Norwegian Missionary Linguistic Mishap

[Interviewer introduces the topic of a family legend about the informant’s religious, LDS mission to Norway, and some of the linguistic troubles some of the American missionaries had while learning Norwegian.] Well the fun part about learning a new language is that you get to learn that they have, different words for, to mean different things. So a good example of that in English is change, and, in English you can have change on a dollar and so you have coins, or you can have, um, a, change your clothes, from you know, change your clothes, you can change you mind, and those are the different, different examples and. We had one mission companion that, just had a difficult time getting that concept down that, you couldn’t use the same Norwegian word like we do, use the same English word for change. And u, one day, we were riding the bus in town, and no Norwegian buses you, — and probably on all buses you have a little cable you could pull to get off at the next stop. [clears throat] Uh we uh, we were going down the middle of town and he, reached over and grabbed it, and it, it dinged, and, and uh, then a couple of minutes later he realized that this wasn’t the right stop, and so from the back of the bus he yelled to the front of the bus, ‘I’m sorry I changed my mind’, only in Norwegian, but the change that he used mean that, instead of ‘I changed my mind’ or ‘I have a different opinion now’, uh, he used the one where you change your clothes, and Norwegians take things so literally, [laughs] when they heard that, you could see the Norwegians kinda chuckling from the front because in their mind or what, what they envisioned was that his guy, took his mind out of his head, and set it aside and picked up another one and put it in his head [laughs] and so they just, they were reserved you couldn’t just outlie, outright laugh at somebody, [laughs] but you could see them they’re kind of snickering, and uh, kind of uh, recognizing that his guy didn’t know what he was talking about, and uh, so anyway that was, a lesson ...