Canada

This is my friend's story that is related to linguistic misunderstanding. My friend Dong came to Canada in 2015 for the first time to learn English and Western culture. His English was pretty limited at that time, but he said he learned by observing others.

One day, he decided to visit Tim Hortons alone to buy a coffee. The problem was he was confused about how to customize his coffee. He wanted to order a medium-sized black coffee, so he prepared to say, "I want to order medium black coffee." But while waiting, he heard previous customers say 'medium double double' or 'large double-double,' and they got coffee. He thought people in Canada may use the word "double double" for coffee. So when it was a turn to order, he told the server, "May I get a double-double without sugar and milk?"

Fortunately, I was able to get him a medium black coffee that day. And a few days later, one of his friends explained what "Double Double' means. Every time we talked about our past funny experiences, he mentioned this story, and everyone laughed a lot, even though we had heard the same story several times.