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What funny/embarrassing language errors have you made?
Hi All
I remember a thread some years ago asking what errors people had made in a foreign language and it came up with some really funny stories. I walked into what I thought was a second-hand shop in Paris and started rifling through the rails when the owner shouted "Qu-est ce que vous faites?". Knowing very little French at the time I looked around puzzled and then realised it was a dry-cleaners and left rapidly with a face tres rouge. There must be thousands of stories out there! |
In a tiny restaurant in Aix, we special-ordered a grand aioli. It was delicious.
When thanking the owners after dinner, the combination of wine and garlic got to me, and I mixed up the words for "fishermen" ('pecheurs' with a circumflex) and "sinners" ('pecheurs' with an accent) and the words "peach" (peche with a circumflex like 'pecheur') and "fish" ('poisson'). So instead of telling these wonderful people that I had many friends at home who were fisherman who brought me fresh fish which I cooked and served with aioli (garlic mayonnaise), I told them that I had many friends at home who were sinners who brought me peaches that I served with garlic aioli. They must think America is a very strange place. Another time in Arles I gave a great laugh to the desk clerk in the hotel when I asked for my key to the 13th floor rather than the 3rd. |
This was not embarrassing to us but we did have a good laugh. We were in a small town in Luxembourg and I had a great deal of trouble making our wants known to a shopkeeper. DW, who speaks a fluent Yiddish intervened and had they had a lively conversation part of which was his wanting to know which town in Bavaria she was from since he couldn't quite place her accent and manner of speaking. He was positive though that it was Bavarian. We let him think that to avoid embarrassing him.
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We were staying in an apartment in Montepulciano and occasionally cooking 'at home' so I was shopping in the local markets. I'd seen plenty of dried mushrooms but on that day I wanted fresh ones. So while my SO waited outside, I went into a shop and asked, in my best Italian, "Do you have any fresh mushrooms?" The gentleman indicated that he didn't, so I left.
I told my SO that I'd had no luck getting the mushrooms but that I was pretty darn proud of myself for being able to ask for them in Italian. We walked along a bit and I thought about it. I told my SO that it was possible that I'd said, "Are you any fresh mushrooms?" We walked along a bit more; I thought about it a bit more. I told my SO that it was even more likely that I'd said "Let's go, fresh mushrooms!" From then on, I just smiled and pointed. :-D |
My "Practice Wife" was English. At a rather posh University party she was talking to my boss, who was feeling rather despondent about some issue about his errant Son.
PW patted him on the shoulder and told him, and the rest of the room, "Oh, Pat, it will be all right. Just keep your pecker up". She meant, of course, keep your spirits up, but the American crowd howled with laughter. :-) |
nukesafe, you just reminded me of another 'english to english' language story:
My best friend's husband took an exchange-teachers' job in Australia about 20 years ago, so their whole family went down there from Toronto for a school year. He was a Health & Phys Ed teacher and part of his job was coaching so they lived in the little field house at the side of the football field. One day, there was a big faculty football game, with all the friends, kids, and family members sitting on the sidelines, cheering them on. My friend was going into the house to get some drinks, but still feeling a bit of an outsider and not wanting to seem rude she yelled out, "I'll be right back but don't you forget -- I'm rootin' for ya! I'm rootin' for ya!" Um, 'rooting' doesn't exactly mean the same in Australia as it does in Canada, if you know what I mean! :"> In fact, when the Canadian company, Roots, did the sportswear for the Olympics a few years back with their logo in big letters, I understand the items got snapped up by the Australians! :-d |
Australians must really enjoy attending baseball games in the USA, when everybody gets up to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."
<i>Let me root, root, root for the home team!</i> |
...the home team especially! :-d
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Thank you for sharing your stories -- I'm glad I'm not the only one with "english to english" problems! My family had just moved from the US to the UK when I became a Sunday School teacher for the 12-14 year olds at my church. One particularly cold Sunday the boys were complaining about how cold it was. I told them since they got to wear pants I didn't want to hear them complain. I wasn't wearing any pants and you didn't hear me complaining! I must have made reference to the fact that I wasn't wearing pants a few too many times. Finally, one of the boys gently explained that what I was referring to were "trousers" and that pants were underwear. I begged them to not go home and tell their parents that their Sunday School teacher wasn't wearing any pants!
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Polish cafe; I ordered, bulka and I got bigos. Cabbage stew instead of a roll . I asked for thre bananas and they brought out six kilos!
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Elegant dinner in a very posh Parisian apartment belonging to a French friend's parents, off the Champs Elysées my first or second trip to France.
Had just arrived that morning and was jet-lagged. Had an apéritif and wine with dinner, then cognac in the drawing room. Matron of the family asks me in French how I'm holding up after a long day of traveling, and I answer in my not-so-good-then French "Oh, je vais bien, Madame. Je souffre un peu de la décolletage, c'est tout." Major eyebrows raised. |
Shortly after we moved to Germany, we invited relatives over for dinner. My husband had praised my cooking, especially my roast chicken, so that's what we planned to serve.
On our first foray into the market, we bought a "suppe huhn" which I thought was a "supper" chicken, that is, a large chicken suitable for roasting. I did not realize it was an old, tough "soup chicken" that was virtually inedible when roasted. Fortunately, DH's German relatives are really nice people and we all had a laugh, then ordered Chinese take-out. And I later redeemed myself by cooking a proper roast chicken for them. Along that line, DH mistakenly believed that one could easily speak German instead of Dutch in the Netherlands and Flemish Belgium and it would mean the same thing. So in Bruges, he ordered a glass of red or "rot" wine. But in Dutch, "rot" does not mean red (that would be "rode"). What he actually ordered was a glass of "bad" wine. |
When in France a couple of years ago, I was at an outdoor cafe having lunch. The waitress asked us how we were doing and I replied "je suis pleine". She had a good laugh out of that becasue it means (idiomatically) "I am drunk". What I meant to say, was that "je suis complete" (I am full). Forgive my spelling if I mispelled the french words...
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JoeCal,
According to my high school French teacher, that means pregnant. |
This wasn't my mistake -- but something said to me by a visiting Norwegian, whose English is typically excellent.
We were in a crowded shopping mall when this angelic, seventeen year old boy loudly proclaimed, "I love the taste of semen." I quickly said, "Um, I have a feeling that's NOT the word you're looking for." He said, "Yes, it is. I like semen. Um, Seelmen ... Somen ... Sayman... Oh, SALMON!" |
Working in Madrid, I often went to a Basque bar/restaurant near my hotel. They served wonderful bar food, and I was particularly taken with a dish or huge shrimp broiled on skewers. My Spanish was pretty basic, and I hesitated to order, so I listened carefully to others who ordered this delicacy. The word seemed to be something like "pinche". (I now know the proper word was "pincho" = Skewer.
With confidence I asked the bartender for "Dos Pinches, por favor". I must have pronounced it horribly wrong, for he looked at me in astonishment. He turned to the other bar customers and said loudly, "This guy wants to order two p#%^&es!" Every head snapped around, as the word I used was the colloquial word for a furry part of female anatomy. "Do you want to eat them here at the bar?", he asked me. "Si, como no?", I innocently responded. The bar broke up. When they stopped howling, they explained my error, and bought me drinks the rest of the night. We were friends, but every time I went back I was greeted with, "Here comes the "P@#$%e eater!" :-) |
My mono-glot husband and I were in a little French village cafe having dinner. There was only a little English spoken there, and we knew but a few phrases in French, pronounced with a decided southern US accent. My husband horrified the waitress when he asked for some water (l'eau) and it came out sounding more like "loo."
Recently in London, we were required to describe the clothing we were wearing so that a taxi driver could spot us. DH told the dispatcher that both he and his wife were wearing vests. Through peals of laughter, the dispatcher suggested that we were probably wearing "weskits" since vests are underwear. |
My error was pretty minor compared to many of those on this thread. I was in Seattle and had dropped the hairdryer into the toilet (which was clean).
I wanted to tell the Hispanic man who was cleaning the room that the hairdryer was wet, but instead of using the word "secadora," I told him I dropped the "fregadora" in the toilet. "Fregadora" means kitchen sink. |
I speak Spanish as a second language pretty fluently, having started classed when I was 10 and continuing through college, and I started to study French in college. Imagine my surprise though, the first time I went to France (the first non-English speaking country I had visited) with a group from my mother's work. I was the only one who "spoke" French, so I had to talk to the bus driver from the airport to the hotel about who we were and where we were going. Remember, this was the first weary, jetlagged morning coming off the overnight flight.
When he dropped us at our hotel, he said to me, in Spanish "You speak Spanish very well, do you speak French too?" I had talked the whole time in Spanish without even thinking. To this day, I still revert to Spanish when I'm in Italy or France when I'm overtired or stressed. Crazy. At least he understood me! |
JoeCal: That doesn't mean "I'm drunk," it means "I'm pregnant."
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..I mispronounced to kiss in French...what I said was a rather indelicate verb to describe what is sometime an outcome of the verb to kiss...Thank goodness I was around friends who corrected me and laughed as I blushed.
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I've told this story before, but if you'll bear with me, I'll repeat it here -
Prior to our trip to Italy I called up an apartment rental agency in Rome and [thought I] said, in the only Italian phrase I knew, "Hello. I'm sorry, I don't speak Italian ...". The person on the phone started laughing and passed me along to someone else who was also laughing when she picked up the phone. I told my DD (who speaks Italian) that everybody laughed at me, so she asked me exactly what I'd said. Turns out I'd called those people up at work in Rome and told them that I was sorry THEY didn't speak Italian. No wonder they laughed ... |
Australian to Irish. When I was young I lived in Dublin. I walked into the women's section in a large department store and asked a shop assistant "do you have any black skivvies?". She did not reply at all. She just looked at me and blinked. Another customer burst out laughing and explained that a skivvy means servant in Ireland, not the turtle neck sweater I was hoping to buy!
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In the US:
My Swiss husband asked the sales assistant if they had any men's douche. The poor assistant was speechless. "Douche" is a general term in Switzerland for body soap. |
"JoeCal: That doesn't mean "I'm drunk," it means "I'm pregnant."
It also means drunk (at least in Burgundy) Il est complètement plein (or) bourré! You could have said "je suis pleine comme un oeuf!" (I'm full like an egg!)which means you ate too much. It depends on the context... "Pleine" for pregnant is ONLY for animals, never say that about a woman! Elle est "enceinte" not "pleine". :-) |
Upon arrival at a hotel.
"Je suis M. Block. Je suis un reservation". ((I)) |
As a way of repaying some medical school lones, my doctor spent some time on a Navajo reservation. She was trying out her Navajo on a woman and said something she thought was harmless, but which really meant that the woman was going to die.
The patient, however, realized what was going on and just began laughing. |
My husband & I took Italian lessons prior to our trip to Rome. First night he went to the local shop to get some wine, cheese & bread. He asked the nice young girl for some "vino, formaggio & pene". She laughed and went to get her father. He came out and asked what it was that my husband wanted. He repeated the request and the man told him "No signor, you want PANE, not pene. Pane is the bread and pene is, how do you say it, the p****!"
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And 2nd story. Daughter in France, meeting lots of people, talking politcs. They ask her about voting for Clinton or Obama and she explains that this is just the "preliminaire". She then finds out this means "foreplay".
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Coco,
When I lived with a French family outside Beauvais, they used to joke that a newly rich neighbor was "bourré de fric." Does that mean he was "drunk with money" or similar? The phrase stuck with me, although I have seldom heard it since. Thanks! |
BT, hope you don't mind me answering your question...
I've come across that phrase quite a lot. Bourré basically means full, crammed or stuffed, so the expression means "stuffed with money", i.e. loaded. |
>>And 2nd story. Daughter in France, meeting lots of people, talking politcs. They ask her about voting for Clinton or Obama and she explains that this is just the "preliminaire". She then finds out this means "foreplay".<<
Well, that's one way of describing the primaries... :-D Lee Ann |
hanl tu es bourré(e)de talent, you are right!
This evening we went to la fête de la Musique ((8))in Dijon and it was bourré de monde! \:D/ \:D/ |
Thanks coco! It's the fête de la musique here in Brussels too, but I'm not out enjoying the festivities as am too tired (am 36 weeks pregnant - mais pas pleine bien sûr ;))
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Wow 36 weeks pregnant! The baby (girl or boy?)should be here soon, congratulations!!! =D>
Take care |
Congratulations Hanl. I had my baby in Brussels last year.
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As a summer student in Montpellier, the locals knew that we were supposed to be speaking French and never let us off the hook. Some of the kids were not fluent and it was too funny..one asked ou est la gare...but pronounced it GAYRE (guerre) which of course means war, and the lady went on and on about oh Dieu, we're at war??? SO funny. I posted my trip report with this story, but it's good...two weeks ago in rural France I sent my husband to get 2 pizzas...a trois (3) fromage ...a mixture of 3 cheeses, all local, and a Margharita. He came back with 3 cheese pizzas and a margarita. We had enough for 12 people. Not to mention the time he asked for a WC and everyone in the place starting howling. I have no idea what he said, but it must have been good. He's better with maps than language.
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Prior to leaving for France, I had foolishly decided to weed my garden one last time. By the time I arrived, I had a peculiar rash and problems breathing. At the hospital, I tried to explain that I had "poussin ivy", until I realized that "fish ivy" wasn't quite the issue. It appears that poison ivy is not native to France, and everyone looked at me in confusion. I then went into pantomime mode and made digging motions, explaining "le jardin." At that point, the new doctor who'd come in reassured me that I was not going to die, but if I did - France was a civilized country and they would NOT bury me in the garden!!
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hanl, Congratulations! Please let us know if it's a boy or girl. (I think I thought you were/are a male!!)
Lawchick, I remember when you had Christina. I hope all is well. How time flies! |
I meant to say smile to my waiter who was not his usual upbeat, and I, "qui parles Français comme une vache espagnole"**said mouse. He started laughing knowing I spoke little French so he translated to everyone. What joy it brought to the dining crowd and seemd much more relaxd.
** The expression in France is directed at one who speaks poor French. |
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