Most embarrassing foreign-language mistake?

In My Humble Opinion
121

I’m fluent in Spanish, but my wife speaks not a word. Bless her heart, she tries. When we were vacationing in Costa Rica, I had gone off to the bathroom, and she wanted to ask the bartender if he could make change. She didn’t know the word for change, but she recalled that the Costa Rican money was called Colones. So she motioned him over and said “¿Tiénes cojones?” Lucky for me he had a sense of humor about it. (“Do you have balls?” which is a handy way to get anyone that speaks Spanish to start swinging at you).

When I was first out of college, I spent some time down in Oaxaca, eager to use what I thought was fluent Spanish. It took me a few weeks to figure out why none of the girls that I gave my phone number to would ever call, until I realized that what I was saying sounded like “¿Me amas?” (“Do you love me?” rather than “Will you call me?”)

Also, don’t ask for Huevos in Oaxaca unless you want to know if the person you’re asking has balls (See above). It’s “blancillos.”

122

A good one from my co-worker:

When he first arrived in Japan, he got a job at a small private English Conversation school. His boss’s wife would always use hyper-polite Japanese, which doesn’t just use new verb tenses and prefixes, but an altogether different set of words, and he was having trouble understanding what she was saying. Trying to explain the problem to her, he wanted to say:

“Tenei na nihongo ga wakarimasen.” (I don’t understand polite Japanese)

Unfortunately, he made one small mistake:

“Teme na nihongo ga wakarimasen.”

Technically, “teme” means “you”, but it’s the kind of “you” that one would use only when about to start throwing punches. So what he essentially said to his boss’s wife was “I don’t understand your Japanese, bitch.”

Luckily for him, there was another teacher there who figured out what the problem was before the poor woman had a stroke.

123

I was in the south of France for a conference, and tried my best to make use of my (very rusty) French. I thought I was doing okay until one day at lunch, when the waiter returned to ask me if I wanted anything more after my meal. I meant to say, no thanks, I’m finished… so I said, “Merci non, je suis fini,” which is a literal translation. In French however, you’re supposed to say “I have finished,” “j’ai fini.” The waiter politely corrected me, and I thanked him for doing so. He then said in perfect English, “Don’t worry - my best friend is Australian, and he does the same thing all the time.” I felt pretty silly then… Later, I was relating this story to a friend of mine who had spent several years in France. He laughed rather more than I thought was really warranted, and I asked him what was so funny. He then told me that “je suis fini” can indeed mean “I’m finished” or “I’m through,” but more along the lines of “I’m dead, I’m done for.” Great thing to say after a nice meal, no? :stuck_out_tongue:

Another friend of mine told me of a time in high school when he wanted to impress a girl that he had a crush on. He’s a native Hindi speaker, she was Bengali, so he thought it would be cool to say something to her in her native tongue. His only other Bengali-speaking classmate, another guy, suggested a phrase that was guaranteed to get her attention. So my friend gathered all his courage, walked up to the girl with a card and a bunch of flowers in hand, and proceeded to say… “I have an enormous dick.” The girl apparently almost passed out in shock at first, but then realized my friend had been set up and roundly abused her fellow classmate for it.

Regional differences in the same language are fun too. One time when I was in Australia, the local park rangers were conducting a round-up of some feral goats that were damaging the landscape. Given the terrain, a number of people with horses and trained dogs were assisting the helicopter with the round-up. I asked one ranger how the dog he had been training performed that day. He replied, “She did well, but she’s a bit knocked up.” I must have been staring like a fool, because he went on to elaborate that the dog was basically worn out. Much amusement ensued when I explained that “knocked up” here in NYC was slang for pregnant, and for a moment I was trying to figure out how a day’s work could make the dog “a bit” pregnant…

Soon after I first arrived in Australia, I was having lunch with my PhD advisor (pasties, yum!) when I needed to wipe off my fingers. I started to ask my advisor if he’d seen any napkins around, and he told me to ask instead for serviettes. There came a moment of confusion as my very proper British advisor tried to make me understand that “napkin” was usually used for “sanitary pad” in Australia, without making any direct reference to feminine hygiene products at all. Priceless! :smiley:

124

Yummy pasties? Just what kind of “advising” were you getting?

:dubious:

125

Could be worse; another infamouns Russian beginner mistake is the verb “to finish.” If you add the reflexive suffix when it isn’t necessary, “I’m done” becomes “I have reached orgasm.” (Well, same thing in the end, I guess.)

126

These were Cornish pasties (“a” pronounced as in “cat”), basically half-moon-shaped, very flaky pastries filled with vegetables and/or meat. They were not pasties (“a” pronounced as in “stay”), which I fully agree would have put a whole new spin on things. :smiley:

127

Don’t know if this is relevant but the thread remionded me of an old joke i heard a while ago:

(This story is old and is from a time when even in France certain rubber and leather goods were not openly sold.)

An American couple is in Paris, a much awaited trip, when suddenly the wife dies of a heart attack. The husband decides to have her buried there as the visit to France was something they had longed for for many years. All arrangements are made when he suddenly realizes that he doesn’t have a black hat for the funeral. The hotel concierge tells him that what he wants is a “chapeau noir.” So off he goes to find a store open late.

First he meets a gendarme and in his fractured French asks, “M’sieur, ou pouvais-je acheter un capeau noir?” (1)

The policeman is a bit surprised but, after thinking a bit, gives our friend directions. The store–if that is what it is–looks a little seedy and run down, but the man behind the counter looks friendly so in goes our friend. He speaks first:

“M’sieur, je veux acheter un capeau noir.”

“Mais, monsieur, j’ai des capeaux rouges, des capeaux blancs, et des capeaux marrons, mais pas des capeaux noires. Pourquoi avez vous besoin d’un capeau noir?”

“Ma femme est morte.”

“O Monsieur! Quelle beau sentiment!”

(for those of you who don’t speak french:
the man wants a “chapeau noir”, or a black hat
but in his innocence asks for a “capeau noir”, or
a black condom)

128

Ugandans have trouble with the ‘K’ sound of English, I think because local dialects pronounce a ‘K’ as “ch” and ‘ch’ as ‘k’. The first time I was told that they had gone and cleaned out the drain in the Ambassador’s ‘chicken’, I had to puzzle over it for a few moments.

An embarrassing incident for my wife was in her office in the American embassy in Lisbon. Her Portuguese was very limited and she was explaining to her employees how I was very good in the kitchen. Unfortunately, instead of the word “cozinha”, which means ‘kitchen’, she used ‘cozinho’, which means ‘anus’. Hilarity ensued, of course.

129

Cool. We have an actual cross-cutural language misunderestand WITHIN the thread about cross-cultural language misunderstands.

That’s so postmodern :).

130

I don’t know if this one has been mentioned yet.

In one of the latest editions of Chuck Sheppard’s News of the Weird, he mentions a campaign that PETA had in a school, in a Spanish speaking country, where they had a model of a life size cow with the translation of the words, “Dump Dairy,” painted on the side.

They were corrected by school officials, because that is actually local slang for, “ejaculate.”

131

I work in a resturant in So-Cal and we often have customers who can’t speak very good english. A few weeks ago, a group of Asians came in. English was obviously not their first language. They were probably Korean based on their pronunciation.

The first one comes up to me and asks “Do you have any cock?”

“Excuse me?” I respond, trying not to laugh.

“Do you have any cock?” Slower this time, but still the same words. “To drink, cock!”

Then it hit me. “Coke!” I just corrected his pronounciation rather than try to explain what he had just asked me for.

132

This thread was great. I thought it was about time for me to come out of lurking mode and make a post.

Nearly a decade ago I was working in Cornwall, Ontario (not the one in England) about an hour from both Ottawa and Montreal. Some coworkers and I got into a conversation that drifted to a sexual nature and this one Quebecois coworker blurted out “I like to do children”. At the time I had the best handle on French and explained to everyone that he chose the wrong translation for fait (the verb faire means both to do and to make).

My wife is Taiwanese so I’ve been attempting to learn Mandarin as well as some Taiwanese. I’ve made many mistakes especially with the tones. One I’m always afraid I would make is with ma. One of the tones means mother and the other horse. I’ve managed to avoid this word altogether to prevent making the mistake. However, I did make the mistake of pronouncing jie-jie wrong. I said gee gee when referring to her younger brother. Instead of saying younger brother I used the word for a certain member of the male anatomy. Not a good thing to be saying about your future brother-in-law.

My wife also has a tendency to call me Ty-Ty all the time (shortening my name, Tyler). However, tai tai in Mandarin means wife which garners curious looks when she continues to use this phrase in Taiwan in front of her family.

133

I’m studying American Sign Language, and my teachers are always very quick to correct us when we form a sign incorrectly that results in a different meaning. (One turns a very becoming shade of red before he explains what we’ve said wrong…) Some examples:

Cents: tap the tip of your index finger near your temple. Horny: same hand shape, but tap the thumb side of your fist against your temple.

Moscow: tap the letter “M” on your cheek. If you puff your cheek out at the same time, it means menstrual period.

Watch where you put your hand to sign “beer.” If it’s right next to your nose rather than on your cheek, it’s the sign for “brown nose.” (I love those signs that look exactly like what they mean!)

Love (a person): cross your arms across your chest as if hugging someone. Love (a food, an animal, an activity): make a fist with your right hand, face the palm away from you, and kiss the back of your hand. A classmate who owned a horse said she loved her horse with the wrong sign for “love.” When corrected, she kissed the thumb side of her fist - which means “kiss ass.” Oops.

When I was working at Gallaudet University (the only university specifically for Deaf students), we were told in our sign language classes never to ask students what the sign for something was. One professor forgot this advice and was referring to people and places as being “spaghetti” instead of “famous” for weeks.

134

The very first time I met my future father-in-law when I first started dating my future wife, I tried to explain what I did for a living in Spanish since he is Mexican. At the time, I worked for a pharmaceutical company doing research. After I did my best to say this in Spanish, it came out sounding like I was a drug dealer.

135

What a great thread! Some of those stories had me, umm, s****ing gophers!

I have 2 to add.

One is from a letter I wrote to a Spanish friend. I meant to say “my cousin smoked marihuana and his parents found out.” What I actualy wrote was “my cousin smoked Mari Juana (girl’s name) and his parents buried themselves underground.”

The other was from when I lived in Spain. The family I stayed with was having some built-in cabinets installed. This required visits over several days by the workmen to do the installation. These types of cabinets were referred to as “cajones,” Spanish for drawers. One day I told the family grandma that “The men with the cojones had been there in the morning.”

Groan!

136

This sounds a bit too rich to be actually true, but …
I was told that the Queen of England once visited a country where the local language was among those in which they pronounce “s” similarly to the English “sh” (much like in MrO’s example). The Queen was received with the customary protocol – cheering crowd, welcoming speeches, and… a children’s chorus singing the national anthem of Great Britain.
So there they were, a big group of lovely, innocent children singing “God shave the Queen” and nobody could do anything to stop them from finishing the anthem (they repeated the phrase several times).
Apparently, the Queen quickly understood the rationale behind the mishap and dismissed the incident with a laugh.

137

Hm, that’s weird. Never heard that “peu” could mean “penis”. Even in slang. Well I’m not from Paris, so who knows what kind of slang they use there…

However, the English word “bit” is very similar to the french word “bite” which actually does mean “penis” So maybe your friend confused stuff a “little bit”…

When I was learning German in French Switzerland, the German word “bitte” (please, you’re welcome) made us all laugh, since it was very similar to the french “bite”, especially due to our bad pronounciation…

138

Oh, and another rememberance from school. With a dead language this time, latin. We were learning the past infinitive ending with -isse, like amavisse (“to have loved”). Then one of my classmates rises the hand and asks: is there a verb “jacapo”? The teacher first confused about the weird question answers: “no, why?” The student: “because the past infinitive of this verb would be ‘jacapisse’” which in French means something like “go ahead and piss” (sorry my English slang is too basic so that the translation sounds authentic). The French writing of this would be: “Y’a qu’à pisser”.

139

I’m sorry to break everyone’s fun, but a few corrections are in order.

I’ve never heard that one. I think, like rickymoz that the problem is with the English word “bit”, which means “dick”.

Capotte means condom. “Capot”, written “capot” means a car hood. The guy was looking for a black hood, which is more surreal but not as funny.

This, however:

is roll-on-the-floor funny.

I somehow managed to avoid completely obscene mistakes; mine are usually pretty trivial. Some time ago, though, someone asked me in Japanese if I was doing “inzei seikatsu”. I said yes. “Inzei seikatsu” means to live off royalties. I thought it meant something else and I carried out an entire conversation about my (non-existant) royalties without me even knowing it.

140

A penfriend of mine, Monika, came over from Germany for Christmas. My whole family was there, about 15 of us. Monika’s english was very good indeed. Except…

During Christmas dinner, we routinely have a toast beforehand. Each of us says something witty or just a standard “cheers” or whatever and then we drink. This year my mother was just before Monika and lifts her glass, “Bottoms Up!”, a fairly traditional toast. Then Monika decides to better that with, “Up your bottom!”

I’ve never seen so much wine sprayed arond a table!