# Classic Errors You Have Made In A Foreign Language **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 30, 2005, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334 "2005-08-30T22:13:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2005, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/41 "2005-08-31T19:41:22Z")
Yes, “pepperoni” seems to be the German word for “jalapeno”. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2005, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/42 "2005-09-01T09:46:26Z")
> [@Exgineer](#): > > The problem seems to be that Germans don’t know what pepperoni is. Or, conversely, Americans don’t ( [quote] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepperoni](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepperoni))). It depends on whether you assume the Italian or the American meaning is the correct one. You want a pepperoni pizza in Germany, just order a salami pizza. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2005, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/43 "2005-09-01T11:00:45Z")
> [@devilsknew](#): > > My friend and I were on our way home through the Taunus after a particularly long night at the Wiesbaden Winefest (Rheingauer Weinwoche). A group of six of us had hit nearly every winery’s booth through the city middle and purchased a bottle at each to share between us. It was my first time that drunk and only after my friends caught up to me sitting on the curb half in the gutter trying to make the world stop spinning while an Ethiopian pimp berated and insulted me for no apparent reason did they decide to call it a night. > > Anyways, we’re riding in my friend’s VW Golf on the way home and I’m feeling really sick- I have hit the wall and I must puke immediately. Problem is, this particular verbage had never come up in any of my conversations or German classes (Curses, Language Gods!). I start to run through my limited vocabulary and remember a suitable approximation. > > Me: “Ick muss spücken!” (“I have to spit!”) > > Friend: “Bitte?” (“What?”) > > Me: “Ick muss ja spücken!!” (“I really have to spit!!”) > > Friend: “Bitte? Nochmal?” (“Come again?”) > > Me: "Spukken, Spukken, Spukken!!! Braaahhhh…ROLF! ("Spit, spit, spit!!! Braaahhhh…ROLF!) > He was kind enought to clean up the car the next morning and let me sleep. > > Um… if you’re ever in a similar situation. > > To vomit: reihern. **Hoch spukken** means literally to Up Throw. ( Thanks to Mr. Ujest who chuckled at your story.) ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2005, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/44 "2005-09-01T11:05:08Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > This was actually more of a British/American . . . well, not misuse, but misunderstanding. When my mother and I were in London a few years ago, a friend told us, “I’ll send my husband over in the morning to knock you up.” > > My mother and I were impressed with her hospitality. Conversely, Mr. Ujest was putting the 10pounds of change in his pocket in some store in England. Not being used to more change than paper, he made the comment, " All this change is going to make my pants fall down." The shop clerks burst out laughing. Pants in Britspeak are underpants. (He should have said “Trousers”) ---
**Author:** ![RickQ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@RickQ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickQ)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2005, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/45 "2005-09-01T11:24:07Z")
About 15 years ago, my family all went to France on vacation. We managed to get by mostly because my sister was ok at French and the people in the tourist town we were staying at could all speak reasonable English. One day we were having a picnic on the beach and my dad saw a mobile food vendor cart thingy. He said he was going to go and get us some chips (meaning fries). He came back with two long skinny donut type things which are called Churros (I think). We laughed about it for days. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2005, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/46 "2005-09-01T12:20:39Z")
Also when I first moved to France I remember being offered some peanuts at a bar. The word for peanuts, which I’d never seen before, is “cacahuetes.” The one thing I was certain of was that I didn’t want ANY caca, wet or dry, and I gave a rather too-strongly gesticulated “NO!” ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2005, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/47 "2005-09-01T14:09:29Z")
A couple of days ago, I was trying out my really rusty French on a customer at the store, and, bursting with confidence and pride, tried to tell her the total in French… …only to find out I’d called her an idiot. :o Luckily she was really sweet about it… _hides in paper bag_ ---
**Author:** ![The\_Weird\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@The\_Weird\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Weird_One)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2005, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/48 "2005-09-02T19:17:37Z")
A little background: the Dutch word for peanut butter is pindakaas, from pinda - peanut and kaas - cheese. Peanut butter, peanut cheese, all well and good. While I was in Rotterdam, I lived in interational student housing. There was a Czech girl living there who didn’t eat peanut butter as long as she was in the Netherlands. Why? Because in Czech, pinda is a slang term for vagina, and she just couldn’t bring herself to eat vagina cheese. ---
**Author:** ![liberty3701](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@liberty3701](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liberty3701)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2005, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/49 "2005-09-02T21:50:31Z")
In french class in high school, this girl says “Je suis nu…” (I am naked) instead of “Je suis ne …” (I was born). I got the worse case of the giggles… The first time one of my friends when to Spain, she asked a shop keeper if a loaf of bread had preservatives in it. Or so she thought. She apparently asked if there were any _condoms_ in it. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2005, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/50 "2005-09-02T22:40:14Z")
> [@pseudotriton ruber ruber](#): > > Also when I first moved to France I remember being offered some peanuts at a bar. The word for peanuts, which I’d never seen before, is “cacahuetes.” The one thing I was certain of was that I didn’t want ANY caca, wet or dry, and I gave a rather too-strongly gesticulated “NO!” In French Canada peanuts are _arachides_, a little too close to _arachnides_ for my liking. Although I suppose eating spiders is better than eating caca wet. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2005, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/51 "2005-09-03T00:31:53Z")
Before going to Lisbon on assignment, I took six months of Portuguese training. My wife was only able to take the familiarization course, which just made her dangerous. One of her local employees asked her one day if I liked to cook, and my wife replied that I was very good in the asshole (the words for kitchen and asshole being VERY similar). When she was in French training, she told the entire class that over the weekend “mon marie a fixee la tapete dans la 4x4”, which, rather than meaning I had glued in some carpet in the jeep, meant that I had had sex with a homosexual in the jeep. Wheee! ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2005, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/52 "2005-09-03T02:13:29Z")
Not mine, but this week some friends/coworkers and I were in a restaurant. The waitress brought some water, and one of the Chinese-born (here just ~8 mo. so far) girls said “Sex!”. We all looked at her together and said “What?!?” We then had a big discussion about sex, and how she couldn’t really tell the difference between that and “Thanks”. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2005, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/53 "2005-09-03T03:01:04Z")
I spent a summer at the German language school at Middlebury College. Total immersion. One day at lunch, a friend brushed away a wayward strand of my hair which had gotten caught in the corner of my mouth. I complained that my hair was always in my mouth. At which point, everybody started laughing and congratulating the guy I was seeing at the time. See, I had said _Mein Herr ist immer in meinem Mund_. :o (I had accidentally said “my mister is always in my mouth!”) ---
**Author:** ![Kiminy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Kiminy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kiminy)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2005, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/54 "2005-09-03T06:31:21Z")
The first time I actually lived in France on my own, I had a room in a small dormitory for students at the local seminary. I was taking courses at the local _université_ as well as a couple of courses at the seminary–with all of the courses counting toward the BA in French that I was working on in the US. I remember that the mailman came in one day to put letters in the mailboxes of the students at the seminary. I happened to be coming down the stairs when he was delivering the mail, and he asked me a question. I have no clue what his question was, or what my answer was, but I do remember that I used the informal _tu_ forms when I answered his question, rather than the expected and polite _vous_ forms. I lived for a total of three years in France, and I’m sure that I made other errors while speaking to native speakers. However, this still stands out as the most embarrassing and obvious error I ever made in a foreign language. As an addition to this thread: During this first year that I was in France, a couple of close American friends and I decided to travel through Spain and Portugal for our three-week Christmas break. While I was pretty comfortable in French, I didn’t know any Spanish or Portugese, so I relied on my two friends to speak the lingo in those countries as we were travelling. As our schedule worked out, we ended up taking a train from Sevilla, Spain to Lisbon, Portugal on Christmas Day. When we arrived in Lisbon, we found a very friendly _pensiòn_-type place. The woman who owned the _pensiòn_ was very kind, and very worried about the fact that we were spending Christmas so far away from our families. After we had settled into our room, she brought us a platter of homemade donuts. Since it was Christmas Day, and most of the restaurants in the area were closed for the holiday, we scarfed down the donuts in short order. She then asked simply _Más_? My friends (who spoke Spanish, but not Portuguese) couldn’t figure out if she meant “Good” or “More”, so after a couple of minutes hesitation, we decided that she meant “Good”, and we were very insistent on that point. Of course, in Portuguese (as in Spanish), _Màs_ means “more”. So this woman went and made us another platter of homemade donuts for Christmas, even though this was the LEAST of our expectations at that time. ---
**Author:** ![Taran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Taran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taran)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2005, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/55 "2005-09-03T17:51:20Z")
I spent a few weeks visiting Spain, one spring. While my spanish wasn’t too bad at the time (it’s terrible now, I’ve not practiced in years), I had some kind of mental block about ‘servicios’ versus ‘servesas’ (the former being ‘services’, the latter being ‘beers’). I asked for beers at the grocery store, beers at restraunts, I asked strangers on the street to direct me to the church beers at nine am on Sunday. Not until I got carded while trying to buy bananas did I figure out my mistake. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/56 "2005-09-04T00:00:12Z")
> [@Kiminy](#): > > She then asked simply _Más_? My friends (who spoke Spanish, but not Portuguese) couldn’t figure out if she meant “Good” or “More”, so after a couple of minutes hesitation, we decided that she meant “Good”, and we were very insistent on that point. Of course, in Portuguese (as in Spanish), _Màs_ means “more”. So this woman went and made us another platter of homemade donuts for Christmas, even though this was the LEAST of our expectations at that time. Actually, the word for ‘more’ in Portuguese is ‘mais’, pronounced ‘myshe’. The Spanish version is pronounced ‘mahs’. That’s probably why your Spanish-speaking friends were confused. The word for ‘good’ is ‘bem’, pronounced ‘beng’. ---
**Author:** ![EvilGhandi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@EvilGhandi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilGhandi)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2005, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/57 "2005-09-04T07:21:01Z")
In Samoan fai (banana) and fa’i (penis) are only differentiated by the glottal stop in the word. While I was there I became quite fond of “fa lifu fai”, roast bananas in coconut cream. It is no stretch to figure out what fa lifu fa’i is slang for. The polite correction you get when you ask a Samoan waiter for a bowl of “man chowder” is a memorable one. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2005, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/58 "2005-09-04T17:19:55Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Actually, the word for ‘more’ in Portuguese is ‘mais’, pronounced ‘myshe’. The Spanish version is pronounced ‘mahs’. That’s probably why your Spanish-speaking friends were confused. The word for ‘good’ is ‘bem’, pronounced ‘beng’. And I’m an idiot. The word for ‘good’ is ‘bom’ or ‘boa(s)’, depending on the gender of the noun. The word ‘bem’ means ‘well’, similar to ‘bien’ in Spanish. ---
**Author:** ![manila](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@manila](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manila)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2005, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/59 "2005-09-04T18:39:27Z")
ya skuchayu tebya ochen, ya hachu slushit tvoi gollus I miss you so much. I want to hear your voice ya skuchayu tebya ochen, ya hachu slushit tvoi vollus I miss you so much. I want to hear your hair :wally ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2005, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334/60 "2005-09-04T19:51:12Z")
So I buy a few Korean textbooks in Seoul and go about learning the basics. One thing I found out the hard way very quickly is that the Korean words for “eighteen” and “fuck” sound quite a bit alike (Ship p’al v. Sshib’bal). I was fortunate enough to find this out in the the cab of a pretty cool driver, who spent the rest of the trip to Yongsan helping me practice my pronounciation instead of stabbing me in the head with a fishing knife. Note to self: Pronounciation counts for a lot when learning foreign languages. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-errors-you-have-made-in-a-foreign-language/319334.md?page=4)