What's your most embarrassing language mistake?

Ok, first of all sorry if this has been done already!

My parents moved to France about six years ago but didn't know the language prior to moving out there. They told me a story that made me chuckle the other day about their first time in France, when they were looking for a hotel.
They saw a big sign saying "Hotel de Ville" (which actually means town hall in French) and decided to go in. My mum said the woman behind the reception desk looked totally confused when my mum went in and asked (in her very broken French) if they had a bedroom.

What are other people's stories about linguistic mishaps?

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Reply 1

qwertyuiop1993

Original post by digforfire

My friend wanted to tell our hosts that his neck hurt, "J'ai mal au cou" but what he actually said was "J'ai mal au cul" - My arse hurts...

They couldn't stop laughing at him, especially seeing as he kept pointing to his neck while repeating "My arse hurts" solemnly.

EDIT: My native French tutor told us her most embarrassing mistake: When she was still learning English as a teen she went to her host family and asked, "Where is the cheese rape?" What she meant to say was "cheese grater" (râpe à fromage)

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 2

JesusIsMyHomeboy

Not that bad but my friend said she 'smoked her room' instead of 'cleaned her room' in her German oral exam. Apparently she got a couple of funny looks.

Reply 3

Trixy.Sam

In my spanish oral at GCSE my teacher and I were on the topic of favourite movies. I said mine was Moulin rouge. She asked me, oh what is your favourite song from the movie...BUUTT i thought she said who was your favourite singer (the words song/singer are quite similar in spanish)! So i said Ewan Mcgregor, and she looked at me like i was such an idiot!!

Thanks for the neg guys :smile:

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 4

Airel

When I went to germany, I asked if something was freedom instead of free.

Reply 5

supernova92

Talking about the play that we had read in my german A2 oral exam. And constantly referring to the main carachter as a HE when it was a WOMAN. I only realised when my teacher told me AFTER the exam..
fml. I was so nervous haha :/

Reply 6

superwolf

A guy I knew in Russia wrote a note to the person he was living with attempting to say he'd cleaned the floor, but actually saying 'I pissed in the field.' :mmm:

Reply 7

Planar

Mine probably amounts to complete mispronunciations of names, eg Camus and Nietzsche

Reply 8

TheDustyKid

At the end of my Japanese lesson I was supposed to say "Can I pay you now?", or, "Ima, haraemasu ka" to my teacher but, by mistake, I said "ima, hairemasu ka?" which is "Can I enter you now?"

Needless to say she was taken aback, but the doorbell rang before she had time to reply. I didn't realise what I said until she left and I sat "fml"-ing and hoping the floor would swallow me up.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 9

Carnationlilyrose

My best friend at school bet all of us that she would say in her A level German oral, 'I love all ball games, especially sex.' She went through with it, except that she got the word for sex wrong and used the word for grammatical gender instead, resulting in complete bafflement from the teacher instead of the response she'd been hoping for. We agreed in the end to pay up, since she'd genuinely intended to do it. I don't remember how much we paid her, but she made enough for a good night out. (This was a long, long time ago! I'm much more responsible now!)

Reply 10

Anatheme

I used to say "smashed potatoes" instead of "mashed potatoes". :holmes:

Reply 11

The Dark Lord

In my GCSE French oral I said 'I have a big dog' when asked where I lived.

failblog.org

Reply 12

georgia

I used to get 'fish' and 'peaches' mixed up all the time in Italian - 'pesce' and 'pesche' - and it's something I'm so conscious about that it still comes out wrong at markets (but in no other context) - SO embarrassing :frown:

Reply 13

chinaberry

Second week of Y12, German vocab test. I put "durchfall" instead of "durchbruch".

I think he gave me a half mark.

Oh and with the people I was staying with this summer in mid conversation, "Wollen Sie bald abhauen?"..."do you want to retire soon"...

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 14

lauren--c

A German guy in a club asked me if I was single and I said yes. Weeks later I realised he had actually asked if I was easy.

Reply 15

thegodofgod

In a German writing homework in year 8 about the weather during a holiday, I wrote "Das Wetter war schwul", instead of "Das Wetter war schwül" - turns out 'schwul' means 'gay' and 'schwül' means 'humid'.

FML.

Reply 16

Ensam_Varg

Said to my swedish friend if she wanted to come get chocolate from the shop. It came out asking her if she wanted to get a baby.

Reply 17

Anatheme

Original post by qwertyuiop1993

Haha smashed potatoes sounds better!

Also I notice you're from Brittany?! I love Brittany! :colondollar:

A little snapshot I took while at 'La Fête du Blé' in Pleudihen-sur-Rance :smile:

http://qwertyuiop1993.deviantart.com/art/Fete-du-ble-258793880

You have to admit there isn't much difference between a mashed potatoe and a smashed potatoe anyway! And huzzah for Brittany! I'm currently wearing shoes with the Gwenn Ha Du on them :proud:

Reply 18

astroju

When I was still learning English, I didn't know how how to say "rapé" in English (means "grated"), so I originally thought "fromage rapé" would be "raped cheese" :colondollar:

Reply 19

username457532

In Spanish I meant to say 'I have three hens' by using the word 'pollo' of chicken and makinging it feminine. My teacher looked shocked and told me that I'd instead used a very rude word for penis...

When I did work experience in the French department of my old school on poor year 7 said 'I do my dog' rather than 'I play with my dog'. When I laughed and told her about her mistake she went bright red. Bless her.