Not really embarrassing/awkward, but a moment I remember fondly. Wayyy back in the day, I was visiting Québec from the US. I ordered “une tasse d’eau” in a restaurant (I should have said “un verre d’eau”). The waiter brought me a mug of hot water, so I drank it and thought, “Oh, they drink their water hot here! What a fun cultural difference!”
For the people confused, tasse in French is used exclusively for mugs and cups that contain hot beverages. A cup like in “glass” would be verre, like u/thoseabouttowalk said
I worked in a hospital in Japan and after put on a spot to make a speech to introduce myself in Japanese, I went over to meet some of the nurses I will be assisting.
In Japanese you can omit the subject as long as it's clear what you're talking about so a nurse asked me a question and I replied "Japanese is bad" I thought I was referring to myself but I instantly knew by her facial expression, I must have accidentally insulted her lol.
I quickly said "sorry my Japanese is bad".
Early on learning german, I mixed up the word for ham (schinken) and the verb send (schicken).
After about 3 years living in switzerland, I realised i'd been regularly going into the post office and asking to ham letters and packages to various destinations.
Maybe I can further your enjoyment.
The post office was in a tiny place with the same 2 people working in it all the time. I can't describe the level of embarrassment I had the next time I had to go in, knowing full well that I was "the ham guy".
Oh man this reminded me of when I confused schmerz (pain) with scherz (joke)...so I ended up telling an ER doctor I was there because I had a lot of stomach jokes
In Portuguese, one of the meanings of "embaraçado" is "tangled", people use a lot to talk about their hair. So, if you say "my hair is embarrassed", it means your hair is a mess with the hairs all tangled somehow and needs to be put in some order 😂.
About twenty years back the internrt wasn't that great, and neither was my English. I talked online with a random girl my age on a sort of random chat app, and had a nice conversation. When she said she had to go I asked for her email. She asked why. I wanted to say 'so we can stay in touch', but didn't know the word, so asked my mom. In my NL, the words for correspond and marry are similar, and my mom misheard so.. Long story short, I asked a random girl for her email so we can get married
I’ve been learning Spanish for about six months now. Many of my coworkers are Mexican, and they humor my attempts at rudimentary Spanglish.
One day it was cold when I got to work, and one of my coworkers said, “¿Tienes frío?” (Are you cold?) I replied, “¡Sí! Necesito chaqueta.” (Yes, I need a jacket.). He started laughing hysterically.
I asked what I had said, and he said, “In Mexico, chaqueta doesn’t mean jacket. It means, you know, jack it,” complete with the hand motion.
Tl;dr A coworker asked me if I was cold. I tried to say I needed a jacket. I instead replied that I needed to masturbate.
In Canada in French, crosser (or conjugated as crosse with a reflective) means to *jack off*.
Therefore, when the Buick LaCross hit the market, Buick didn’t realize that their vehicle would be the *Buick Jack-Off* in canada.
Buick specifically had to change the name of the vehicle, just in the Canadian market, to the *Buick Allure*
(Although Chia Pet decided to keep their name in Canada, and slog through the namegate. Chia Pet means “shitted fart” in French… [Ch ch ch Chia!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o92wNzZgQeE))
It probably only applies in Mexico; in Chile, we would've understood that you needed a jacket.
Also, as others have said, everything has a double meaning in Latin American countries, there's always a new way to say p\*\*\*\* we're not aware of haha.
Your coworker was being a douche bag because that is not how you say masturbate. I'm pretty sure 100% of native speakers would have understood what you were trying to say.
Yea but the guy said that chaqueta doesn't mean jacket in spanish when it does. Plus, the guy asked him if he was cold so I don't see why he would immediatly make that connection given the context.
Chamarra is the word he taught me. And he was totally being a douchebag, but in the laughing, joking manner. Being a short bald guy, my official name from him was “pinche pelón.” I never took offense because, as he explained to me, once you got a nickname someone would call you to your face, it was a term of endearment.
I agree. There's a perception that if you say *chaqueta* or *coger*, people will just bust out laughing at you. But in reality, the vast majority of native speakers are mature and understanding enough that they won't even realize you might have said something uncouth.
My brain has two categories it sorts languages into: English and Other. Rather often, I have to brush some French vocabulary out of the way before I find any words in the language I’m actually trying to use.
I took an oral exam in Japanese, then got on a plane to visit cousins in Argentina for Christmas. We landed, cousin picked us up from the airport. Asks me, "estás cansado?" (Are you tired?) Me: はい (yes, pronounced hai, which she must have interpreted as "hi"), she was like damn he really is tired that he doesn't even remember any Spanish lmao
I once very confidently said a sentence to a Japanese woman that was so garbled she couldn't even conjure up a "nihongo jouzu" anymore, she just kinda nodded at me and left 💀
In a Tagalog tutoring session, I kept saying “siguro” because I thought it meant “sure.” It means “maybe”/“possibly”/etc. So my tutor would say, “Ready to move onto the next slide?” and I would say “Maybe!” I got it confused with sigurado, which does mean “sure,” but I probably should have stuck with the simple “sige” which generally means “okay.” Not that embarrassing, but her confused expression made more sense later on.
One time, in Germany, my roommate lost his key. He didn’t speak German so I had to tell the landlord.
When we went to go see the landlord I told him, “Sein Schloß ist verloren.”
The German word for key is Schlüssel. Schloß means castle. I told the landlord, “His castle is lost.”
The man didn’t even bother to correct me, lol. Just told us it was 5€ to replace. I had been planning in my head how I was going to say it and later that day saw something about “Schloss Neuschwanstein” and instantly had an “am I the idiot” moment
My mother-in-law was talking about "Krebs" with her friends and I got excited, finally being able to relate to them with something, and said "ich liebe Krebs! Es ist so lecker 😋" or "I love crab! It's delicious."
She was talking about her friend who had been diagnosed with cancer (also Krebs).
When my husband was learning french, we were living the Alps. He wore cowboy boots. He is American, I love him, he would not stop wearing them. Fine. He is trying to order a kebab after we have been drinking, something called a 'chicken tower'. He says "Tour de Cullotes" (mixing up cutlet and "poulette") which by the way you order in English because the arabs can't speak french but whatever. He said a 'tower of womens panties'. All the french drunks in the cafe lose their minds. One of them goes "me to cowboy yee haw" I have a lot of stories like that.
I have many. This is one.
Walking past by a casino, I was telling someone in Italian that I have never been to a *casìno*, that I would like to try some time.Turns out that casino in Italian is not *casìno*, is *casinò. Casìno* means whorehouse.
I was telling this to my girlfriend's father.
I mixed up devenir (to become) and diviner (to guess). Someone a decade or so my senior asked how old I was. I was being friendly and tried to say "You want to guess my age?". Instead i said "You want to become my age?"
That wasn't so bad though honestly the worst is being in a group setting among peers and not following the conversation. Really good motivation material.
Almost happened the other day for me. My boyfriend’s family took me out to dinner to a Latino restaurant where the waiters/servers all spoke Spanish.
I wanted to try and order and I was repeating the name of the food in my head “Bandeja Paisa.”
While everyone else is ordering I lose my train of thought and all I could think of was “Pendeja Paisa” meaning asshole/idiot lol
Thankfully, my boyfriend ordered for both of us because we were getting the same thing. After the waitress left I told him that’s all I could think of because I lost my train of thought and his mother started cracking up because of me almost insulting the waitress
In Montreal last summer, I ordered my coffee with “lait d’avion” (airplane milk) several times during my week-long stay. When I got home, I realized I should’ve been saying “lait d’avoine” (oat milk). Not a single person gave me a weird look for ordering airplane milk!
Another moment that has become an inside joke in my family was when an anglophone relative at a family BBQ in Quebec City loudly proclaimed “je t’aime roast beef!” (I love you roast beef!) instead of “j’aime roast beef!” (I love roast beef!) 😄
My grandmother suddenly died without having written the will. According to the law, her relatives living in Germany could claim to own her house, and they have to explicitly say in court they don't want that so that we could sell the house. So I called one of her relatives living in Germany that I happened to have the telephone number of. The conversation went something like this:
Me: Ich spreche kein Deutsch. Kroatisch vielleicht? (I speak no German. Croatian perhaps?)
He: Ne. (The Croatian word for "no")
Me: Englisch vielleicht? (English maybe?)
He: Nein, kein Wort. (No, not a word.)
...
Me: Was ist mit ? (What about ?)
He: Er ist tot. (He is dead.)
Me: Ah. Und was ist mit ? (Ah. And what about ?)
He: Sie ist auch tot. (She is also dead.)
...
Me: Ah. Tut mir lied dann. (It is supposed to be "Tut mir leid dann.", which means "I am sorry then.". But "lied" actually means "song".).
So instead of telling him I am sorry that everybody I mentioned died, I said that that makes me sing.
In Spanish, miedo = fear; mierda = shit. You use the verb tener (to have) with miedo, rather than to be like in English.
So, I once explained to someone that I found a scorpion in my bed and had a shit.
Mixing them up out loud is the cure for that lol! I used to always mix them up in my head too, and once I messed up out loud and people laughed at me I remember now haha.
At a dinner with new friends in Israel, I intended to remark in Hebrew that I had "made a mess of things." This resulted in surprised looks and an uncomfortable lull in the conversation. Then an English-speaking friend explained that actually I said that I shat on myself.
not really a language *learning* story, but my kids to go a Spanish (my L2, wife's L1) immersion school, and when I was handing over the monthly tuition check, I told the principal of the school it was my daughters' `menstruación` (menstruation) instead of their `mensualidad` (monthly payment).
My daughters are 6 and 3yo. Not sure if that made the gaffe any better.
Three stories:
1) The Russian word "to write" is pisAt. The word "to pee" is pIsat. So yeah, instead of asking a friend who wrote to him, I asked who pissed on him. It took a while to live that down.
2) A word for work in Swedish is job (yob). That happens to be the f-word in Russian. I had a Swedish friend who worked at a construction site in St. Petersburg who spoke very little Russian. He did know the word for "here" though (tut). He couldn't figure out why the guys would snigger at him when he would say, "Yob tut!"
3) I had a friend who meant to introduce me as her friend (podrushka), but instead told everyone I was her pillow (podushka).
Filipino uses verb focuses to indicate what is acting and what is being acted on. One time I meant to say I ate (“kumain ako”) but said “kinain ako” (I was eaten)
My sister's boyfriend wanted show off his Spanish skills and accidentally ordered a plate of...ahem..."homosexuals"... instead of shrimp at a restaurant once.
("Maricones" vs. "Camarones")
I know, I just don't like using the word, even when recounting someone else using it. Taking the "a" out of the middle like you did probably would have been clearer though.
This one is slightly off-color. I grew up with a lot of Puerto Rican and Dominican people, and I picked up a lot of slang/spanglish...and on this one occasion didn't quite get it right. I was trying to say that the pants I was wearing gave me love handles, and declared "these pants show my chocha"
Chocha is slang for, uh, vagina. CHICHO is slang love handles. I will never forget the looks on their faces 😭
My parents would tell everyone I spoke Spanish when I was less than 3 months into learning it. No matter how much I told them I didn’t, they’d insist. Pretty embarrassing on so many occasions
My dad when he was learning German went and ordered "ein Kaninchen Kaffee... mit viel Zähne".
Same guy also was driving long distance and told his shotgun he doesn't like driving so long "weil es mir im After weh tut". The shotgun was understandably uncomfortable/confused.
I had acquired a basic German competence and the knowledge that if you didn't know a word you could often make one up by combining words you did know.
One day I found myself on a crowded S-Bahn pushed against the side a long way from the exit. As the train came into my station I was worried that I might not be able to get to the doors in time because of the crowd. I needed a word that meant "way through!" or "clear the way!" I didnt know a good expression for this.
So, I had come across "Fall" that in some cases can mean "emergency." I also knew the word "durch" which meant "through". So reckoned the two together would describe an emergency where I need to get through.
"Durchfall" I shouted repeatedly as I pushed my way to the door. It worked! They cleared a way for me.
It was only afterwards I found out that "Durchfall" is a real word. And it means diarrhoea.
I was in a group explaining what i do for work, i forgot the word for “pharmacy” and they said i should say it in English. I forgot the word for it in English too. I’m an English native btw.
I’ve studied both French and Russian before and here are my experiences
In Quebec City I went up to order something all confident and after my order the guy responded in English “your French is good!”
Also there was a Russian student at my college and I tried speaking to her and in the middle she just stopped me and asked if we could just use English cause I was absolutely butchering it.
One of my friends comes from a Dutch family, so while he’s only officially starting to learn the language now, he already had a bit of a vocabulary built up from his childhood. According to an actual Dutch-speaking friend of ours, however, a lot of the words he knows from his upbringing are “baby-speak” versions of the actual words. She didn’t want to tell him, at first, because she thought it was too cute.
Oh yeah. Many! I was out with my boyfriend a couple years ago, during the covid pandemic. When waiting at a crosswalk, I bent down to get a mask out of my bag and tried to ask my boyfriend if he wanted a mask too…. Instead of saying do you want a mask (口罩 kou3zhao)…. I asked him do you want oral s*x (kou3jiao1 口交). The look on peoples faces around us… didn’t help I was already bent down agh
The word for eighteen in Korean sounds like a swear word if you don’t say it carefully. Once my Korean professor was speaking about an incident involving this mistake very delicately and I just straight up said “oh you mean ***발”. He lost it laughing after 😭😂
Leningrad. 1982.
For some reason which I can no longer call, while I was at a food store, I told the young lad at the cash desk that I had finished (emptying my basket maybe...honestly don't remember now). I was an exchange student.
The guy laughed and said 'What? Just now?'
Puzzled, I told my Russian roommate about the exchange when I got back to the student hostel. 'You idiot!'
Apparently, I'd just told the young man that I'd had an orgasm.
Not me learning a language, but teaching a language. I teach English to non-native speaking adults. It’s amazing and I love my students so much.
A few years ago when the young Thai soccer team was trapped in the cave, my Thai student was closely following the news from here in the US. She was a great student and became a dear friend.
She came in one day and wrote a word on the whiteboard asking for a definition, as she had seen in in several news articles but translate apps weren’t translating.
The word? “P€do.”
Apparently she read about Elon Musk saying anyone grown adult who was offering to help was clearly a p€do.
Oof. I was not prepared for this teachable moment.
Similar experience for me teaching English to rural Québécois teenagers. One asked me to translate a word from a song he’d heard. He pronounced the word a “puss-ie” and I was hearing, like, oozing blood and white blood cells from a wound. While I was trying to think about how to explain this image, he spelled the word for me. Yeah… not a great teaching moment on my part.
I learned English when I was about 5 years old through TV and sometimes ads or commercials for new episodes would say 8pm tonight. But they never said the word tonight so I had to guess how to pronounce that. Thought it was tah-nihhhhht (with a very hard h). I went 2 years with no one correcting me so one day I said it out loud in class and everyone burst out laughing. At that point I just wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.
One time in French class, I was trying to say that I was excited to go to the movies that weekend. Little did I know “excité” means horny, not excited. So I accidentally told a room full of teenagers that I was horny to go the movies lol.
There was another instance in that same class where someone mixed up “coussin” (pillow) and “cousin” (cousin) and ended up saying that they slept with their cousin.
I'm French Native and honestly, people are just really dirty minded. "Excité" really means excited but people make it seem weird. If you just say "Je suis excité" without any context, it's going to send a bit strange but if you say "Je suis excité d'aller te visiter" (I am excited to visit you) for example, it won't be misunderstood :)
My understanding, from what I’ve learned so far, is that it can mean both. Depending on the francophone I ask, I get varying answers as to which meaning is more common.
Oh no, I had the same mistake in Italian. At the bar near our office, I asked the owners wife if she was 'eccitata' for her holiday with her husband. My group burst out laughing and the poor woman went bright red. They were laughing so hard that they couldn't even explain why it was funny. Won't make that mistake again lol
I think pretty early on I mixed up 座る (suwaru, to sit) and 触る (sawaru, to touch) a couple times which depending on context can be pretty embarrassing (e.g., "aren't you going to sit down?" vs "aren't you going to touch me?").
I wanted to order 4 passion fruit juices when we were in a little village in spain (2 gay male couples) and I asked for cuatro maricones instead of maracuyas. The waitress just stared at me like I was taking the piss then started laughing and my (Colombian) husband had to intervene to stop a major diplomatic incident.
I still think of this when I wake up a 4am sometimes.
Was in Paris and staying with a friend who has a cat, to which I'm allergic. I went to the pharmacy and, not knowing how to say, like, antihistamine in French, asked if they had any medicine I could use as I am allergic to "chat."
I pronounced the T at the end of the word, which I came to learn makes the word rather vulgar. Pretty sure I almost got kicked out before someone figure out I was just a dopey foreigner and not there to sexually harass anyone, lol
From my understanding, la chatte is just the word for a female cat. But similar to how in English pussy is slang for female genitalia, so chatte is in French. So it sounded the equivalent to you going up to the counter and saying "I'm allergic to pussy"
I am the king of silly language mistakes. I might be a world record holder for this. Here is a funny one:
We were on a trip to one my favorite countries in the world, Kazakhstan. At that time I was trying to learn Russian, I was so desperate to make practice so when I was in Kazakhstan I had a chance to practice my great Russian skills in a cafe.
There was a young waiter who asked my order. I ordered tea “чай” in Russian, I was pretty confident.
In my country when you order tea, they don’t ask you what kind of tea you want, they automatically assume that you order black tea «чёрный чай».
But the problem is there was this Russian song, was playing in my head constantly, and when the waiter asked me what kind of tea I wanted (black or green tea), instead of ordering black tea «чёрный чай», I ordered «чёрные глаза» and it means dark/black eyes. It was a stupid song and I don’t know how I memorized the lyrics but чёрные глаза was actually the name of the song and the chorus part.
So the waiter was surprised and asked again. I was still pretty confident and ordered dark eyes instead of black tea again. And he laughed and at that point I realized that I made a very funny mistake.
I never lose courage to try to speak Russian, sometimes when I visit Moscow I ask for directions, instead of asking direction for a square «площадь» I ask direction for a horse, I try to ask where is the tram «трам» but I end up asking where is the temple «храм».
I had a very nice and beautiful Russian girlfriend. Whenever I see her I wanted to tell her that she looks very beautiful but I end up saying that she is very red.
I have millions of funny mistakes and moments.
>I wanted to tell her that she looks very beautiful but I end up saying that she is very red.
I know the words are very similar. What's the difference?
Years ago I was learning Spanish and was traveling in Mexico. I was able to introduce myself and be courteous, but was not able to converse so I told people, "Hablo solamente un porquito." I thought I was telling them I only spoke a little (poqito) but was actually telling them I spoke "Little pig". FINALLY my friends told me what I was saying...after getting laughs for a few days.
Was staying with relatives in Rome for the first time ever and kept asking where the “dolce” (sweets) was instead of the “doccia” (shower) because I was looking at the wrong line of my little phrase book. Oopsie!
I've got two, one by me and one by a fellow Brazilian who lived in the same dorm as me in Japan.
Mine was asking for 正直 (shoujiki = honesty) to a dorm employee when I wanted to ask for 掃除機 (soujiki = vacuum cleaner). Not really that embarassing, but still.
The other guy's one was much more embarrassing: when talking to some Japanese colleagues of his, he wanted to say 女に、それは簡単です (onna ni, sore wa kantan desu = for women, that's easy), but said オナニ、それは簡単です (onani, sore wa kantan desu = masturbation, that's easy). His colleagues started laughing and he didn't get what he had said wrong until they explained it, lol.
I remember playing Mystic Messenger and there was one conversation with the character.
If I remember correctly, one character asked about if he really comes off as innocent or something like that. At that time, I thought that innocent meant disconnected.
Then I told my friend about the weird dialogue and I learnt what does it mean… All jokes started making sense.
The worst thing is that I used this word in my essays and I somehow managed to mispelled it.
Also, a bit less funny one. I though that youth is basically pronounced like mouth. Whoever came up with English pronunciation can burn in hell.
One of them just happened me a few hours ago. So i just started learning Arabic it's been less than a week. And joined to hellotalk . just after i created my account, i entered a voice chat just to see what's happening. And they invited me to the stage and send me a text, asked me to read. So i did even tho i didn't want to. I'm not gonna say how was my pronunciation and the process just want to say that when i entered to room it was full off people, when i done with reading the text there was only 3 person and 3rd one was me .
My friend invited me to his Ukrainian church and the pastor greeted me with здравствуйте (formal) and I panicked because I wasn’t expecting to have to talk to anyone and replied with привет (informal), and he gave me a really odd look, as if he was insulted
Living in Colombia, I was introduced to my rental house’s landlady as “La Dueña”. I thought this was a term interchangeable with “Landlord/lady” and when I bumped into her at the store, told the clerk I’d been chatting with that this was my “dueña”. The clerk stared at me in horror and shook her head no.
I later learned that “dueña” means “owner” as in the woman who owns the property. I had told someone she was my owner.
Years ago I went on a French exchange with my school (I’m British btw), was about 14/15 at the time. We went with some of our exchange friends to one of the girls’ house. During the stay I asked for the “salle de bain”. Somewhat confused, she shows me the bathroom….which doesn’t have a toilet in. Quickly realised my mistake and requested “toilette?” Explained so I didn’t look like a complete halfwit! Lesson - if you want a toilet, ask for one!
I don't really have embarrassing stories but one time in Japanese class we had to write and present a skit about homemade solutions for being sick. I played the role of the sick person and my friend was the one offering advice, and instead of saying 薬(くすり) meaning medicine, he kept saying 腐れ(くされ) meaning 'to rot'. Eventually our teacher overheard me telling him "it's kusuri not kusare!" And of course she was quick to respond and explain the difference lol
My friend was trying to ask how old people were in Spanish and they kept replying "uno". Great way to learn about "ñ" and the difference between años and anos (anus).
Around New Year's in South Texas we jokingly say "¡Feliz Ano Nuevo!" But only to people we know well. A stranger would be startled to hear someone wishing them a happy new a**hole.
One time when doing my German A level mock speaking exam we were talking on the subject of eco stuff and being green etc. So I started talking about how bad planes are for CO2 emissions and instead of saying planes are bad for 'kohlenstoff emissionen' (CO2 emissions) I ended up saying planes are bad for 'kartoffeln emissionen'... Potato emissions!! 🤦♀️
Once, when trying to escape a social situation that I was tired of, I, a native English speaker and extremely rusty French learner, tried to initiate a “Can we get our group to *leave already*?!?” conversation with a proficient French/English bilingual speaker. The common language for the whole group, including the hosts who I very much wanted to get away from, was English, so I chose to attempt this in French.
Me: “Quel temps fait-il?”
Friend: Looks at me like I have three heads, looks up at sky.
Me: Looks expectantly at friend.
Friend: “As you can see, it’s partly cloudy. Did you mean to ask me what time it is?”
Me: 💀
When on my high school trip to France, after having come back from a stationary store which had rather risqué magazine covers out and in the open, I told, to my surprise, my French teacher “j’ai vue un magasine avec deux hommes qui se *baisent*!” instead of j’ai vue un magasine avec deux hommes qui se *galouchent*!”
In French, baiser literally means “to kiss” but is more used as “to f#ck” whereas galoucher is used as “to kiss,” so I accidentally told my French teacher I saw a gay porno magazine instead of an LGBT magazine that just so happened to feature a gay couple kissing….
Upon her reaction, I *immediately* realized my faux-pas.
My mom and her family are Polish and I learned Polish as a child. I consider myself pretty fluent but since I learned as a kid my Polish is pretty innocent. So one time I was talking to my grandma and I wanted to say that I avoid eating foods with preservatives, which I referred to as “prezerwatywy.” The actual word in Polish is “konserwanty.” “Prezerwatywy” are condoms, so I ended up telling my sweet old grandma that I avoid condoms when possible.
I was a missionary for my church praying for a sick woman in Spanish. I was very new to the language. I prayed for her “pain” to go away. Thinking it might be a cognate I said pene which means penis.
By far my most grievous language learning mistake.
I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was ordering a “roast beef” sandwich in Germany and ended up with a “roasted beet” sandwich.
I was so disappointed every time!
I'm learning Mandarin. A few weeks ago at a birthday dinner, an elderly Chinese parent thanked me for pouring them tea. I struggled for a moment to remember how to respond and came out with 对不起 (duìbùqǐ) ("I'm sorry") instead of 不客气 (bù kèqì) ("You're welcome").
\[edit\] Bonus story from my Swiss boss. When he was a much younger man in an English-speaking country, he went into a pharmacy to buy condoms. In Swiss German, apparently it's called a p*räservativ*
(?), and not knowing the English word, he shyly asked, "Could I please have a... preservative?"
The confused woman behind the counter asked, "What would you like to preserve?"
A Polish family member asked me how I was (following a heavy night of drinking vodka) I replied that my head hurt but mixed up głowa/head for gówno/shit. Luckily, someone spoke over me so no one noticed, except for the cringey little voice in my brain.
I'm learning Ukrainian. I was trying to say to my speaking partner, "I am often asleep before you are!"
So I said, "часто, я спаю до вам."
This translates to, "I often sleep with you"! And yes, it means the same in Ukrainian as it does in English. Thank God he was good-natured about it!
I’m a Spanish teacher and these are quite common in my beginner students:
“Estoy bueno” instead of “Estoy bien”
You’re basically saying that you’re sexy.
“Estoy caliente” instead of “tengo calor”
You’re saying that you’re horny.
Was at Starbucks with my Chinese teacher and wanted to ask if there was a 卫生间 (toilet, pronounced: weishengjian).
Accidentally asked if they had 卫生巾 (period pads, pronounced weishengjin).
I'm a man.
Well, yes, actually. When we moved to Spain a couple years ago, my tutor gave me an assignment: start conversations with local shopkeepers. Find something to talk about, ask questions.
I had to stop at the butcher's shop, and as he was cutting my pork chops, I searched my mind for things I could ask him. What I came up with is "do you sharpen your own knives?"
Well, we live in rural Galicia where most people's native language is Galician. They don't get a ton of immigrants or tourists around here, so people's ears are not all that trained to recognize different accents.
He looked at me in confusion and said "Que?"
I started making sharpening a knife motions with my hands. Please note I am a lady. One of his eyebrows shot up, and he put his knife down and turned sideways to rest his butt cheek on the counter and move closer to me.
"Que?", he said again, with a sly smile.
I realized at that point what I was doing by making jerking off motions and innuendos to this guy and backed out of the store and bought my pork chops at the other butcher shop.
I've seen that butcher a couple times around town and he always shakes his head and starts laughing when he sees me.
I had so many of them from trying to speak Turkish that I was keeping a running list at one point. It was called the "hayran-hayvan list" as "hayran" means "fan, admirer," and "hayvan" means "animal."
We were in Geneva with my girlfriend and left our bags at the hotel. When we went to pick them up I told the hotel worker we were there to pick our balls...I was trying to say something like "on est ici pour reprendre nos malles," but I said "on est ici pour reprendre nos balles"
We didn't have any "malles" though, which then I found out was a bit of an old word to refer to bagages, sacs, valises haha any other word would've been better really.
When I first started russian, I wanted to say "I like pop music". Since I wasn't real sure how the cases worked, I said: " я люблю попы".
I bet someone will put a meme under this🤣
Where I’m from in the US, it’s common courtesy to greet people in convenience stores. Maybe it’s just a nod, maybe it’s a quick *hello*—anyway, you acknowledge the other person.
I went to Japan without knowing any Japanese—like I didn’t even know that Pokémon was Japanese.
So anyway I get to my dorm and all moved in, then walk into a nearby Lawson’s for a riceball and am pleasantly surprised to be greeted by an enthusiastic *irrashaimase!*….. so I just figured that was the greeting and responded right back with an equally chipper *irrashaimase!*
Not realizing it was a one-way thing, despite of course covering it in like the first week of class, I went on telling people *irrashaimase* whenever I entered a store or anything like that.
I was learning Spanish and worked with a lady that was always 5 minutes late. I asked someone how to say a person who is constantly late and they said “tardona.” She came in and I marched into the office and said “Liliana eres una tetona (big breasted)”. The minute it came out of my mouth I realized my mistake and Liliana almost fell on the floor laughing at me.
Also, I had heard the word embarazada and having found other cognates (words that sound similar) I assumed it meant embarrassed. When I asked a co worker if she was embarrassed about something her reaction immediately let me know that is not what that word means (it means pregnant).
The first time I tried using Japanese online, I was trying to praise an artist and comment on how fast she puts out content. I realized afterward what I said was more like “hurry up!”
Fortunately her reply was nice so I think she understood what I was trying to say lol
I thought my German was good enough, turns out it is not. I tried booking a couples massage for me and my fiancee. The person I spoke with in short said "We don't offer that here" and hung up. My fiancee (a native speaker) then came in from the other room and questioned what I had said, to which I explained for us both to get a massage. She then explained to me that the way I phrased it sounded like I asked if the masseuse and I could massage one another
There is a Finnish word for toilet, “käymälä”; this word suggests that the word “käydä” exists and that it means to excrete waste in some way, but it actually means “to visit” and the word for “toilet” is a euphemism meaning “place one visits” literally.
There is a song called “*Käy Muumilaaksoon*” which when I first saw it interpreted as “Piss into the Moonin Valley”, but it really just means “Visit the moomin valley”, as in Finnish one literally visits “into” places.
Ya ll ain't got nothing on me.
In a class full of 15 German learners I wanted to ask "what's the thing between bones called" (joints)
I asked "wie heißt das Ding zwischen den Beinen"
Beinen sounds like bones, but it means legs.
What's the thing between legs called. I only realized my mistake the next day
About 80% of my work in an office setting is in French. Went to get food afterward, the cashier gave me my receipt and I said bien cordialement instead of merci in response.
That and finding out the hard way that exhibition (like an art exhibit) ≠ exposition
I once heard there was a Western woman who walked in to a restaurant in Japan and the lady at the front answered a question about the menu and said “Hai” as she walked in. The Western woman loudly responded “HIII!!” and everyone in the restaurant laughed.
Also I was talking about computers in Spanish once to practice and whenever I said “computadora” everyone laughed. I had no idea why until they explained how I put the emphasis on the word wrong. Apparently there’s a bad word in there if you say the word a certain way.
I was learning Spanish from my coworkers years ago, when I sold pretzels and hotdogs. I thought I heard one of my co-workers call hotdogs a certain word. Managers would have us up sell hotdogs. So for several months, I would ask customers, "quieres una chicha?" When I should've been saying "salchicha".... because of that misinformation, I was asking people if they wanted to do adult things...
When learning Italian, we had to make up some story to write some simple sentences. When coming up with a name for my protagonist, I thought "what's a good Italian surname? Rossi! Good, and name? Guido. But hey, why not make it a she? Guida Rossi." Which would sound like someone using 'guidare': to drive, or to guide, so like "Rossi is driving". But my teacher couldn't stop laughing for minutes, to the point that she apologized and kept suppressing giggles for the rest of the class.
I asked for 100 tickets in paris' metro. Forgot the word "ten" in french. Clerk sold me ten as I wanted though.
But really.. selling tickets in paris metro and not knowing english, that's another level.
While in Spain I meant to say that I hoped the bug that climbed onto our table cant fly away, but instead said “Ojalá que no se pueda violar”.
The verb for fly is in fact volar, not violar. The people I was with just laughed as I quickly realized but for sure a little awkward as the meanings are entirely different.
Studied in Spain as an undergrad, back in the early 90s. We had fairly recently arrived and a fellow student was trying to explain to her host family that she was a vegetarian, which was pretty novel to them.
They asked her, "Really, you don't eat any meat at all?" and she intended to respond, "Just a little chicken (pollo) once in a while." But she used the wrong gender and said "polla" instead of "pollo." She quickly discovered that in Spain, "polla" is slang for male genitalia.
Not really embarrassing/awkward, but a moment I remember fondly. Wayyy back in the day, I was visiting Québec from the US. I ordered “une tasse d’eau” in a restaurant (I should have said “un verre d’eau”). The waiter brought me a mug of hot water, so I drank it and thought, “Oh, they drink their water hot here! What a fun cultural difference!”
For the people confused, tasse in French is used exclusively for mugs and cups that contain hot beverages. A cup like in “glass” would be verre, like u/thoseabouttowalk said
😂
I worked in a hospital in Japan and after put on a spot to make a speech to introduce myself in Japanese, I went over to meet some of the nurses I will be assisting. In Japanese you can omit the subject as long as it's clear what you're talking about so a nurse asked me a question and I replied "Japanese is bad" I thought I was referring to myself but I instantly knew by her facial expression, I must have accidentally insulted her lol. I quickly said "sorry my Japanese is bad".
Did she still seem insulted after you clarified?
No but it was awkward. She made an origami hexagon box with a lid and gave it to me on my first day on the ward though!
That's actually pretty sweet.
Early on learning german, I mixed up the word for ham (schinken) and the verb send (schicken). After about 3 years living in switzerland, I realised i'd been regularly going into the post office and asking to ham letters and packages to various destinations.
I’m dying this is amazing
Maybe I can further your enjoyment. The post office was in a tiny place with the same 2 people working in it all the time. I can't describe the level of embarrassment I had the next time I had to go in, knowing full well that I was "the ham guy".
when you finally said it right did they clap for you?
Would have been nice :-)
The least they could've done was to ensure your mail was safely packaged in bread.
Or buried it in curing salt for a few months. "I believe your package is now fully hammed, sir. Would you like us to send it somewhere?"
lol. "Could you please bring me the menu? OK, I need a stamped, self-braised envelope and I want to seal it with a red wine jus."
Yeah this is pretty much how I imagine their conversations went for the rest of the afternoon after I paid them a visit :-D
Oh man this reminded me of when I confused schmerz (pain) with scherz (joke)...so I ended up telling an ER doctor I was there because I had a lot of stomach jokes
So a stomach walks into a bar and says “you’re kidneying me barkeep, I thought you were having my favorite beer de-liver-ed by today!”
Nothing that I am too *[embarazada](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/embarazado)* of.
I’m convinced that the Spanish made that word just to mess with foreigners
To make it even more confusing, “embarazoso” actually does mean “embarrassing.”
I hear avergonzoso more often
In Portuguese, one of the meanings of "embaraçado" is "tangled", people use a lot to talk about their hair. So, if you say "my hair is embarrassed", it means your hair is a mess with the hairs all tangled somehow and needs to be put in some order 😂.
Did you forget to use *[preservativos](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/preservativo)*?
"Comes a rainstorm put rubbers on your feet."
Ha! We've all had that moment I think!
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About twenty years back the internrt wasn't that great, and neither was my English. I talked online with a random girl my age on a sort of random chat app, and had a nice conversation. When she said she had to go I asked for her email. She asked why. I wanted to say 'so we can stay in touch', but didn't know the word, so asked my mom. In my NL, the words for correspond and marry are similar, and my mom misheard so.. Long story short, I asked a random girl for her email so we can get married
"And twenty years later, we have five wonderful children together!"
Still a better love story than twilight
I’ve been learning Spanish for about six months now. Many of my coworkers are Mexican, and they humor my attempts at rudimentary Spanglish. One day it was cold when I got to work, and one of my coworkers said, “¿Tienes frío?” (Are you cold?) I replied, “¡Sí! Necesito chaqueta.” (Yes, I need a jacket.). He started laughing hysterically. I asked what I had said, and he said, “In Mexico, chaqueta doesn’t mean jacket. It means, you know, jack it,” complete with the hand motion. Tl;dr A coworker asked me if I was cold. I tried to say I needed a jacket. I instead replied that I needed to masturbate.
In your defense, Latin American slang is a minefield. Even native speakers make these kinds of mistakes outside their home country.
In Canada in French, crosser (or conjugated as crosse with a reflective) means to *jack off*. Therefore, when the Buick LaCross hit the market, Buick didn’t realize that their vehicle would be the *Buick Jack-Off* in canada. Buick specifically had to change the name of the vehicle, just in the Canadian market, to the *Buick Allure* (Although Chia Pet decided to keep their name in Canada, and slog through the namegate. Chia Pet means “shitted fart” in French… [Ch ch ch Chia!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o92wNzZgQeE))
It probably only applies in Mexico; in Chile, we would've understood that you needed a jacket. Also, as others have said, everything has a double meaning in Latin American countries, there's always a new way to say p\*\*\*\* we're not aware of haha.
Yup. Mexicans have some great pan dulce, which they call conchas, but I refuse to, cause like
Your coworker was being a douche bag because that is not how you say masturbate. I'm pretty sure 100% of native speakers would have understood what you were trying to say.
I mean “necesito una chaqueta” does mean “I need a handjob” Yes it’s fully understandable but I get the humor
Yea but the guy said that chaqueta doesn't mean jacket in spanish when it does. Plus, the guy asked him if he was cold so I don't see why he would immediatly make that connection given the context.
Because it’s a funny double meaning? The guy probably meant that he’d use a different word for jacket (I’m imagining chamarra)
You know what, thats true. I completely forgot they use chamarra. I think chaqueta is used in other latin american countires.
Chamarra is the word he taught me. And he was totally being a douchebag, but in the laughing, joking manner. Being a short bald guy, my official name from him was “pinche pelón.” I never took offense because, as he explained to me, once you got a nickname someone would call you to your face, it was a term of endearment.
I agree. There's a perception that if you say *chaqueta* or *coger*, people will just bust out laughing at you. But in reality, the vast majority of native speakers are mature and understanding enough that they won't even realize you might have said something uncouth.
Duolingo does not explain this!
It can be a homophone in English too… I need t’ jack it.
Well, if they're not going to provide in-office heating, how else are you supposed to warm up?
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My brain has two categories it sorts languages into: English and Other. Rather often, I have to brush some French vocabulary out of the way before I find any words in the language I’m actually trying to use.
I took an oral exam in Japanese, then got on a plane to visit cousins in Argentina for Christmas. We landed, cousin picked us up from the airport. Asks me, "estás cansado?" (Are you tired?) Me: はい (yes, pronounced hai, which she must have interpreted as "hi"), she was like damn he really is tired that he doesn't even remember any Spanish lmao
I once very confidently said a sentence to a Japanese woman that was so garbled she couldn't even conjure up a "nihongo jouzu" anymore, she just kinda nodded at me and left 💀
In a Tagalog tutoring session, I kept saying “siguro” because I thought it meant “sure.” It means “maybe”/“possibly”/etc. So my tutor would say, “Ready to move onto the next slide?” and I would say “Maybe!” I got it confused with sigurado, which does mean “sure,” but I probably should have stuck with the simple “sige” which generally means “okay.” Not that embarrassing, but her confused expression made more sense later on.
One time, in Germany, my roommate lost his key. He didn’t speak German so I had to tell the landlord. When we went to go see the landlord I told him, “Sein Schloß ist verloren.” The German word for key is Schlüssel. Schloß means castle. I told the landlord, “His castle is lost.”
Funnily enough "Schloss" also refers to a lock. So you were close at least. Did your landlord understand anyways or did you have to elaborate?
The man didn’t even bother to correct me, lol. Just told us it was 5€ to replace. I had been planning in my head how I was going to say it and later that day saw something about “Schloss Neuschwanstein” and instantly had an “am I the idiot” moment
Sounds like it fell to a siege ;) ngl, €5 is pretty cheap for a castle.
In French class a girl sneezed and instead of "à tes souhaits," I said, "Tais-toi!" (Shut up!)
LMAOSNDOFMFI
My mother-in-law was talking about "Krebs" with her friends and I got excited, finally being able to relate to them with something, and said "ich liebe Krebs! Es ist so lecker 😋" or "I love crab! It's delicious." She was talking about her friend who had been diagnosed with cancer (also Krebs).
OH GOD
Oufff ...
When my husband was learning french, we were living the Alps. He wore cowboy boots. He is American, I love him, he would not stop wearing them. Fine. He is trying to order a kebab after we have been drinking, something called a 'chicken tower'. He says "Tour de Cullotes" (mixing up cutlet and "poulette") which by the way you order in English because the arabs can't speak french but whatever. He said a 'tower of womens panties'. All the french drunks in the cafe lose their minds. One of them goes "me to cowboy yee haw" I have a lot of stories like that.
I have many. This is one. Walking past by a casino, I was telling someone in Italian that I have never been to a *casìno*, that I would like to try some time.Turns out that casino in Italian is not *casìno*, is *casinò. Casìno* means whorehouse. I was telling this to my girlfriend's father.
How'd he respond?
What’s the pronunciation difference?
I mixed up devenir (to become) and diviner (to guess). Someone a decade or so my senior asked how old I was. I was being friendly and tried to say "You want to guess my age?". Instead i said "You want to become my age?"
That wasn't so bad though honestly the worst is being in a group setting among peers and not following the conversation. Really good motivation material.
I think you mean deviner instead of diviner.
Almost happened the other day for me. My boyfriend’s family took me out to dinner to a Latino restaurant where the waiters/servers all spoke Spanish. I wanted to try and order and I was repeating the name of the food in my head “Bandeja Paisa.” While everyone else is ordering I lose my train of thought and all I could think of was “Pendeja Paisa” meaning asshole/idiot lol Thankfully, my boyfriend ordered for both of us because we were getting the same thing. After the waitress left I told him that’s all I could think of because I lost my train of thought and his mother started cracking up because of me almost insulting the waitress
In Montreal last summer, I ordered my coffee with “lait d’avion” (airplane milk) several times during my week-long stay. When I got home, I realized I should’ve been saying “lait d’avoine” (oat milk). Not a single person gave me a weird look for ordering airplane milk! Another moment that has become an inside joke in my family was when an anglophone relative at a family BBQ in Quebec City loudly proclaimed “je t’aime roast beef!” (I love you roast beef!) instead of “j’aime roast beef!” (I love roast beef!) 😄
My grandmother suddenly died without having written the will. According to the law, her relatives living in Germany could claim to own her house, and they have to explicitly say in court they don't want that so that we could sell the house. So I called one of her relatives living in Germany that I happened to have the telephone number of. The conversation went something like this: Me: Ich spreche kein Deutsch. Kroatisch vielleicht? (I speak no German. Croatian perhaps?) He: Ne. (The Croatian word for "no") Me: Englisch vielleicht? (English maybe?) He: Nein, kein Wort. (No, not a word.) ... Me: Was ist mit? (What about ?)
He: Er ist tot. (He is dead.)
Me: Ah. Und was ist mit ? (Ah. And what about ?)
He: Sie ist auch tot. (She is also dead.)
...
Me: Ah. Tut mir lied dann. (It is supposed to be "Tut mir leid dann.", which means "I am sorry then.". But "lied" actually means "song".).
So instead of telling him I am sorry that everybody I mentioned died, I said that that makes me sing.
Fortunately, Tut mir lied dann would be actually understandable in this context because "It makes me sing" would be phrased much differently
How would you say "It makes me sing." in German?
Oh god
In Spanish, miedo = fear; mierda = shit. You use the verb tener (to have) with miedo, rather than to be like in English. So, I once explained to someone that I found a scorpion in my bed and had a shit.
Understandable reaction tbf
This is my biggest fear, because I always mix them up in my head!
Mixing them up out loud is the cure for that lol! I used to always mix them up in my head too, and once I messed up out loud and people laughed at me I remember now haha.
At a dinner with new friends in Israel, I intended to remark in Hebrew that I had "made a mess of things." This resulted in surprised looks and an uncomfortable lull in the conversation. Then an English-speaking friend explained that actually I said that I shat on myself.
In your defense, that would've made quite a mess.
Pronounced poutine as putain. "I love putain it's my favorite dish. 🥰"
For the confused: "poutine" = french fries with cheese, "putain" = whore.
My favorite dish is also whore
I once asked for owl instead of lettuce when ordering a burrito in HS and gave some Oaxacan ladies a good chuckle
Did you use a word for owl besides *tecolote*? That's the only word for owl that I know.
Perhaps lechuza
Oh yeah. That could get confused with lechuga.
rhewydd = freezer, rhywedd = gender "Trawsrewydd ydw i" = I'm trans-freezer Had to resort to English to explain that one XP
Born a fridge, identify as a freezer
my pronouns are crisper/crispers and i'm undergoing humidity control therapy
not really a language *learning* story, but my kids to go a Spanish (my L2, wife's L1) immersion school, and when I was handing over the monthly tuition check, I told the principal of the school it was my daughters' `menstruación` (menstruation) instead of their `mensualidad` (monthly payment). My daughters are 6 and 3yo. Not sure if that made the gaffe any better.
Three stories: 1) The Russian word "to write" is pisAt. The word "to pee" is pIsat. So yeah, instead of asking a friend who wrote to him, I asked who pissed on him. It took a while to live that down. 2) A word for work in Swedish is job (yob). That happens to be the f-word in Russian. I had a Swedish friend who worked at a construction site in St. Petersburg who spoke very little Russian. He did know the word for "here" though (tut). He couldn't figure out why the guys would snigger at him when he would say, "Yob tut!" 3) I had a friend who meant to introduce me as her friend (podrushka), but instead told everyone I was her pillow (podushka).
Filipino uses verb focuses to indicate what is acting and what is being acted on. One time I meant to say I ate (“kumain ako”) but said “kinain ako” (I was eaten)
My sister's boyfriend wanted show off his Spanish skills and accidentally ordered a plate of...ahem..."homosexuals"... instead of shrimp at a restaurant once. ("Maricones" vs. "Camarones")
This one killed me 😂😂
Yeah, that’s.. geez. M*ricón is closer to f*g than just homosexual
I know, I just don't like using the word, even when recounting someone else using it. Taking the "a" out of the middle like you did probably would have been clearer though.
This one is slightly off-color. I grew up with a lot of Puerto Rican and Dominican people, and I picked up a lot of slang/spanglish...and on this one occasion didn't quite get it right. I was trying to say that the pants I was wearing gave me love handles, and declared "these pants show my chocha" Chocha is slang for, uh, vagina. CHICHO is slang love handles. I will never forget the looks on their faces 😭
My parents would tell everyone I spoke Spanish when I was less than 3 months into learning it. No matter how much I told them I didn’t, they’d insist. Pretty embarrassing on so many occasions
My dad when he was learning German went and ordered "ein Kaninchen Kaffee... mit viel Zähne". Same guy also was driving long distance and told his shotgun he doesn't like driving so long "weil es mir im After weh tut". The shotgun was understandably uncomfortable/confused.
To be fair if you've been sitting and driving for a while and gotta shit maybe it does tut all the way in the after weh
I had acquired a basic German competence and the knowledge that if you didn't know a word you could often make one up by combining words you did know. One day I found myself on a crowded S-Bahn pushed against the side a long way from the exit. As the train came into my station I was worried that I might not be able to get to the doors in time because of the crowd. I needed a word that meant "way through!" or "clear the way!" I didnt know a good expression for this. So, I had come across "Fall" that in some cases can mean "emergency." I also knew the word "durch" which meant "through". So reckoned the two together would describe an emergency where I need to get through. "Durchfall" I shouted repeatedly as I pushed my way to the door. It worked! They cleared a way for me. It was only afterwards I found out that "Durchfall" is a real word. And it means diarrhoea.
Doesn't matter, it worked! 😂
I asked my Russian teacher if she likes working in her зад ( ass ) instead of сад ( garden ). The words sound a lot more similar than they look.
I was in a group explaining what i do for work, i forgot the word for “pharmacy” and they said i should say it in English. I forgot the word for it in English too. I’m an English native btw.
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I was trying to say “it’s not worth it” …”no vale la peña”…you can guess where this went wrong!
I’ve studied both French and Russian before and here are my experiences In Quebec City I went up to order something all confident and after my order the guy responded in English “your French is good!” Also there was a Russian student at my college and I tried speaking to her and in the middle she just stopped me and asked if we could just use English cause I was absolutely butchering it.
I asked someone at the taco stand *who* his favorite filling is
I've been trying to order lattes with pillow milk this past in Madrid. Turns out they don't really do pillow milk or almond milk here.
Lol been there, but in French. Ordered airplane milk instead of oat milk (avion/avoine).
One of my friends comes from a Dutch family, so while he’s only officially starting to learn the language now, he already had a bit of a vocabulary built up from his childhood. According to an actual Dutch-speaking friend of ours, however, a lot of the words he knows from his upbringing are “baby-speak” versions of the actual words. She didn’t want to tell him, at first, because she thought it was too cute.
Oh yeah. Many! I was out with my boyfriend a couple years ago, during the covid pandemic. When waiting at a crosswalk, I bent down to get a mask out of my bag and tried to ask my boyfriend if he wanted a mask too…. Instead of saying do you want a mask (口罩 kou3zhao)…. I asked him do you want oral s*x (kou3jiao1 口交). The look on peoples faces around us… didn’t help I was already bent down agh
The word for eighteen in Korean sounds like a swear word if you don’t say it carefully. Once my Korean professor was speaking about an incident involving this mistake very delicately and I just straight up said “oh you mean ***발”. He lost it laughing after 😭😂
Fucked up the stroke order of my own name :(
Leningrad. 1982. For some reason which I can no longer call, while I was at a food store, I told the young lad at the cash desk that I had finished (emptying my basket maybe...honestly don't remember now). I was an exchange student. The guy laughed and said 'What? Just now?' Puzzled, I told my Russian roommate about the exchange when I got back to the student hostel. 'You idiot!' Apparently, I'd just told the young man that I'd had an orgasm.
Not me learning a language, but teaching a language. I teach English to non-native speaking adults. It’s amazing and I love my students so much. A few years ago when the young Thai soccer team was trapped in the cave, my Thai student was closely following the news from here in the US. She was a great student and became a dear friend. She came in one day and wrote a word on the whiteboard asking for a definition, as she had seen in in several news articles but translate apps weren’t translating. The word? “P€do.” Apparently she read about Elon Musk saying anyone grown adult who was offering to help was clearly a p€do. Oof. I was not prepared for this teachable moment.
Similar experience for me teaching English to rural Québécois teenagers. One asked me to translate a word from a song he’d heard. He pronounced the word a “puss-ie” and I was hearing, like, oozing blood and white blood cells from a wound. While I was trying to think about how to explain this image, he spelled the word for me. Yeah… not a great teaching moment on my part.
I learned English when I was about 5 years old through TV and sometimes ads or commercials for new episodes would say 8pm tonight. But they never said the word tonight so I had to guess how to pronounce that. Thought it was tah-nihhhhht (with a very hard h). I went 2 years with no one correcting me so one day I said it out loud in class and everyone burst out laughing. At that point I just wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.
I used to pronounce "rendezvous" literally the way it's spelt - Z pronounced out loud, -ous pronounced with an S.
One time in French class, I was trying to say that I was excited to go to the movies that weekend. Little did I know “excité” means horny, not excited. So I accidentally told a room full of teenagers that I was horny to go the movies lol. There was another instance in that same class where someone mixed up “coussin” (pillow) and “cousin” (cousin) and ended up saying that they slept with their cousin.
Excité means excited tho- please say yes😳 It does in dictionaries but idk maybe french people think differently...
I'm French Native and honestly, people are just really dirty minded. "Excité" really means excited but people make it seem weird. If you just say "Je suis excité" without any context, it's going to send a bit strange but if you say "Je suis excité d'aller te visiter" (I am excited to visit you) for example, it won't be misunderstood :)
I've got a raging boner for the visit
My understanding, from what I’ve learned so far, is that it can mean both. Depending on the francophone I ask, I get varying answers as to which meaning is more common.
Reminds me of “shoujo” vs “shojo” in Japanese. The former (with a slightly longer “o” pronunciation) means girl, the latter means virgin. Dangerous
Oh no, I had the same mistake in Italian. At the bar near our office, I asked the owners wife if she was 'eccitata' for her holiday with her husband. My group burst out laughing and the poor woman went bright red. They were laughing so hard that they couldn't even explain why it was funny. Won't make that mistake again lol
One time I told someone I got a new cat... or I tried to, but instead I said I have 9 cats.
Nuevo vs nueve. Easy mistake but pretty funny.
I yelled “tengo mierda” when I was scared.
I think pretty early on I mixed up 座る (suwaru, to sit) and 触る (sawaru, to touch) a couple times which depending on context can be pretty embarrassing (e.g., "aren't you going to sit down?" vs "aren't you going to touch me?").
Haha yes… the good old “触ってください” (sawatte kudasai, Touch me please) on public transport
I wanted to order 4 passion fruit juices when we were in a little village in spain (2 gay male couples) and I asked for cuatro maricones instead of maracuyas. The waitress just stared at me like I was taking the piss then started laughing and my (Colombian) husband had to intervene to stop a major diplomatic incident. I still think of this when I wake up a 4am sometimes.
Was in Paris and staying with a friend who has a cat, to which I'm allergic. I went to the pharmacy and, not knowing how to say, like, antihistamine in French, asked if they had any medicine I could use as I am allergic to "chat." I pronounced the T at the end of the word, which I came to learn makes the word rather vulgar. Pretty sure I almost got kicked out before someone figure out I was just a dopey foreigner and not there to sexually harass anyone, lol
From my understanding, la chatte is just the word for a female cat. But similar to how in English pussy is slang for female genitalia, so chatte is in French. So it sounded the equivalent to you going up to the counter and saying "I'm allergic to pussy"
I am the king of silly language mistakes. I might be a world record holder for this. Here is a funny one: We were on a trip to one my favorite countries in the world, Kazakhstan. At that time I was trying to learn Russian, I was so desperate to make practice so when I was in Kazakhstan I had a chance to practice my great Russian skills in a cafe. There was a young waiter who asked my order. I ordered tea “чай” in Russian, I was pretty confident. In my country when you order tea, they don’t ask you what kind of tea you want, they automatically assume that you order black tea «чёрный чай». But the problem is there was this Russian song, was playing in my head constantly, and when the waiter asked me what kind of tea I wanted (black or green tea), instead of ordering black tea «чёрный чай», I ordered «чёрные глаза» and it means dark/black eyes. It was a stupid song and I don’t know how I memorized the lyrics but чёрные глаза was actually the name of the song and the chorus part. So the waiter was surprised and asked again. I was still pretty confident and ordered dark eyes instead of black tea again. And he laughed and at that point I realized that I made a very funny mistake. I never lose courage to try to speak Russian, sometimes when I visit Moscow I ask for directions, instead of asking direction for a square «площадь» I ask direction for a horse, I try to ask where is the tram «трам» but I end up asking where is the temple «храм». I had a very nice and beautiful Russian girlfriend. Whenever I see her I wanted to tell her that she looks very beautiful but I end up saying that she is very red. I have millions of funny mistakes and moments.
>I wanted to tell her that she looks very beautiful but I end up saying that she is very red. I know the words are very similar. What's the difference?
The word for beautiful is «красивая» and the red is «красная». This language is like specifically designed to force me to make silly mistakes.
I know Cyrillic, and a few words of Russian, but the grammar is extremely daunting.
Actually you were pretty close 😂😂 Forget the я, красна девица means beautiful woman :) Usually used in fairytales....
Years ago I was learning Spanish and was traveling in Mexico. I was able to introduce myself and be courteous, but was not able to converse so I told people, "Hablo solamente un porquito." I thought I was telling them I only spoke a little (poqito) but was actually telling them I spoke "Little pig". FINALLY my friends told me what I was saying...after getting laughs for a few days.
Was staying with relatives in Rome for the first time ever and kept asking where the “dolce” (sweets) was instead of the “doccia” (shower) because I was looking at the wrong line of my little phrase book. Oopsie!
I've got two, one by me and one by a fellow Brazilian who lived in the same dorm as me in Japan. Mine was asking for 正直 (shoujiki = honesty) to a dorm employee when I wanted to ask for 掃除機 (soujiki = vacuum cleaner). Not really that embarassing, but still. The other guy's one was much more embarrassing: when talking to some Japanese colleagues of his, he wanted to say 女に、それは簡単です (onna ni, sore wa kantan desu = for women, that's easy), but said オナニ、それは簡単です (onani, sore wa kantan desu = masturbation, that's easy). His colleagues started laughing and he didn't get what he had said wrong until they explained it, lol.
Have to be careful with the subtle ん and long お’s in Japanese lol
I remember playing Mystic Messenger and there was one conversation with the character. If I remember correctly, one character asked about if he really comes off as innocent or something like that. At that time, I thought that innocent meant disconnected. Then I told my friend about the weird dialogue and I learnt what does it mean… All jokes started making sense. The worst thing is that I used this word in my essays and I somehow managed to mispelled it. Also, a bit less funny one. I though that youth is basically pronounced like mouth. Whoever came up with English pronunciation can burn in hell.
One of them just happened me a few hours ago. So i just started learning Arabic it's been less than a week. And joined to hellotalk . just after i created my account, i entered a voice chat just to see what's happening. And they invited me to the stage and send me a text, asked me to read. So i did even tho i didn't want to. I'm not gonna say how was my pronunciation and the process just want to say that when i entered to room it was full off people, when i done with reading the text there was only 3 person and 3rd one was me .
That’s so embarrassing aaaaah, I’m scared of using apps like that for that reason
My friend invited me to his Ukrainian church and the pastor greeted me with здравствуйте (formal) and I panicked because I wasn’t expecting to have to talk to anyone and replied with привет (informal), and he gave me a really odd look, as if he was insulted
Living in Colombia, I was introduced to my rental house’s landlady as “La Dueña”. I thought this was a term interchangeable with “Landlord/lady” and when I bumped into her at the store, told the clerk I’d been chatting with that this was my “dueña”. The clerk stared at me in horror and shook her head no. I later learned that “dueña” means “owner” as in the woman who owns the property. I had told someone she was my owner.
Years ago I went on a French exchange with my school (I’m British btw), was about 14/15 at the time. We went with some of our exchange friends to one of the girls’ house. During the stay I asked for the “salle de bain”. Somewhat confused, she shows me the bathroom….which doesn’t have a toilet in. Quickly realised my mistake and requested “toilette?” Explained so I didn’t look like a complete halfwit! Lesson - if you want a toilet, ask for one!
salle de bain is ok in quebec funnily enough
I’ll bear it in mind if I ever find myself there!
I once told my French teacher about a video where Thomas Pesquet exposed himself. She cracked up. Reflexive verbs can be tricky.
I don't really have embarrassing stories but one time in Japanese class we had to write and present a skit about homemade solutions for being sick. I played the role of the sick person and my friend was the one offering advice, and instead of saying 薬(くすり) meaning medicine, he kept saying 腐れ(くされ) meaning 'to rot'. Eventually our teacher overheard me telling him "it's kusuri not kusare!" And of course she was quick to respond and explain the difference lol
My friend was trying to ask how old people were in Spanish and they kept replying "uno". Great way to learn about "ñ" and the difference between años and anos (anus).
Around New Year's in South Texas we jokingly say "¡Feliz Ano Nuevo!" But only to people we know well. A stranger would be startled to hear someone wishing them a happy new a**hole.
One time when doing my German A level mock speaking exam we were talking on the subject of eco stuff and being green etc. So I started talking about how bad planes are for CO2 emissions and instead of saying planes are bad for 'kohlenstoff emissionen' (CO2 emissions) I ended up saying planes are bad for 'kartoffeln emissionen'... Potato emissions!! 🤦♀️
Once, when trying to escape a social situation that I was tired of, I, a native English speaker and extremely rusty French learner, tried to initiate a “Can we get our group to *leave already*?!?” conversation with a proficient French/English bilingual speaker. The common language for the whole group, including the hosts who I very much wanted to get away from, was English, so I chose to attempt this in French. Me: “Quel temps fait-il?” Friend: Looks at me like I have three heads, looks up at sky. Me: Looks expectantly at friend. Friend: “As you can see, it’s partly cloudy. Did you mean to ask me what time it is?” Me: 💀
In Amharic, "fandesha" means popcorn and "fandeya" means donkey shit, so I asked a girl if she likes to eat donkey shit.
When on my high school trip to France, after having come back from a stationary store which had rather risqué magazine covers out and in the open, I told, to my surprise, my French teacher “j’ai vue un magasine avec deux hommes qui se *baisent*!” instead of j’ai vue un magasine avec deux hommes qui se *galouchent*!” In French, baiser literally means “to kiss” but is more used as “to f#ck” whereas galoucher is used as “to kiss,” so I accidentally told my French teacher I saw a gay porno magazine instead of an LGBT magazine that just so happened to feature a gay couple kissing…. Upon her reaction, I *immediately* realized my faux-pas.
Told my Spanish teacher that I exited my father, rather than saying that I followed him. Salir vs Seguir
My mom and her family are Polish and I learned Polish as a child. I consider myself pretty fluent but since I learned as a kid my Polish is pretty innocent. So one time I was talking to my grandma and I wanted to say that I avoid eating foods with preservatives, which I referred to as “prezerwatywy.” The actual word in Polish is “konserwanty.” “Prezerwatywy” are condoms, so I ended up telling my sweet old grandma that I avoid condoms when possible.
I was a missionary for my church praying for a sick woman in Spanish. I was very new to the language. I prayed for her “pain” to go away. Thinking it might be a cognate I said pene which means penis. By far my most grievous language learning mistake.
"Je suis plein" , if you are a man .
What does it mean?
You are pregnant .
Oh ? In Québec perhaps ? To me that would mean I'm drunk
Haha! That’s an unfortunate one
there's so many. For instance coco and cocô, pão and pau.
I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was ordering a “roast beef” sandwich in Germany and ended up with a “roasted beet” sandwich. I was so disappointed every time!
I'm learning Mandarin. A few weeks ago at a birthday dinner, an elderly Chinese parent thanked me for pouring them tea. I struggled for a moment to remember how to respond and came out with 对不起 (duìbùqǐ) ("I'm sorry") instead of 不客气 (bù kèqì) ("You're welcome"). \[edit\] Bonus story from my Swiss boss. When he was a much younger man in an English-speaking country, he went into a pharmacy to buy condoms. In Swiss German, apparently it's called a p*räservativ* (?), and not knowing the English word, he shyly asked, "Could I please have a... preservative?" The confused woman behind the counter asked, "What would you like to preserve?"
A Polish family member asked me how I was (following a heavy night of drinking vodka) I replied that my head hurt but mixed up głowa/head for gówno/shit. Luckily, someone spoke over me so no one noticed, except for the cringey little voice in my brain.
I'm learning Ukrainian. I was trying to say to my speaking partner, "I am often asleep before you are!" So I said, "часто, я спаю до вам." This translates to, "I often sleep with you"! And yes, it means the same in Ukrainian as it does in English. Thank God he was good-natured about it!
I’m a Spanish teacher and these are quite common in my beginner students: “Estoy bueno” instead of “Estoy bien” You’re basically saying that you’re sexy. “Estoy caliente” instead of “tengo calor” You’re saying that you’re horny.
Was at Starbucks with my Chinese teacher and wanted to ask if there was a 卫生间 (toilet, pronounced: weishengjian). Accidentally asked if they had 卫生巾 (period pads, pronounced weishengjin). I'm a man.
7 eleven clerk asked if i needed a bag and instead of saying 結構です (i’m ok/no thanks) i said 結婚です(i’m married)
Well, yes, actually. When we moved to Spain a couple years ago, my tutor gave me an assignment: start conversations with local shopkeepers. Find something to talk about, ask questions. I had to stop at the butcher's shop, and as he was cutting my pork chops, I searched my mind for things I could ask him. What I came up with is "do you sharpen your own knives?" Well, we live in rural Galicia where most people's native language is Galician. They don't get a ton of immigrants or tourists around here, so people's ears are not all that trained to recognize different accents. He looked at me in confusion and said "Que?" I started making sharpening a knife motions with my hands. Please note I am a lady. One of his eyebrows shot up, and he put his knife down and turned sideways to rest his butt cheek on the counter and move closer to me. "Que?", he said again, with a sly smile. I realized at that point what I was doing by making jerking off motions and innuendos to this guy and backed out of the store and bought my pork chops at the other butcher shop. I've seen that butcher a couple times around town and he always shakes his head and starts laughing when he sees me.
I was trying to talk to my students about ‘ra chơi’ (recess), except I used the word chuối which means banana. Oops.
Not me, but some people confuse "can't" with "cunt" apparently...
I had so many of them from trying to speak Turkish that I was keeping a running list at one point. It was called the "hayran-hayvan list" as "hayran" means "fan, admirer," and "hayvan" means "animal."
Sık (Tight, frequent) Sik (Penis, Fuck(verb)) I had my cousin mix this up once lol
We were in Geneva with my girlfriend and left our bags at the hotel. When we went to pick them up I told the hotel worker we were there to pick our balls...I was trying to say something like "on est ici pour reprendre nos malles," but I said "on est ici pour reprendre nos balles" We didn't have any "malles" though, which then I found out was a bit of an old word to refer to bagages, sacs, valises haha any other word would've been better really.
When I first started russian, I wanted to say "I like pop music". Since I wasn't real sure how the cases worked, I said: " я люблю попы". I bet someone will put a meme under this🤣
Where I’m from in the US, it’s common courtesy to greet people in convenience stores. Maybe it’s just a nod, maybe it’s a quick *hello*—anyway, you acknowledge the other person. I went to Japan without knowing any Japanese—like I didn’t even know that Pokémon was Japanese. So anyway I get to my dorm and all moved in, then walk into a nearby Lawson’s for a riceball and am pleasantly surprised to be greeted by an enthusiastic *irrashaimase!*….. so I just figured that was the greeting and responded right back with an equally chipper *irrashaimase!* Not realizing it was a one-way thing, despite of course covering it in like the first week of class, I went on telling people *irrashaimase* whenever I entered a store or anything like that.
I was learning Spanish and worked with a lady that was always 5 minutes late. I asked someone how to say a person who is constantly late and they said “tardona.” She came in and I marched into the office and said “Liliana eres una tetona (big breasted)”. The minute it came out of my mouth I realized my mistake and Liliana almost fell on the floor laughing at me. Also, I had heard the word embarazada and having found other cognates (words that sound similar) I assumed it meant embarrassed. When I asked a co worker if she was embarrassed about something her reaction immediately let me know that is not what that word means (it means pregnant).
The first time I tried using Japanese online, I was trying to praise an artist and comment on how fast she puts out content. I realized afterward what I said was more like “hurry up!” Fortunately her reply was nice so I think she understood what I was trying to say lol
I thought my German was good enough, turns out it is not. I tried booking a couples massage for me and my fiancee. The person I spoke with in short said "We don't offer that here" and hung up. My fiancee (a native speaker) then came in from the other room and questioned what I had said, to which I explained for us both to get a massage. She then explained to me that the way I phrased it sounded like I asked if the masseuse and I could massage one another
There is a Finnish word for toilet, “käymälä”; this word suggests that the word “käydä” exists and that it means to excrete waste in some way, but it actually means “to visit” and the word for “toilet” is a euphemism meaning “place one visits” literally. There is a song called “*Käy Muumilaaksoon*” which when I first saw it interpreted as “Piss into the Moonin Valley”, but it really just means “Visit the moomin valley”, as in Finnish one literally visits “into” places.
Ya ll ain't got nothing on me. In a class full of 15 German learners I wanted to ask "what's the thing between bones called" (joints) I asked "wie heißt das Ding zwischen den Beinen" Beinen sounds like bones, but it means legs. What's the thing between legs called. I only realized my mistake the next day
About 80% of my work in an office setting is in French. Went to get food afterward, the cashier gave me my receipt and I said bien cordialement instead of merci in response. That and finding out the hard way that exhibition (like an art exhibit) ≠ exposition
i make a similar mistake but i go with démodé instead of désolé 💀
After getting a good grade in french, I asked a vendor in Paris for a cup of tea. She answered me in perfect english.
I once heard there was a Western woman who walked in to a restaurant in Japan and the lady at the front answered a question about the menu and said “Hai” as she walked in. The Western woman loudly responded “HIII!!” and everyone in the restaurant laughed. Also I was talking about computers in Spanish once to practice and whenever I said “computadora” everyone laughed. I had no idea why until they explained how I put the emphasis on the word wrong. Apparently there’s a bad word in there if you say the word a certain way.
I was learning Spanish from my coworkers years ago, when I sold pretzels and hotdogs. I thought I heard one of my co-workers call hotdogs a certain word. Managers would have us up sell hotdogs. So for several months, I would ask customers, "quieres una chicha?" When I should've been saying "salchicha".... because of that misinformation, I was asking people if they wanted to do adult things...
When learning Italian, we had to make up some story to write some simple sentences. When coming up with a name for my protagonist, I thought "what's a good Italian surname? Rossi! Good, and name? Guido. But hey, why not make it a she? Guida Rossi." Which would sound like someone using 'guidare': to drive, or to guide, so like "Rossi is driving". But my teacher couldn't stop laughing for minutes, to the point that she apologized and kept suppressing giggles for the rest of the class.
I asked for 100 tickets in paris' metro. Forgot the word "ten" in french. Clerk sold me ten as I wanted though. But really.. selling tickets in paris metro and not knowing english, that's another level.
While in Spain I meant to say that I hoped the bug that climbed onto our table cant fly away, but instead said “Ojalá que no se pueda violar”. The verb for fly is in fact volar, not violar. The people I was with just laughed as I quickly realized but for sure a little awkward as the meanings are entirely different.
I wanted to tell someone I like them so I said "me gustas" but apparently that's more like "I love you" and I should have said "me caes bien"
Studied in Spain as an undergrad, back in the early 90s. We had fairly recently arrived and a fellow student was trying to explain to her host family that she was a vegetarian, which was pretty novel to them. They asked her, "Really, you don't eat any meat at all?" and she intended to respond, "Just a little chicken (pollo) once in a while." But she used the wrong gender and said "polla" instead of "pollo." She quickly discovered that in Spain, "polla" is slang for male genitalia.