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A speaker of a foreign language can create a pun, or some sort of oddly constructed phrase in the reader's language by mistake. In Phillip K. Dick's novel, "The Man in the High Castle," a Japanese...
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#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/45468 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
A speaker of a foreign language can create a pun, or some sort of oddly constructed phrase in the reader's language by mistake. In Phillip K. Dick's novel, "The Man in the High Castle," a Japanese character, Mr. Tagomi, says, "Fleece-seeking cortical response." It takes another character a second to realize that Tagomi means "woolgathering." It seems to me that one could have a foreign speaker make unintentional puns, or try to translate puns in his own language literally with humorous results. This gimmick requires an explanation and can be used too many times.