Most embarrassing moments using a foreign language

[Iasius]

I thought I'd retrieve part of my my recent post from the SF/F forum and ask you. What's your most embarrassing moment when speaking in a foreign language?

To quote from my post:

I spent a year at an American high school myself, though I don't think I had too many blunders myself. One exception though: I once told my English teacher after receiving what I thought was an unfair grade "You cheated on me" instead of "You cheated me." Not an especially egregious mistake I think for someone not entirely familiar with the language, but my face turned immediately red within seconds after I realized what I'd said and remained that way for some time.

Fortunately by now, that's mostly an amusing anecdote for me.

 

[TheBrew]

Every day in my Italian 1 class... good thing all I have left is my final.

 

[WillsBabe]

I know precisely 2 words of Polish. One is "good morning", the other is "thank you". First day there, I bought some post cards, received my change from the girl and thanked her by saying "good morning." She laughed at me. Heartily. And, I felt, a little unkindly.

 

[Misfit Toy]

I once dated a young lady from Denmark who was travelling the US one summer. We were saying our goodbyes when she told me that she wished I would come to Denmark and "knock her up".

It was quite a while before a mutual friend informed me that she meant "visit her at home" (knock on her door).

 

[Goliath]

I don't have a personal example, but such misunderstandings recently played a small but significant role in Canadian federal politics.

When Canada's Conservative government announced its plans to cut federal funding for the arts, the arts community in Quebec retaliated with a YouTube video entitled Culture en peril/Culture in Danger.

This is now seen as one of the most successful political advertisements in Canadian history. It may, in fact, have cost the Conservatives the most recent federal election.

 

[AdAstra]

I told a female colleague: "Je suis en chaleur" (I'm in heat) instead of "j'ai chaud" (I'm warm). She replied with "I'm sorry, I can't help you with that."
It was (more or less) intentional though, but it's fun to be able to get away with things like that.

 

[Daneel]

Nothing too bad, fortunately. In my life, I've travelled to Europe on two separate occasions and I've been able to get by fairly well on English alone.

When I was in high school, however, I went on a trip with some other students (and a few teachers, who had organized the whole thing) to France and Italy. I had stopped studying French a few years earlier, as it was never really my best subject. Needless to say, my French was quite rusty, but I thought I could remember a few phrases. I was with some older students and we went to (IIRC) the Arc de Triomphe. 17-year olds could get in for free, so I tried telling the person in the booth that I was seventeen. What I should have said, I believe, was, "Je suis dix-sept" (or something like that), but I left out the "suis" -- so basically, I was saying, "I 17, I 17". After that, one of my friends asked me if I sank someone's battleship.

Like I said, nothing too embarrassing, thankfully, but a bit of a "d'oh!" moment.

 

[AdAstra]

What's even worse is that it should be "j'ai dix-sept ans" and not "je suis..."

 

[trekkiedane]

Somehow I got the word "purse" out of my mouth when I meant "wallet" ... Did get a laugh though!

 

[Daneel]

What's even worse is that it should be "j'ai dix-sept ans" and not "je suis..."

So I would have been wrong either way. Outstanding!

This is why I stopped taking French after ninth grade (although, there are some differences between the French spoken in Canada and the French spoken in France -- I wonder if that had anything to do with my confusion).

 

[Stiletto]

In French I answered someone's "Thank you" with "Very much"

Still bugs me every once in a while. It was so dumb!

 

[Zeta]

Back in 1990, I spent a summer in the Dominican Republic in a Spanish immersion program. I lived with a large family for eight weeks and on our first night we were sitting around the kitchen table and the mother of the family asked what I did for a living in the US. I replied "Computer." Due to the way I said it, the family heard con puta. I couldn't understand why the kids all screamed with laughter and the parents turned red. Once my Spanish got a little better, I learned what con (with) puta (prostitute) meant....boy, was I embarrassed

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Every day in my Italian 1 class... good thing all I have left is my final.

Italiano non è troppo male. Infatto, puo essere divertimento.

Probably the most embarrassing thing for me is when I ran into an Italian professor from a previous semester.

I was so excited to say hi to her and show that I had learned so much more Italian than when I was in her class.

I ran up to her, planning to say "Hi, how are you" (Ciao, come stai?). Instead, I said "Ciao, come se dice" (Hi, how do you say"). Realizing my mistake, I immediately froze and forgot everything I had learned in Italian. So much for that

 

[archeryguy1701]

I took 2 years of German, but was never very good at remembering words, much less reading and pronouncing them correctly. One day, we were talking about favorite hobbies. I wanted to say that I enjoyed bogen schießen (the 'ie' sounds like a long e), or bow shooting. Instead, I said bogen scheißen (the "ei" sounds like a long i), or bow shitting. The only thing more embarassing than once I figured it out was that before hand, everyone (teacher included) were laughing their asses off, and no one would tell me for a couple days what I really said.

 

[Lookingglassman]

I was in Barcelona Spain and went to a McDonalds and tried to order my meal in Spanish. The cashier was laughing at me and told me she spoke English.

 

[JimCasy]

This isn't so much embarrassing as just kind of funny...

I was at the bar with a couple friends and this drunk Hispanic guy came and sat down next to me in our booth, so we were trying to make conversation with him, but he kept trying to put his hand on my thigh. The first couple times, I was trying to be nice, you know, "Hey man, I have a boyfriend, that's not cool," but after that didn't work, I finally yelled, "Tengo un novio!" at him and he looked really startled and got up and left.

Another time, I went up to the bar to get a pitcher, and there was a group of Hispanic guys at the table next to it, and I saw one of the guys kept looking at me, and I caught, "Get her number" in Spanish come from the table a couple times, so finally I just turned around and grinned at the guy and was like, "So, are you too scared to get my number?" and he just blushed and turned away. He was really shy, it was cute. He asked me to dance later.

 

[Major Chord]

I've never really spoken French outside of class, so I really don't have any flubbs that weren't part of the learning experience. However, after dating a German exchange student...her English wasn't the best when I first met her, let's just say. We both speak French (she is way more fleuent than me, mind you), so I was attempting to carry on a conversation with her, en Francais. I forgot how to say a word (can't remember what), and she asked me in English, " Cat stole your thong?". She meant "Cat got your toungue"...I understood what she meant, but I still burst out laughing. I had to explain it to her...she thought it was funny too.

A second good story comes from my 8th grade French teacher, who, while staying abroad with a host family, asked why they don't put preservatives in their jelly (which, in France, is pretty common, I guess). She asked; "Pourquoi est-ce vous ne prennez pas des preservatives dans votre confiture?" ( or something to that effect) Apparently, the word "preservitif" in French means condom, so she asked "Why don't you put condoms in your jelly?", or something to that effect. She didn't understand why all the others at the dinner table were shooting food out of their mouths...

 

[freak]

Well this has nothing to do with foreign language but it does have something to do with sign language. I had a sign language class in college and we learned to sign. Well as I was doing the sign for the letter "d", I accidentally raised my middle finger instead of my index finger. Suffice to say, that was EXTREMELY embarrasing cause A)the teacher's mouth dropped thirty feet to the floor and B)the whole freaking class laughed their asses off @ me and my screw-up. So not so good memories right there.

 

[ed629]

Something close to it, when I was taking LEO training we had to take a week of spanish. I'm fluent in spanish... yet I was told I was saying things incorrectly. What we were being taught was a very formal way of saying everything. Instead of saying "What happened?" or "What's going on?" in spanish, we were taught "You, tell me what is happening here?" or "You need to tell me what is going here."

Anyway, were doing DUI\Sobriety tests... one was the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus where you have the suspect follow your finger, eyes, etc. Well anyway we were told to say "Sigue mi dedo con los jotos.".... I burst out laughing, he said follow my finger with the fags\homos... he should of said 'ojos'.

Even though he made the mistake.... I got punished... was ordered to do a 6 mile run because I laughed...

 

[Danoz]

I thought I'd retrieve part of my my recent post from the SF/F forum and ask you. What's your most embarrassing moment when speaking in a foreign language?

To quote from my post:

I spent a year at an American high school myself, though I don't think I had too many blunders myself. One exception though: I once told my English teacher after receiving what I thought was an unfair grade "You cheated on me" instead of "You cheated me." Not an especially egregious mistake I think for someone not entirely familiar with the language, but my face turned immediately red within seconds after I realized what I'd said and remained that way for some time.

Fortunately by now, that's mostly an amusing anecdote for me.

I studied Japanese. I told a woman her baby was "scary" when I meant to say "cute." The words are quiet similar: "kowai" means scary and "kawai" means cute. Luckily she didn't take offense and recognized what I was trying to say (and politely, actually very politely corrected me)-- nevertheless I was embarrassed!