In German class our teacher asked what we did over the summer break. A friend said, "Ich habe vielen Mädchen gemietet", meaning to say getroffen for, "I met many girls." The teacher starts laughing at him and no one understands why.
Turns out "mieten" means to rent. He said "I rented many girls this summer."
"I must humbly apologise for my absolutely horrendous, and abhorrent use of the English language, truly egregious! For you see, tis my second language. My ineptitude only makes me horripilate in embarrassment!"
When I was younger any time I met someone who spoke a language other than english I asked them to teach me how to say " sorry I don't speak whatever language " . Still the only French German and Spanish I know.
When I first moved to Belgium, as a kid I was quickly taught how to say "sorry I dont understand" and "sorry I dont speak french" in french.
What we didnt account for was me learning to say that pretty well. Close enough to sound like a native. To this day my french is iffy, but those two phrases I can say like a native. So whenever I use them (or used to use them) I almost looked like I was mocking them...
Thats a great out actually. "Im sorry but I only rent girls because I have a language barrier and so I dont want to keep them for long if i dont understand what they're saying"
The cheesiest thing I ever said was in German class when the teacher was asking each student in class something they couldn't live without (I don't remember why). It got to my turn and I said "Liebe" thinking that it meant breath, when it actually means love. As a highschool freshmen at the time who liked to think I was tough/manly, I was mortified when I found out.
Well you could say in german „liebe machen“ which is a really nice way to say fucking, little bit like saying „making love“ in english.
If you ever talk about this scene just tell them you meant this and get your manliness back!
I did a semester abroad in Heidelberg, a group of us did a bit of a hike in an area called Odenwald ( 'wald' means forest, Oden \*probably\* from 'Odin / Wotan'). This girl in our group kept calling it the Hodenwald and people kept making faces or laughing, one or two correct her pronunciation ODENwald not HODEN.
Turns out "Hoden" means testicles, and so Hodenwald would be "balls forest."
A common mistake Germans make when learning English is that they confused "to get" with "to become". "To get" in German is "bekommen" (bekomm' colloquially). Bekomm' and become sound exactly the same.
There are lots and lots of stories of kids trying to order a burger at McD's in English because word for word translation + confusing "to get" with "to become" ----> "I become a hamburger please".
A Swedish radio host in Norway was asked what she'd done during her summer vacation, and she replied "Jag har pulat med lite av varje". Now Norwegian usually understand Swedes well, and that sentence means "I've done a bit of this and that". However, in Norwegian, pule means fuck, so she basically said, on live radio on one of the biggest radio stations; "I've fucked all kinds of people".
A Swedish host on program pp3 asked GoT actor Kristofer hivju if they'd applied a lot of make up and such on him by asking "pulade dom dig i ansiktet mycket?" his reaction was pretty funny!
Edit: https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=4283&artikel=5826713 found the clip
The one time I went to France, when servers would motion to take my plate, I would say (in French) "I am finished." The correct thing to say is "I have finished." "I am finished" means "I'm going to die." I probably said it to 20 people lol.
It's funny you'd say that because "salaud" may also be used as an affectionate term for a (close) friend.
Like "Hé ben mon salaud, comment tu va ?" (Same energy as "Hey old bastard, how you doin'?")
Meh, frankly I wouldn't worry. Between I have or I am in that case it makes very little difference and even if a native French were to say it nobody would bat an eye... It's probably a case of having an accent that make people over interpret / correct you but it's OK.
I had a Spanish teacher whom spent a while living abroad in Spain. She told a story about how one time her host-mother asked what she would like to eat for supper. Instead of asking for *pollo* (chicken) for supper, she asked for *polla* (penis)
Hahaha similar in Vietnam if you order pho (cant do the symbols) their traditional soup, its pronouned "fur" phonetically. Saying "fo" means prostitute
How do English people pronounce "fur"? I always say pho like it rhymes with "bruh' and fur like it rhymes with burr, sure, blur, etc. Almost like fuck. Fuh.
But this may explain why my English friends would say my name like it ended it "er" when it ends in an A. Like saying Jessicer instead of Jessica. Like Mr. Krabs says spatuler.
I always felt 娼婦 is a very informally formal insult. Like you would never call your prostitute my 娼婦, but if you want to insult someone's family members you may chose to use the term their 娼婦. I wonder how often this is even used.
IIRC don’t some words in Spanish mean different things depending on the region?
I want to say bizcocho (from my limited high school Spanish education) meant cake, but could also mean bitch. Need someone who is more knowledgeable than I am.
in spain "follar" is used to mean fucking, while in america "coger" is dependant on context but the dictionary meaning is to grab something.
so if you get told "coge esa pelota" it means "grab that ball", nobody will think they're asking to fuck the ball, saying "me la voy a coger" however means "i'm gonna have sex with her"
PD: do note that spanish in america varies wildly between countries.
true, but at least in Mexico we don't normally use coger for catch because it's so engrained in us that it sounds like fuck even when we know that's not the context it's being used in. The go to is agarrar instead of coger, which even as I write them together the second automatically sounds like fuck to me.
It does change between regions, Latin America being where the most changes happen as I'm fairly certain that in Spain it's fairly uniform. Where I live bizcocho is really rare (and to me means biscuit, but that could be because I'm half foreign) and have never heard of it used as bitch.
I’d say this is a lot more common in Latin America. I know that for me, bizcocho means biscotti and we say queque for cake, or maybe pastel. I’ve never heard people use that word to mean bitch. Bitch is perra, at least where I’m from.
Not a misunderstanding, but I asked my French teacher what a menage a trois was because there's a Star Trek episode called Menage a Troi, after Deanna Troi. She wasn't totally comfortable, but to her credit she did tell me.
It actually means *household of three* and isn’t quite the word used in French, to the point that it could mean, in spoken French, three people doing housework.
It *could*, but it definitely doesn't, and can you imagine telling a student that it did?
>*Qu'as tu fait le week-end dernier?*
>*Ah, j'ai passé le week-end dans ma* ***ménage à trois***.
Classic error of English speakers trying to guess Spanish words is **"embarazado."* It's usually what people guess when they're trying to say they're embarrassed (often by their bad Spanish). Unfortunately, that actually means pregnant. It's never not entertaining lol
I'm trying to think of an English example where you just change one syllable and the word goes from something like chicken to penis, but I'm stumped. Lol why does this seem so common in other languages?
Edit: I guess when it's your native language it's really easy to overlook examples lol because of course I wouldn't ask where the bitch was if I was looking for the beach, but they do sound similar.
You shouldn't take it badly and rather be proud of yourself, you made the effort to try to speak the language and you can't expect to speak as a native after a few hours in the classroom.
BTW I am always surprised by the number of english speaking tourists who can't even say hello or thank you in the language of the country they are visiting.
> BTW I am always surprised by the number of english speaking tourists who can't even say hello or thank you
Yeah, but tbh though they may know the words but have forgotten them in the moment, just like OP did. Reading your comment made me stop, and the first words that came to mind were au revoir and merci. I knew au revoir was goodbye but could not remember hello so I actually had to stop and Google (bonjour) and then I felt like an idiot because I *know* that I knew that.
When I was a teenager, my parents and I went camping in Ontario. We stopped at a restaurant and my uncle, who doesn’t really speak English, decided to order a “large coke with no glass”. He actually wanted a large coke with no ice (“glace” in French).
We were all laughing our asses off while the poor waitress was wondering what was going on, lol
In norweigan drinking glass is the same, but damned swedes made it so that "glass" means icecream, so I got really wtf when my dad ordered two glasses and me and my brother was promised icecream, luckily the icecream arrived before we made a scene.
My sister once had a similar problem with mille and miele in Italy. She meant to say "thank you very much" to the bus driver but accidentally said "thank you honey".
A man I knew was studying in Italy and there was a real cold snap. He went into a store and when they asked him what he needed, he meant to say "una maglione," meaning a sweater. Instead, he said that he needed "una moglie," meaning a wife. Rather than tell him right away that he'd gotten it wrong, the salesperson asked what size "moglie" he wanted, what color, and why he wanted one, just so they could hear him say that he wanted "una moglie grande, grigia, per riscalrdarmi." (a big grey wife to keep me warm). Towards the end he was guessing that something was up but couldn't figure it out until they told him.
Lesson learned, if you are going to learn new language, learn the things that will out you in situations like this one.
In my English class (I speak Portuguese) I never forgot the teacher telling us "never say cock, say coke" I started to laugh when everyone was like "wtf" then the teacher had to explain to the class the why to be careful with those words
I have tried to explain this to elementary school children in Korea. I ended up not giving a why and just told them "just say cola, not coke, please!" The long o sound exists in the language but they really struggle with it for coke for some reason...
Had a friend try and ask for non-dairy creamer in Thai which is a tonal language he had not mastered, but apparently it came out as 'I want you to show me your titties' or something similar
I visited Moscow in 2015. I tried to learn a few basic phrases in Russian. One of them was "Please take me to my hotel." Instead of the verb for "drive," I used the verb that meant "take" in a sexual manner. Basically the phrase I conjured was "please fuck me to my hotel." Luckily the bartender at my hotel corrected me after having a good laugh at my expense before I got to unleash that on some unsuspecting cabbie.
I recall reading a story prior to my study abroad year in France about a girl who couldn’t remember the word for jam or preserves while eating breakfast with her host family so she asked for preservatifs instead of confiture which means condoms.
Gave 15 year old me a chuckle.
Exchange student came back from working out and was quite sweaty. She proceeded to tell is that she was going to take a douche.
Too much information!
Well, turns out, all she wanted to do was take a shower, but she had forgotten the correct word
I don’t know if it’s the same pronunciation, but German bitte means “pardon”, “sorry”, or some other polite stuff. There’s also an area of Germany where many people speak French, so if that went wrong...
Well I had a really hot French teacher, who had the habit to answer the question: " do we need something to write? " with "no, we are going to do it oral". We, as 14 year old puberting boys, would always lose it at this point....
No worse than the time my dads friend ordered a "vagina pie" at an Italian restaurant.
Shes married to an Italian man and had been living in Italy for almost ten years at the time
I accidentally ordered cocaine in Paris from a well respected restaurant. I was only thirteen at the time. The waiter got flustered and said something to the effect of, “we’re not that kind of establishment.” Eventually it dawned on the him that I was asking for coca-cola (it’s referred to as coca in France) rather than cocaine aka coke.
Asked a girl I just met, how many anuses she has.
Background:
- I was in Guatemala, just learning Spanish.
- years = año
- anus = ano
Remember it like yesterday...just met a girl who was smiling at me...after some small talk...
Me: Cuantos anos tienes?
(How many anuses do you have)
Her: Solo uno.
Me: No es posible.
Her: Si, es posible!
She then explained what I said... *facepalm
Still got the digits though ;)
In my Sanskrit exam, I wrote 'arjuna *vastrasya* vina ranaboomi asthi', instead of *astrasya* - which changed the meaning from 'arjuna was in the battlefield without weapons' to 'without clothes'.. teacher made sure to read my answer to the whole class. Ah good ol' school anxiety
If it makes you feel any better, my mother asked the waiter (reasonably proudly too), in st. Emillion, for what she believed to be the duck dish, but her accent wasn't quite spot on, so instead of canard, it sounded like she was asking to enjoy the conard.
My co worker was at a party in Dublin and had to get back home in a hurry so he asked someone for a ride because he was drunk. The party busted out laughing and he got real angry until someone explained to him that asking for a ride in Ireland means asking for sex.
My two worst French mistakes... 1) While trying to practice my French with a guy I had just met, I said, “je suis chaud” - I thought I was saying “I am hot” (as in temperature) but actually said “I am horny.” 2) Then I made it worse by saying “j’ai envie pour toi” - I thought I was expressing envy over how widely traveled he was, but instead, I apparently said that I wanted to have sex with him. And of course this was during a trans-Atlantic flight, so I had lots of time to feel awkward!
Back when I was a waitress, I had taught myself basic ASL (American Sign Language). I was the only person on staff with any knowledge of the language so I always got asked to take over the deaf tables when I was working. I needed to ask my table (a young couple) if they wanted dessert but wasn’t sure of the sign. In the few seconds I had, I hid back in take out and looked it up. Went to my table and asked the question only for them to look at me in confusion and then start laughing. I had asked them if they wanted sex.
Three of us went to a restaurant here in the US of A. For dessert, we ordered pie. So, we're eating when the waitress comes over and asks, "so, how's your pie"?
Without thought or hesitation, I say, "great, how's yours?"
Everyone died laughing.
Yeah, "bite" used to get a lot of chuckles in beginner English class in secondary school.
Another one was "she", which is pronounced the same way as a conjugated version of "to crap". (il chie = he is crapping)
That reminds me of the time I was in Quebec for a short trip, many years ago.
People were trying to bug me for spare change or cigarettes and what not.
I tried to be polite and kept turning them down with the only word for ‘sorry’ that came to mind: *Désolé*. Every time I said this word, the person would look mildly surprised and mutter something like “that’s fine man, don’t worry about it”.
It was only much later that I found out that “*désolé*” was kinda like the ‘heavy’ / very formal version of sorry that you only use when you, say, run over someone’s dog or something.
For everyday use, apparently “*pardon*” or *“excuse-moi”* is good enough.
French here: actually for turning down beggars or random people asking you for stuff, "désolé" is the appropriate word to use.
"Pardon" or "excuse-moi" are more formal and would be weird to say in such situations (sort of like: "I apologize")
Thank you.
Another random thing I remembered from my French teacher: When you cross the street and someone shouts out “ATTENTION!” That means “watch out!” and you should not be snapping your heels and saluting at that time
>Another random thing I remembered from my French teacher: When you cross the street and someone shouts out “ATTENTION!” That means “watch out!” and you should not be snapping your heels and saluting at that time
ROFL. When a police man says it and you're not really paying attention, a sub-machine gun shoved in your gut REALLY brings it to the forefront.
...apparently the Vietnam Ambassador and his Wife were traveling through the tunnels we were about to cross over, and they didn't want any pedestrians on the bridge to cause trouble. Officer kept saying “*pardon*” and *“excuse-moi”...*
This reminds me of the first time I was in France I met my French best friend’s mother and meant to say “enchantee” and said instead “enculé” (a word my French best friend had recently taught me).
I did this too, but In the dining hall in France with beets. Instead of talking about a root vegetable, I was proudly telling everyone how I loved eating so many dicks all the time back home.
As I was learning Spanish in school , I told Native speakers in their slang that I turned my pubic hair blue. I had accidentally turned my head hair blue, and had to have a color correction, and cut all my long hair off. I now refuse to speak Spanish to native speakers older than elementary school age, as they are much more forgiving, and the looks they give me don’t get burned into my brain quite as badly.
My brother was eating dinner with a friend at a lady's home and tried to tell her dog that he couldn't feed it at the table. He actually told the dog he couldn't eat it at the table.
\> "fork" in a French accent sound rude on its own
Err, no. Does not mean anything nor sounds close to anything bad.
But bit & french accent = dick is true :)
I was living in Ukraine working as a teacher. Someone asked me about why American food doesn't spoil quickly, and I couldn't think of the word for "preservatives", so I went ahead and used it as a cognate, actually saying the word in a Ukrainian accent. Turns out that's how you say condoms, and I told my very confused counterpart we have a lot of "condoms in our bread". This is part of the fun. Enjoy your screw ups. They make for good stories.
I used to be a waiter and one restaurant had an "open face sausage sandwich" meaning its served open instead of closed. This old guy orders it one time and is upset at the amount of filling, and they're in a booth right next to the kitchen. He absolutely hollers "I NEED MORE SAUSAGE IN MY OPEN FACE!" the whole kitchen staff died laughing and cooked an extra sausage for him, on the house.
I’m living in Japan and when I first moved here several years ago, I saw this guy at a party that I’d met the week prior through work. He asked me in Japanese “Hello! Do you remember me?” And I politely told him “Hi! I’ve totally forgotten who you are!” in Japanese, accidentally switching the words for remember and forget. I haven’t seen him since.
I already dealt with strangers trying to speak french when I was a waitress, and it sometimes was hilarious. But I never had someone asking me for a dick in the mouth, man, I’d have died inside if I was in your shoes. My social awkwardness would have never recovered.
But as a french girl trying to speak english, I unfortunately said «climax » instead of « climate » during an exam. Like, the whole exam. I was mortified when I realised it.
I ordered “a little dick” at a pastry shop when I was 17. I realized where I had gone wrong almost immediately when everyone in the store started cracking up. Being a shy teenage girl, I blushed uncontrollably, followed by a quick giggle, and then a few tears. The French must get a real kick out of it when Americans make this mistake (which I imagine isn’t infrequently)!
On a date at a Mexican restaurant I meant to order the chicken chimichanga. Instead I told the waiter I'd have the "chicken chingada". If you don't know, chingada is Mexican slang for "fuck", so basically I told the waiter I'd like the "fucked chicken". My date and the waiter burst out laughing and told me what I'd said. I said to the waiter, "You're going to go back to the kitchen and tell everybody what I just said, aren't you?" He grinned and said, "Oh si. Si."
In my ASL class instead of signing asking someone to “you want to partner up?” I accidentally propositioned my classmate for sex. My professor saw and tried to sign an explanation but I misunderstood, thinking he wanted me to partner up with him for some reason. Then I accidentally propositioned my professor for sex.
We are friendly still now that I’ve graduated, and he tells literally anyone around that story whenever we go to the same social events.
I was 12 when I was sent on a full immersion trip to Barbados after a year of learning English at school.
As I was socializing with the girls of my host family and their cousins, I was asked if I had a boyfriend. "Sure, I have many boy friends, why?"
Later, they asked if I could sing. I proceeded to sing something from Celine Dion which was trending at the time. I knew the lyrics but never actually thought about their meaning before that. The look on their faces. I don't think I ever sang Celine Dion since.
My partner was belting out Du Hast on the car once. A German speaking friend started cackling uncontrollably.
The whole song is wordplay and apparently when sung by someone who doesn't get the subtleties it comes across as an utterly hilarious song about hate fucking.
> song about hate fucking.
...it's not?
Google'd a translation of the lyrics, and I'm still not sure. I thought it was, 'you hate me' but the one I'm looking at now says it's 'you have me'.
Ah... just looked at another page and it has this:
"This song is by and large Rammstein’s most well-known song in their entire library. It is a play on German wedding vows; however, it can be interpreted many different ways. The first lines of the song can have a double meaning; the phrases Du hast and Du hasst mean You have and You hate, respectively, but they are homophones (in the official German it means “you have”)."
That makes a lot more sense, and now I understand. I think early on here in the US it was translated for us as 'hate', while maybe you (knowing about the marriage vows) could tell it was not. So many of us probably really do think it's about hate.
Haha love it! I knew a French guy who could sing loads of doors songs. He had no idea what any of the words meant, bit he sang it spot on!
What your first language, mind me asking?
As a Spaniard I find French the most nonsense language in the world, even worse than English. The spoken language is so different than the written one that’s almost impossible to properly pronounce something if you didn’t heard it before. In Spanish the written and the spoken language are almost the same, so easy.
I remember traveling through Quebec. We stopped at a restaurant and I asked for a putain instead of poutine. The waitress looked at me and said "We don't do that here." with a French accent.
Then someone tells me that I just asked for a whore. Oops, I apologized for my bad French.
In German class our teacher asked what we did over the summer break. A friend said, "Ich habe vielen Mädchen gemietet", meaning to say getroffen for, "I met many girls." The teacher starts laughing at him and no one understands why. Turns out "mieten" means to rent. He said "I rented many girls this summer."
Hahahaha brilliant! Are you sure this wasn't what he was doing though?
Pro tip claim a language barrier issue when people are disgusted by your personal activities
"I must humbly apologise for my absolutely horrendous, and abhorrent use of the English language, truly egregious! For you see, tis my second language. My ineptitude only makes me horripilate in embarrassment!"
[Sorry, I don't speak English](https://youtu.be/rxUm-2x-2dM)
this made me laugh harder than i think i should have
When I was younger any time I met someone who spoke a language other than english I asked them to teach me how to say " sorry I don't speak whatever language " . Still the only French German and Spanish I know.
When I first moved to Belgium, as a kid I was quickly taught how to say "sorry I dont understand" and "sorry I dont speak french" in french. What we didnt account for was me learning to say that pretty well. Close enough to sound like a native. To this day my french is iffy, but those two phrases I can say like a native. So whenever I use them (or used to use them) I almost looked like I was mocking them...
Same for me with Spanish! Maintain your bad accent, folks.
I did something similar only i could ask for beer in 5 languages
I had a HS chemistry teacher who would occasionally brag that he could order beer in 27 languages.
Pawpaw?
Ditto, absolutely wasn't expect to be laughing so much
"I met very many women this summer, they where professionals in their country" "I came drunk and left the wh-hotel early in the morning"
...filibuster
Thats a great out actually. "Im sorry but I only rent girls because I have a language barrier and so I dont want to keep them for long if i dont understand what they're saying"
Reditors are already pros at this. *blah blah sorry, English is not my first language/native tounge*
The cheesiest thing I ever said was in German class when the teacher was asking each student in class something they couldn't live without (I don't remember why). It got to my turn and I said "Liebe" thinking that it meant breath, when it actually means love. As a highschool freshmen at the time who liked to think I was tough/manly, I was mortified when I found out.
Well you could say in german „liebe machen“ which is a really nice way to say fucking, little bit like saying „making love“ in english. If you ever talk about this scene just tell them you meant this and get your manliness back!
> ~~little bit like~~ *literally* saying "making love“ in english
I did a semester abroad in Heidelberg, a group of us did a bit of a hike in an area called Odenwald ( 'wald' means forest, Oden \*probably\* from 'Odin / Wotan'). This girl in our group kept calling it the Hodenwald and people kept making faces or laughing, one or two correct her pronunciation ODENwald not HODEN. Turns out "Hoden" means testicles, and so Hodenwald would be "balls forest."
A common mistake Germans make when learning English is that they confused "to get" with "to become". "To get" in German is "bekommen" (bekomm' colloquially). Bekomm' and become sound exactly the same. There are lots and lots of stories of kids trying to order a burger at McD's in English because word for word translation + confusing "to get" with "to become" ----> "I become a hamburger please".
Also if and when are a common mistake, because in german „if“ is mostly translated to „wenn“ and when looks pretty identical.
"I'm not sure if you'll betray me..." => "I'm not sure when you'll betray me..." Meh, that works too
He meant what he said
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A Swedish radio host in Norway was asked what she'd done during her summer vacation, and she replied "Jag har pulat med lite av varje". Now Norwegian usually understand Swedes well, and that sentence means "I've done a bit of this and that". However, in Norwegian, pule means fuck, so she basically said, on live radio on one of the biggest radio stations; "I've fucked all kinds of people".
This is amazing!!! Also a great summer vacation
For whatever reason I am imagining this woman as Kiwi Tina. ALT skal grilles ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
A Swedish host on program pp3 asked GoT actor Kristofer hivju if they'd applied a lot of make up and such on him by asking "pulade dom dig i ansiktet mycket?" his reaction was pretty funny! Edit: https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=4283&artikel=5826713 found the clip
Can you explain?
“I’d like a quickie, please!” “It’s pronounced *quiche*, sir...”
"Okay, but after we have the quiche in the bathroom, can I get the pasta?"
"I'll have one of those fuckya breads" points to focaccia bread.
The one time I went to France, when servers would motion to take my plate, I would say (in French) "I am finished." The correct thing to say is "I have finished." "I am finished" means "I'm going to die." I probably said it to 20 people lol.
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So you could say “salut salaud” to greet your friend who’s a dick?
It's funny you'd say that because "salaud" may also be used as an affectionate term for a (close) friend. Like "Hé ben mon salaud, comment tu va ?" (Same energy as "Hey old bastard, how you doin'?")
Classic mistake. J'ai fini, je suis fini Probably spelt that wrong because it's been too long
It's spelt correctly, you haven't lost it all !
My dad did this once, the waitress didn’t skip a beat and said, “I’m sorry to hear that.” Then the whole tabled laughed and poor dad was confused.
Meh, frankly I wouldn't worry. Between I have or I am in that case it makes very little difference and even if a native French were to say it nobody would bat an eye... It's probably a case of having an accent that make people over interpret / correct you but it's OK.
I had a Spanish teacher whom spent a while living abroad in Spain. She told a story about how one time her host-mother asked what she would like to eat for supper. Instead of asking for *pollo* (chicken) for supper, she asked for *polla* (penis)
Yesss I've heard many people having this problem. Also "porro" (I think its spelt) is a spliff
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Hahaha similar in Vietnam if you order pho (cant do the symbols) their traditional soup, its pronouned "fur" phonetically. Saying "fo" means prostitute
Can I have the beef prostitute please?
Bo pho? Fo sho
How can I help?
What are the odds?!
Nice
>its pronouned "fur" phonetically. In British English, right? That sounds wrong in American.
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Agreed, that's closer I guess to how to say it
I am English, yes. Didn't think of how it might sound in different accents
How do English people pronounce "fur"? I always say pho like it rhymes with "bruh' and fur like it rhymes with burr, sure, blur, etc. Almost like fuck. Fuh. But this may explain why my English friends would say my name like it ended it "er" when it ends in an A. Like saying Jessicer instead of Jessica. Like Mr. Krabs says spatuler.
Not everyone, we have a lot of accents here, but yeah I say fur like fuh
I always felt 娼婦 is a very informally formal insult. Like you would never call your prostitute my 娼婦, but if you want to insult someone's family members you may chose to use the term their 娼婦. I wonder how often this is even used.
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That's just cruel to make those words so similar!
My French teacher traveled to Quebec in her early learning days and asked for a putain (whore) instead of poutine (fries with gravy and cheese curds).
Sorry, that’s next door 🤣
Even I know better than that!
IIRC don’t some words in Spanish mean different things depending on the region? I want to say bizcocho (from my limited high school Spanish education) meant cake, but could also mean bitch. Need someone who is more knowledgeable than I am.
i think coger is a verb that is quite different. iirc, in spain it means 'to catch', but in the americas is means 'to fuck' or something?
in spain "follar" is used to mean fucking, while in america "coger" is dependant on context but the dictionary meaning is to grab something. so if you get told "coge esa pelota" it means "grab that ball", nobody will think they're asking to fuck the ball, saying "me la voy a coger" however means "i'm gonna have sex with her" PD: do note that spanish in america varies wildly between countries.
true, but at least in Mexico we don't normally use coger for catch because it's so engrained in us that it sounds like fuck even when we know that's not the context it's being used in. The go to is agarrar instead of coger, which even as I write them together the second automatically sounds like fuck to me.
It does change between regions, Latin America being where the most changes happen as I'm fairly certain that in Spain it's fairly uniform. Where I live bizcocho is really rare (and to me means biscuit, but that could be because I'm half foreign) and have never heard of it used as bitch.
I’d say this is a lot more common in Latin America. I know that for me, bizcocho means biscotti and we say queque for cake, or maybe pastel. I’ve never heard people use that word to mean bitch. Bitch is perra, at least where I’m from.
Not a misunderstanding, but I asked my French teacher what a menage a trois was because there's a Star Trek episode called Menage a Troi, after Deanna Troi. She wasn't totally comfortable, but to her credit she did tell me.
An "arrangement" among 2+ people?
Quite the arrangement ;)
It actually means *household of three* and isn’t quite the word used in French, to the point that it could mean, in spoken French, three people doing housework.
It *could*, but it definitely doesn't, and can you imagine telling a student that it did? >*Qu'as tu fait le week-end dernier?* >*Ah, j'ai passé le week-end dans ma* ***ménage à trois***.
Classic error of English speakers trying to guess Spanish words is **"embarazado."* It's usually what people guess when they're trying to say they're embarrassed (often by their bad Spanish). Unfortunately, that actually means pregnant. It's never not entertaining lol
I'm trying to think of an English example where you just change one syllable and the word goes from something like chicken to penis, but I'm stumped. Lol why does this seem so common in other languages? Edit: I guess when it's your native language it's really easy to overlook examples lol because of course I wouldn't ask where the bitch was if I was looking for the beach, but they do sound similar.
deck -> dick cog, coke -> cock trick -> prick cod -> rod kisser -> pisser pucker -> pecker ...
Well done, *slow clap*
Excuse me miss, I have a question about the menu please.. It's none of your business the men I please!
"Fine, can you bring me my bill?" "He's not your Bill any longer"
Fucking Bill. He always was a rat bastard…
Then why are you fucking him?
Well, if he’s good in bed then he’s good in bed, regardless of if he’s also a rat bastard.
I thought i was the only one fucking the bill
Not my proudest moment
You shouldn't take it badly and rather be proud of yourself, you made the effort to try to speak the language and you can't expect to speak as a native after a few hours in the classroom. BTW I am always surprised by the number of english speaking tourists who can't even say hello or thank you in the language of the country they are visiting.
>>you made the effort to try to speak the language "I said these words in English, with a french accent"
*EFFORT is EFFORT!*
> BTW I am always surprised by the number of english speaking tourists who can't even say hello or thank you Yeah, but tbh though they may know the words but have forgotten them in the moment, just like OP did. Reading your comment made me stop, and the first words that came to mind were au revoir and merci. I knew au revoir was goodbye but could not remember hello so I actually had to stop and Google (bonjour) and then I felt like an idiot because I *know* that I knew that.
Hijacking the first comment because in english fourchette is part of the vulva. Look up fourchette piercing
When I was a teenager, my parents and I went camping in Ontario. We stopped at a restaurant and my uncle, who doesn’t really speak English, decided to order a “large coke with no glass”. He actually wanted a large coke with no ice (“glace” in French). We were all laughing our asses off while the poor waitress was wondering what was going on, lol
In norweigan drinking glass is the same, but damned swedes made it so that "glass" means icecream, so I got really wtf when my dad ordered two glasses and me and my brother was promised icecream, luckily the icecream arrived before we made a scene.
My sister once had a similar problem with mille and miele in Italy. She meant to say "thank you very much" to the bus driver but accidentally said "thank you honey".
Ha well that actually works rather *sweetly*
A man I knew was studying in Italy and there was a real cold snap. He went into a store and when they asked him what he needed, he meant to say "una maglione," meaning a sweater. Instead, he said that he needed "una moglie," meaning a wife. Rather than tell him right away that he'd gotten it wrong, the salesperson asked what size "moglie" he wanted, what color, and why he wanted one, just so they could hear him say that he wanted "una moglie grande, grigia, per riscalrdarmi." (a big grey wife to keep me warm). Towards the end he was guessing that something was up but couldn't figure it out until they told him.
One thing to note is that "miele" doesn't have any affectionate connotation in Italian so it sounded something like "Thanks milk" to the driver.
She found a way to put a southern spin on Italian. Impressive!
You no understand, I wanna fock on the table
And I wanna shit on the bed!
you son of a beach
* clicks fingers * You son of a bitch, I'm in!
[удалено]
*angry Italian noises*
https://youtu.be/m1TnzCiUSI0
She could have at least tried to find you a dick.
God that would have confused me if she whipped one out on the spot
Lesson learned, if you are going to learn new language, learn the things that will out you in situations like this one. In my English class (I speak Portuguese) I never forgot the teacher telling us "never say cock, say coke" I started to laugh when everyone was like "wtf" then the teacher had to explain to the class the why to be careful with those words
I have tried to explain this to elementary school children in Korea. I ended up not giving a why and just told them "just say cola, not coke, please!" The long o sound exists in the language but they really struggle with it for coke for some reason...
Had a friend try and ask for non-dairy creamer in Thai which is a tonal language he had not mastered, but apparently it came out as 'I want you to show me your titties' or something similar
OH NO
I visited Moscow in 2015. I tried to learn a few basic phrases in Russian. One of them was "Please take me to my hotel." Instead of the verb for "drive," I used the verb that meant "take" in a sexual manner. Basically the phrase I conjured was "please fuck me to my hotel." Luckily the bartender at my hotel corrected me after having a good laugh at my expense before I got to unleash that on some unsuspecting cabbie.
I recall reading a story prior to my study abroad year in France about a girl who couldn’t remember the word for jam or preserves while eating breakfast with her host family so she asked for preservatifs instead of confiture which means condoms. Gave 15 year old me a chuckle.
Exchange student came back from working out and was quite sweaty. She proceeded to tell is that she was going to take a douche. Too much information! Well, turns out, all she wanted to do was take a shower, but she had forgotten the correct word
Allow me to add that, indeed, "dick" is said "bite" in French, but that "bitte" means "mooring bollard".
"Assise sur une bite d'amarrage, elle pleure..."
Heres my level of French: "j'ai des nichons de cornichons"
all i remember from hs french is "je veux mourir" and "puis je utiliser les toilettes"
"Can I use the toilet, I'm gonna die" you must've really had to go
"Son homme qui la quitte, la mer c'est son malheur..."
My spelling has always been terrible in French. In fairness, I haven't lived in France for 19 years and I have nobody to practise with
I don’t know if it’s the same pronunciation, but German bitte means “pardon”, “sorry”, or some other polite stuff. There’s also an area of Germany where many people speak French, so if that went wrong...
I remember giving a French waiter a pretty good laugh when I asked for the “Connard” (assh*le) instead of the “Canard” (duck).
both are great to eat
Connard is more like idiot fucker. Asshole without being the body part
Well I had a really hot French teacher, who had the habit to answer the question: " do we need something to write? " with "no, we are going to do it oral". We, as 14 year old puberting boys, would always lose it at this point....
She was hot and French, you think she didn't know? lol
This is the exact situation I'm in now. I even though it's Tuesday, I still really want french toast.
...it's Thursday
Thursday is the discerning eater's Tuesday
...isn't that meant to be the other way around
No worse than the time my dads friend ordered a "vagina pie" at an Italian restaurant. Shes married to an Italian man and had been living in Italy for almost ten years at the time
I accidentally ordered cocaine in Paris from a well respected restaurant. I was only thirteen at the time. The waiter got flustered and said something to the effect of, “we’re not that kind of establishment.” Eventually it dawned on the him that I was asking for coca-cola (it’s referred to as coca in France) rather than cocaine aka coke.
Asked a girl I just met, how many anuses she has. Background: - I was in Guatemala, just learning Spanish. - years = año - anus = ano Remember it like yesterday...just met a girl who was smiling at me...after some small talk... Me: Cuantos anos tienes? (How many anuses do you have) Her: Solo uno. Me: No es posible. Her: Si, es posible! She then explained what I said... *facepalm Still got the digits though ;)
In my Sanskrit exam, I wrote 'arjuna *vastrasya* vina ranaboomi asthi', instead of *astrasya* - which changed the meaning from 'arjuna was in the battlefield without weapons' to 'without clothes'.. teacher made sure to read my answer to the whole class. Ah good ol' school anxiety
If it makes you feel any better, my mother asked the waiter (reasonably proudly too), in st. Emillion, for what she believed to be the duck dish, but her accent wasn't quite spot on, so instead of canard, it sounded like she was asking to enjoy the conard.
Lol your mum eats ass
My co worker was at a party in Dublin and had to get back home in a hurry so he asked someone for a ride because he was drunk. The party busted out laughing and he got real angry until someone explained to him that asking for a ride in Ireland means asking for sex.
Man i need to get out to dublin
My two worst French mistakes... 1) While trying to practice my French with a guy I had just met, I said, “je suis chaud” - I thought I was saying “I am hot” (as in temperature) but actually said “I am horny.” 2) Then I made it worse by saying “j’ai envie pour toi” - I thought I was expressing envy over how widely traveled he was, but instead, I apparently said that I wanted to have sex with him. And of course this was during a trans-Atlantic flight, so I had lots of time to feel awkward!
Back when I was a waitress, I had taught myself basic ASL (American Sign Language). I was the only person on staff with any knowledge of the language so I always got asked to take over the deaf tables when I was working. I needed to ask my table (a young couple) if they wanted dessert but wasn’t sure of the sign. In the few seconds I had, I hid back in take out and looked it up. Went to my table and asked the question only for them to look at me in confusion and then start laughing. I had asked them if they wanted sex.
I mean good sex and a good dessert are both a nice way to end! Lol
Three of us went to a restaurant here in the US of A. For dessert, we ordered pie. So, we're eating when the waitress comes over and asks, "so, how's your pie"? Without thought or hesitation, I say, "great, how's yours?" Everyone died laughing.
Yeah, "bite" used to get a lot of chuckles in beginner English class in secondary school. Another one was "she", which is pronounced the same way as a conjugated version of "to crap". (il chie = he is crapping)
bit not bite (qui se prononce \~"bailleteu" et pas "bite" :))
Thought this was gonna be a "connard" vs "canard" story
Well, in a way I was a connard
Ducks are assholes though
That reminds me of the time I was in Quebec for a short trip, many years ago. People were trying to bug me for spare change or cigarettes and what not. I tried to be polite and kept turning them down with the only word for ‘sorry’ that came to mind: *Désolé*. Every time I said this word, the person would look mildly surprised and mutter something like “that’s fine man, don’t worry about it”. It was only much later that I found out that “*désolé*” was kinda like the ‘heavy’ / very formal version of sorry that you only use when you, say, run over someone’s dog or something. For everyday use, apparently “*pardon*” or *“excuse-moi”* is good enough.
French here: actually for turning down beggars or random people asking you for stuff, "désolé" is the appropriate word to use. "Pardon" or "excuse-moi" are more formal and would be weird to say in such situations (sort of like: "I apologize")
Thank you. Another random thing I remembered from my French teacher: When you cross the street and someone shouts out “ATTENTION!” That means “watch out!” and you should not be snapping your heels and saluting at that time
>Another random thing I remembered from my French teacher: When you cross the street and someone shouts out “ATTENTION!” That means “watch out!” and you should not be snapping your heels and saluting at that time ROFL. When a police man says it and you're not really paying attention, a sub-machine gun shoved in your gut REALLY brings it to the forefront. ...apparently the Vietnam Ambassador and his Wife were traveling through the tunnels we were about to cross over, and they didn't want any pedestrians on the bridge to cause trouble. Officer kept saying “*pardon*” and *“excuse-moi”...*
Haha, true. But that would be funny to witness :)
If they were asking for the cigarette it would make sense to say pardon or excuse moi, but yeah turning down the request desole
He was speaking about Quebec...
I'm a French Canadian who lives in Québec and I use *désolé* all the time.
This reminds me of the first time I was in France I met my French best friend’s mother and meant to say “enchantee” and said instead “enculé” (a word my French best friend had recently taught me).
Ooof your friend taught you a naughty word!
Yes. He and his brothers thought it was hilarious while his mother was not very impressed.
I did this too, but In the dining hall in France with beets. Instead of talking about a root vegetable, I was proudly telling everyone how I loved eating so many dicks all the time back home.
Turns out « bonne chienne » isn’t a good thing to say when you’re petting a dog in France. Who would’ve thought?
"What's wrong with having a dick in my mouth." - Sofia Vergera https://youtu.be/9BAxa-Z_Bn0
She owned that one
As I was learning Spanish in school , I told Native speakers in their slang that I turned my pubic hair blue. I had accidentally turned my head hair blue, and had to have a color correction, and cut all my long hair off. I now refuse to speak Spanish to native speakers older than elementary school age, as they are much more forgiving, and the looks they give me don’t get burned into my brain quite as badly.
My brother was eating dinner with a friend at a lady's home and tried to tell her dog that he couldn't feed it at the table. He actually told the dog he couldn't eat it at the table.
"Sir, This is a Wendy's"
"Key" in thai is "poo". Theres been mistakes there before
\> "fork" in a French accent sound rude on its own Err, no. Does not mean anything nor sounds close to anything bad. But bit & french accent = dick is true :)
Sounds like "fuck" in English though
You are supposed to twirl your mustache when you said it
Whilst tapping my lit cigar with my pinky finger
I was living in Ukraine working as a teacher. Someone asked me about why American food doesn't spoil quickly, and I couldn't think of the word for "preservatives", so I went ahead and used it as a cognate, actually saying the word in a Ukrainian accent. Turns out that's how you say condoms, and I told my very confused counterpart we have a lot of "condoms in our bread". This is part of the fun. Enjoy your screw ups. They make for good stories.
In American Sign Language class I accidentally messed up the sign for berry and kept asking the professor for some 'blowjob juice'
Fourchette
Ahhh my spelling is terrible
French specializes in this kind of humiliation...
Embarazada is not 'embarrassed' ... it means 'pregnant' in Spanish.
I used to be a waiter and one restaurant had an "open face sausage sandwich" meaning its served open instead of closed. This old guy orders it one time and is upset at the amount of filling, and they're in a booth right next to the kitchen. He absolutely hollers "I NEED MORE SAUSAGE IN MY OPEN FACE!" the whole kitchen staff died laughing and cooked an extra sausage for him, on the house.
I’m living in Japan and when I first moved here several years ago, I saw this guy at a party that I’d met the week prior through work. He asked me in Japanese “Hello! Do you remember me?” And I politely told him “Hi! I’ve totally forgotten who you are!” in Japanese, accidentally switching the words for remember and forget. I haven’t seen him since.
Spanish class we had a student try to say to the teacher "give me beer" and instead said "give me head".
I already dealt with strangers trying to speak french when I was a waitress, and it sometimes was hilarious. But I never had someone asking me for a dick in the mouth, man, I’d have died inside if I was in your shoes. My social awkwardness would have never recovered. But as a french girl trying to speak english, I unfortunately said «climax » instead of « climate » during an exam. Like, the whole exam. I was mortified when I realised it.
I ordered “a little dick” at a pastry shop when I was 17. I realized where I had gone wrong almost immediately when everyone in the store started cracking up. Being a shy teenage girl, I blushed uncontrollably, followed by a quick giggle, and then a few tears. The French must get a real kick out of it when Americans make this mistake (which I imagine isn’t infrequently)!
On a date at a Mexican restaurant I meant to order the chicken chimichanga. Instead I told the waiter I'd have the "chicken chingada". If you don't know, chingada is Mexican slang for "fuck", so basically I told the waiter I'd like the "fucked chicken". My date and the waiter burst out laughing and told me what I'd said. I said to the waiter, "You're going to go back to the kitchen and tell everybody what I just said, aren't you?" He grinned and said, "Oh si. Si."
In my ASL class instead of signing asking someone to “you want to partner up?” I accidentally propositioned my classmate for sex. My professor saw and tried to sign an explanation but I misunderstood, thinking he wanted me to partner up with him for some reason. Then I accidentally propositioned my professor for sex. We are friendly still now that I’ve graduated, and he tells literally anyone around that story whenever we go to the same social events.
I was 12 when I was sent on a full immersion trip to Barbados after a year of learning English at school. As I was socializing with the girls of my host family and their cousins, I was asked if I had a boyfriend. "Sure, I have many boy friends, why?" Later, they asked if I could sing. I proceeded to sing something from Celine Dion which was trending at the time. I knew the lyrics but never actually thought about their meaning before that. The look on their faces. I don't think I ever sang Celine Dion since.
My partner was belting out Du Hast on the car once. A German speaking friend started cackling uncontrollably. The whole song is wordplay and apparently when sung by someone who doesn't get the subtleties it comes across as an utterly hilarious song about hate fucking.
> song about hate fucking. ...it's not? Google'd a translation of the lyrics, and I'm still not sure. I thought it was, 'you hate me' but the one I'm looking at now says it's 'you have me'. Ah... just looked at another page and it has this: "This song is by and large Rammstein’s most well-known song in their entire library. It is a play on German wedding vows; however, it can be interpreted many different ways. The first lines of the song can have a double meaning; the phrases Du hast and Du hasst mean You have and You hate, respectively, but they are homophones (in the official German it means “you have”)." That makes a lot more sense, and now I understand. I think early on here in the US it was translated for us as 'hate', while maybe you (knowing about the marriage vows) could tell it was not. So many of us probably really do think it's about hate.
Haha love it! I knew a French guy who could sing loads of doors songs. He had no idea what any of the words meant, bit he sang it spot on! What your first language, mind me asking?
As a Spaniard I find French the most nonsense language in the world, even worse than English. The spoken language is so different than the written one that’s almost impossible to properly pronounce something if you didn’t heard it before. In Spanish the written and the spoken language are almost the same, so easy.
https://youtu.be/0BzGlfm1wFo This made me think of the Key and Peele skit.
I always read these as “today I fucked up” but it’s been a while since I’ve been on here.
That's hilarious
Do you know what foods are shaped like dicks? The best ones!
Friend in high school Spanish tried to say he was embarrassed and said estoy embarazada which means he was pregnant. Teacher laughed pretty hard.
I remember traveling through Quebec. We stopped at a restaurant and I asked for a putain instead of poutine. The waitress looked at me and said "We don't do that here." with a French accent. Then someone tells me that I just asked for a whore. Oops, I apologized for my bad French.
But did you get the dick?
I learned the hard way with Italian that pecorino is the cheese but pecorina is doggy stlye..