Fun with English

     Being a good little German-American, I of course somehow fell in love with a Japanese man (a heresy of sorts in a family that remained %100 biologically German while living in America for four generations - WHAT?! He's not even WHITE?).  Ko-kun, my samurai/daredevil pilot, came to the states alone when he was 15 to learn to fly helicopters.  Unfortunately he was around too many other Japanese people for many years and only learned very cursory English for a long while.... well, until meeting me two years ago, the big whopping Bavarian-American girl who just happened to be fluent in Japanese... go figure.
     Since then we've had quite a lot of fun with rookie grammatical errors and such.  "Fun with English" will be short snippets of the funnier episodes of "English confusion", as I like to call it.

Fun with English - part 1 - De-mystifying Coffee

Ko-kun: "I'm really tired, so I make some decaf coffee now."
Me: "You don't want it to interrupt you falling asleep?  It's the afternoon."
Ko-kun: "No, I want REALLY strong coffee so it wake me up!!"
Me: "Then why do you want decaf?" *Perplexed*
Ko-kun: "Well, it IS so strong! That's why."

    Ko-kun had been operating under the assumption that decaf coffee was a stronger version of coffee because the "DE" portion of the word just sounded stronger.  No matter that words like de-valued and de-capitated exist; these apparently were not big clues for the last 10 years or so.  Words like de-velop and de-licious must have been the misleading culprits.  I of course immediately put this to right.

Me: "So, let me get this straight.  In the mornings at the helicopter company... when you are REALLY tired... you've been drinking DECAF to wake up?!?!"
Ko-kun: *shakes head yes*

Sigh*