My poor German grammar/vocabulary got me in trouble once. In 1972 (I was 12),I was at a carnival in Germany with my mother, aunt and cousin. There was a shooting gallery where prizes were posted on top of narrow wax poles; shoot out the pole and win the prize. One prize was a postcard of a naked woman. I took aim, nailed the pole with my first shot, and instead of saying “I shot the naked lady”, I yelled out for all to hear “I shitted the naked lady”.
My mom turned 15 shades of red, my aunt and cousin were cracking up, as was everyone else within earshot.
We were doing one of those exercises in middle school French class where we picked verbs from Column A and nouns from Column B and tried to construct a sentence in the past tense.
A friend of mine was somewhat distracted that day, picked her verb and her noun and recited to the class “J’ai descendu mon pantalons.” (I took down my pants.)
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.
I took a couple of years of Spanish in high school. Then, about four or five years later, I was assigned to a ship in the Mediterranean. We stopped in Palma Spain for a couple of days. In a bar with a bunch of guys from my department (none of whom spoke any Spanish), I decided to be the translator for us and the locals. (Well, after a couple of drinks, it seemed like a good idea.) I got up to use the facilities, and, in my badly remembered Spanish, stated that I had the bathroom, not that I was going to the bathroom. For the rest of the night there, everyone asked me for permission to use the can.
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.
Two short days ago Elenfair and I were walking back to our car and I was trying to say that I really, really, really had to answer the call of nature. I couldn’t remember irai, and ended up trying to saying “ma vessie verai kaboom!” (my bladder is going to go kaboom!)
Due to my thick accent, she heard “Ma vessie déraille!” – my bladder has derailed.
[QUOTE=pinkfreud"Soy muy caliente" is more like “I’m hot to trot” [/QUOTE]
A similar problem exists in German. “Ich bin heisse” (literally, “I am hot”) means you’re horny; the correct phrase would be “Mir ist heisse” (literally, It is hot to me). Fortunately, we learned this when my friend made the mistake in German class, not in Germany.
In Spain once we were rushing to make a train and I knew we’d never get it done if we were dealing with a non-English-speaking ticket agent. So I ran up to the window and asked “Hablo ingles?” – “Do I speak English?” He figured it out.
Same in French–“Je suis chaud”, the literal translation of “I am hot”, conveys horniness. “J’ai le chaud” (“I have the heat”) is the right way to talk about the temperature.
My sister spent part of a summer in Mexico once. She went for a walk one morning, and her Mexican hosts asked what she was doing. She said, “I’m walking for exercise,” and they gave her a :dubious: look. Later, she figured out that she had actually said “I’m farting for exercise.”
I often refer to especially tasty and bad-for-you foods as dangerous. For example, chocolate covered cheesecake is dangerous, because I will eat it until there is no more, no matter how much there is.
I don’t know enough of any foreign language to really try using it, much less using it wrong. The worst I ever did was order a pepperoni pizza in Germany.
I was trying to get a phone number from someone who only spoke Spanish over the phone. The onlyy thing to do was to break out my unused High School Spanish from the memory vault.
I kept getting “nombre” and “numero” mixed up. Much chaos ensued.
Not exactly. This was actually yet one more blunder I made. Went to an Italian restaurant in Berlin and ordered the pepperoni pizza. Waiter brings it out, puts it on the table and leaves. I pick off all those annoying green peppers and put them in the ashtray, looking for the nice pepperoni underneath and see none. I called the waiter over and said, “where are the pepperoni?”
He looks at me as if I have truly lost my mind and points to the ashtray and says, “there.”
Pepperoni - a nice German word for “little peppers”.
They don’t have pepperoni sausage like we have here - at least they didn’t back then.
He figured it out.