed lower on the matrix of 6 dots.
Then you have abbreviations which are formed by placing a single one of the dots before a single letter to make a whole word, for example "dot 5 c".
My father turned to his hymn book and confidently sang out that the "soldiers of mother" should arise. A "dot 5 c" (Christ) had been accidentally recorded as a "dot 5 m" - the addition of that one single dot which turns a c to an m had made the word into "mother" by mistake.
Aha, That's a good one!
I had an American friend, that told me she was once in the bus and a guy started to bother/provoke her. She ignored him so he took her arm and instead of saying "Lache-moi!" (let go of me/leave me alone) she said "Lèche-moi!" (Lick me)...
I work in France. Had to smile when my British boss asked the French assisstant to put a load of files "dans les cabinets". He thought he was referring to the filing cabinets. She followed his instructions and left several boxes of files in the loos.
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