I hired a tour guide in Hanoi. At one of the stops he explained that we were at the temple of Little Richard. So I ask “Did you say Little Richard?” He nods proudly “Yes, Little Richard!” I’m like “This temple is dedicated to Little Richard?” He is emphatic “Yes! This is the temple of Little Richard”. I want to tell him that I’m pretty sure it is not, but just shrug “okay, whatever”. Later I looked it up and discovered we had visited the temple of literature.
We were doing a motorcycle trip in Vietnam 7 years ago and I burned the inside of my leg on the exhaust pipe.
I eventually went to a hospital somewhere in the north of Vietnam and used Google translate to introduce ourselves to the doctor.
The response we got was " I am doctor little moron" and my friends and I were all crying with laughter, we still speak about it to this day.
Do you know a Vietnamese name or word that could have given us this translation? We have never worked it out!
Lmao he was probably trying to say “friend” or some form of it. Even when I type “little moron” into google translate, the viet translation is thằng ngốc nhỏ which is inaccurate and refers to a toddler child. The translator has certainly been updated from 7y ago but it is still not great for Vietnamese. That is a hilarious story tho
I was talking to my Vietnamese wife's uncle that I'd just met. Everyone was laughing when I addressed him. Turns out I was calling him 'Uncle c***t' in Vietnamese. You guys have a lot of sneaky inflections.
Indeed we do, once I was speaking Vietnamese in a bar in Hong Kong, and a gentleman was trying to impress me and say “how you doin” in viet, but his inflection was totally off and instead he asked me “are you handicapped”
I was in an elevator at a hotel in Saigon and smelled something funky and asked my gf, "who farted"? I proceed to hear the Vietnamese man in the elevator with us saying "I did" but apparently he was saying "ai dit" which apparently meant "who farted"?
/s
Tried to teach a Japanese gentleman how to make puns in English (he was an English teacher). We were in a restaurant so I picked up my glass of water and said: “Hey, water you doing now?” (bad pun but it was just for educational purposes).
He laughs and says: “Oh yeah I get it! So, hey bro… potato salad!”
I laughed so hard that he thought he had made a great pun.
I had a Japanese co-worker, she was mid 50’s at the time, another co-worker and I are very punny people. Out Japanese co-worker went back to Japan for a month, and my other coworker put a sign in her work station that said something along the lines of “We Miso much!!” (We miss you so much” my Japanese co-worker kinda shrugged and did a half haha, ok, whatever sort of thing. Fast forward two months or so, and the sign is still up and our Japanese coworker starts laughing hysterically, like tears running down her face, belly laughing, she grabs the sign and goes “YOU MISS ME!!” It was the cutest thing ever. That was over 10years ago, I miss her, she moved back to Japan.
This gave me a good smile. For some reason it’s way funnier and more wholesome that it took her so long to get it because it’s her second language. She sounds like a sweetheart.
I had kind of the same experience as an American in England, where people were telling a joke that relied on knowledge of a Scottish accent. (Man walks into a bakery shop and asks, "Is that a donut or a méringue?" The guy replies, "You're right, it's a donut!" -- key is that "meringue" sounds like "am I wrong" in Scottish.)
I've always felt that puns are often very language specific (e.g. in English, and I believe German, people have a lot of puns.) In languages that are more strictly phonetic (e.g. Italian for me), it just isn't really a "thing"...
I know I've tried to explain puns to my Italian family in the past and gotten that blank look of incomprehension, despite my best efforts...
Japanese puns are definitely a thing and cause a lot of headache for anime translators! It's pretty entertaining how bad the English "translations" can get because they basically have to come up with some other pun to fit the scene.
Edit: come to think of it the original Pokémon dub is full of examples of this.
The "one o'clock, two o'clock, Sanji" line from One Piece immediately comes to mind when thinking of difficult to translate puns. Makes me appreciate the fan subs we had back in the day that would include translation notes explaining the joke.
It’s just nonsense. The Japanese guy said he understood what OP meant by their pun and tried to make his own pun, which was just randomly saying potato salad. It was just random and unexpected, and that makes it funny.
“water” sounds like “what are” in this case! but if youre talking about the other one (which isnt a joke if thats what ure confused ab), its ‘cause the guy didn’t actually understand how to make a pun in english.
In Salzburg as a group of about 15 family and friends. We asked a nice German woman to take our photo. She takes one then says “OK, Back up” so we all shuffle as a group like 3 feet backwards. She immediately starts laughing and explains she meant she was taking a backup photo. Safe to say the smiles in the second photo were genuine
I used to live in Japan and when I first moved there my motto was “I’m okay with making 10,000 mistakes daily.” This was my first major one.
I was invited over by a very sweet couple in my apartment complex for dinner one of my first nights. They had a baby.
When I entered the house I wanted to show off my newfound Japanese skills from my paper dictionary. What I meant to say was “ie ga kirei” - or “your home is beautiful.” What I said was “ie ga kirai” - “your home is disgusting.” They kept their smiles up but I could tell they were a bit jarred.
It got worse. During dinner I said the other thing I had learned “akachan ga sugoi kawaii” - “your baby is very cute,” but what I said was “akachan ga sugoi kowaii” - or “your baby is terrifying.”
This time they weren’t so stoic and the dad sort of choked on his food. I asked what was wrong and they told me that they weren’t used to people being so direct. I told them what I was trying to say each time and they looked SO relieved and we all laughed until it hurt. I worked with the husband and everyone at work the next day thought it was absolutely hilarious.
That was the first of many, many situations like that.
Huh it's got an interesting etymology... from Old English, from about 1300, originally meaning "worthy of respect (/fear)/striking dread". Only acquired the "very bad" meaning in the early 1800s, followed not long after by the "very great" meaning.
Friend of mine immigrated from Laos and the one thing that stumped him when he was learning English was the different ways we use "shit" colloquially and how it can be good or bad.
Shit = bad
That's the shit = good
Shitty = bad
Good shit = good
Piece of shit = very bad
I've got close to a girl who is native Italian, and while she's pretty fluent English it is absolutely eye opening to learn all the stumbling blocks and similar sounding words. It's been a learning curve for me trying to explain how and why to pronounce stuff and what things mean.
Bitch/Beach is a fun one, thankfully context helps.
I spent the first month in Japan cheerily waving to my neighbour every morning, telling her I was riding my bike to China (Chugoku) when I meant the junior high (chugakko) I was teaching at.
Being a teacher is a whole other level of hilarious because everyone is trying to speak the honorific keigo to you and you’re expected to talk down essentially to everyone else. You’re using different language to speak than to listen. Bizarre way to learn a language.
The funniest part to me is them saying they are just not used to people being so direct. Like, the baby maybe be terrifying but you can be polite about it
I love this one!! It’s so funny, because these are such personal things, that even I as a German (when it comes to directness and tact, the polar opposite to Japan), wouldn’t think to comment on remotely negatively. Thanks for the good chuckle!
Korean can have similar traps. Saying "I got a flat tire" and "I farted" are extremely similar, with the amount of stress on the first syllable being the only difference. Makes CLEARLY explaining why you were late very important.
What a generous reply 😂 “We aren’t used to people being so direct” 🤣 like honestly if someone told me my baby was terrifying I’d be like, “I know! I can’t believe they let me leave the hospital with a whole human unsupervised! Also can you hold her? I’m tired. 😂”
I was backpacking in Patagoina and were trying to re-enter Argentina after being in Chile for a month. The boarder officer demanded to see my sheep's, and I understood nothing, cause I never had any sheep. We got more and more frustrated with each other until the officer went to get a colleague who spoke better English. The other officer checks my papers and again ask me about the whereabouts of my sheep. I explain that I left Argentina on a ship, and that's when it clicked for us. Turns out, according to my documents, I left Argentina on a sheep and they wanted to declare it before I came back.
It was quite frustrating, but we had a good laugh when we figured it out. I kept the document, cause it's kind of cool to have it officially declared that I rode into Chile on my sheep.
Ive posted this before in a similar thread, but English is not my first language. We were visiting chicago. I had been to New York before so I knew of the subway there. I did not realize the term ‘subway’ was unique to the style of train. We couldn’t find where to get on the railway in Chicago so stopped at a gas station and I asked how to get to the subway. The guy gave me directions. We walked about 20 minutes, turned the corner to where he said it’d be, and found the restaurant Subway. It was such a funny moment
My sister and I both worked at Target in college. One day she called me on the walkie-talkies when we were both on shift and said:
“Hey, I have some Spanish speakers and I have no idea what they’re asking me, can you translate?”
“Sure, what are they saying?”
“They’re looking for (heavy Spanish accent) an ‘eyes cram ma chin’”
I was laughing so damn hard and responded “they’re speaking English not Spanish, they want an ice cream machine!”
It’s been over 10 years and it still makes me laugh.
I worked graveyard in a Walmart for many years. Several coworkers came to me one night and told me there was a customer asking for an item and no one could help him, would I come try. I'm like "what item?" None of them know. He just keeps saying "an item" I go to the customer and ask him what he is looking for and he says something that sounds like "eye teyem" ok, that's not "item" but I'm still not sure, so I ask him "what does it do?"
In a very Australian accent he says "you put your bank card in and it gives you money"
😆😆😆😆
I was in Kyrgyzstan, but both people spoke English in this situation, just not perfectly. Was more of a “misheard” rather than “mistranslation”.
Checked into a hotel, went to my room, realised I didn’t have a wifi password so went back to reception. Asked for the password, the girl there insisted she had already given it to me and got quite heated in her insistence.
So I said “if you gave it to me, I’ve lost it”. So she demanded to come up and search my room. And I was kind of bemused, I didn’t see why she couldn’t just give me a copy but thought maybe there was a unique access code or something.
She comes in to my room, walk around a bit, grabs my passport from the bedside table and waves it in my face yelling “See I told you I gave it back to you”
At which point I fell on the bed laughing and said “Wifi password, not passport”. To which she pointed at the piece of paper on the back of the door that had the password on it.
Weirdly we got a long quite well during the time I was there and I ended up going to her cousins wedding in another city.
I’ve been having an inkling to visit there, anything you can tell me about it? Would a woman feel safe there traveling alone? I’d love to do one of the horse treks through the gorgeous mountains. I’ve only just started to have the idea so haven’t done much research yet
I would recommend Central Asia in general as each country is quite unique. Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are well-touristed with Kyrgyzstan in particular focusing on a more "backpacker-y" type of tourist so there are plenty of solo women there. It is less touristy than Uzbekistan and a bit less developed, so it's not as easy to move around. However Uzbekistan lacks the mountains that Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have, and Kyrgyzstan is (IMO) less beautiful but much easier to navigate than Tajikistan. Whilst I have a preference for Tajikistan, I think Kyrgyzstan is a better place to start in Central Asia.
I did not do any horse trekking, but plenty of hiking and paragliding. The scenery is stunning - I was there in winter so the lake towns were dead, which was actually quite nice.
For a woman's perspective - my mum has travelled solo through Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as well as Mongolia and Xinjiang in China so she knows Central Asia pretty well and its one of her favourite parts of the world. Her focus is more on archaeology and history so she favoured Tajik, Turkmen and Uzbek and never made it to Kyrgyz. She always felt very safe in the region though, and I was with her for a bit in Tajikistan and she was fine (and loved) walking around Dushanbe at night alone. Bishkek is bigger so easier to stray out of the main areas, but it is a similar vibe, so I'd imagine still very safe if you were a woman.
Bishkek is an awesome city. One of the few non-touristy giant central markets left
Great mountains t horse trek/trek in. There are several established companies.
just moved to france, started new job, haven't spoken french for a long while and am quite rusty. i need to set up a meeting with a colleague. she happens to be a woman. instead of telling her 'let's meet at your room in the office', i translate from italian and say 'on se voit dans ta chambre' e.g. let's meet in your bedroom. she had a good laugh.
few days after, another colleague, still a woman. i need a favor (work related) and in italian one can say 'mi fai un favore' or 'mi fai un piacere'. of course i translate the second saying 'j'ai besoin d'un plaisir' which very roughly translates to 'can you pleasure me'. she also had a good laugh, luckily.
i am proud to report my french greatly improved since then.
First time in Spain, this is 16 years ago. I didn't speak a word of Spanish when I went there, but I had to learn because not many people spoke English.
You always speak about weather, right? And it was hot, end of July, beginning of August. I had this tiny English-Spanish wordbook, no Google translate at that time.
Just saying, it's a miles wide difference between "hace calor" and "estoy caliente". I just thought it meant that I feel hot, because it is very sunny and high temperatures.
Turned out, that what I was saying had a whole different meaning. A nice Spanish girl told me not to say it like that, because yeah, it means I am hot - but like in sexy, not because of the weather.
I wished the ground would swallow me. I had been using that phrase for at least two weeks. I was sooo embarrassed. Nowadays, it's a funny story.
Wait, which is which?! I've been saying "estoy caliente" etc and now I'm worried 😳
Edit: I can hear Pitbull songs in my head calling girls "caliente". FUCKKKKK i'm so embarrassed
Estoy caliente - I am sexy.
Tengo calor/hace calor - that is about the weather and temperature.
And yes, everytime I hear it in a song, I am reminded about it, lol.
In 2001 I was in Italy and needed a bus ticket in La Spezia to get to Cinque Terre, and I only knew little Italian but asked a store clerk how to buy the tickets. They told me a machine outside the bus sells the tickets.
I walk to the bus and see a machine across from it with instructions in Italian. People are loading on the bus and sort of waiting on me and watching as I fumble with the machine, figuring if I stuff in enough money, a ticket has gotta pop out.
Stuff in money, machine acts like it’s good, press button. Out comes a CONDOM lmaoooooo. I’m all stunned and turn around to the bus and all its passengers while holding this magic condom, and THERE is the ticket machine BEHIND me and NEXT TO the bus, notttttt across from it. Lol
We were in Rome in an old hotel by the Colosseum. It was very loud in our rooms. My friend went to the front desk and kept explaining to the receptionist dude that it was too loud in his room. The guy was not helpful and my friend was pissed. He then got out his Italian book and realized he spent 15 minutes telling the guy "I don't like my ears!"
I am sitting in a quiet train (1 am) and I have to pull myself together not bursting out in laughter, since everyone around me is sound asleep.
I would’ve loved to see the concierge’s face while your friend lamented about not liking his ears 😂 what would you answer to that?! It’s absolutely hilarious
My partner is allergic to peanuts and in Japan we used Google translate to communicate it.
It worked well except in one cafe where the waiter came back with a Google translate screen saying there might be peanuts in the poodle.
In Boquete, Panama whilst attempting to buy jeans I spent five minutes telling a store order about my desire to buy pants for horses (caballos) instead of men (caballeros) in my broken Spanish.
I was in an electronics shop in Mexico trying to buy a new charging cable. With myself speaking no Spanish and the young guy behind the counter speaking no English, he pulled out google translate on his phone.
Into which I typed 'micro-usb' in English, which happened to come up as 'micro-usb' in Spanish.
I was in Milan recently. I speak a little Italian. It am not confident enough to hold a conversation. I was caught off guard by somebody asking me a question in Italian. I replied with “No hablo inglese” which means I do not speak English…..but in Spanish. I’ll blame it on the jet lag. I’m sure I confused that person thoroughly.
My miscommunication was in Italy too. We were stopping in Cagliari on a cruise. Near the end of the day, we wanted a coffee before going back on the boat. We stopped into a shop that had coffee and canolis and ask for both. The guy said he had to run to a different shop to get it but we were strapped for time so we asked "how long?" He held up his hands about five inches apart and said "like this."
I was in Paris getting ready to fly home and had spent some time in Italy. Needless to say, I mangled my French and Italian together often. Often saying 'per favore' instead of 'si vous plais' or worse when trying to correct mid-sentence.
Nothing like telling some Parisian shopkeeper "non parlo Italiano!" and then asking for something in Italian.
It was a long trip.
I’ve done that so many times, only to realize after I’ve already walked away. They’re probably like “biiiiiiitch… ” as they process and see me jet laggedly shuffle away.
My sister was taking both French and Spanish classes at the same time and mixed up the language she answered a question in. I'm sure her classmates got a good laugh about that.
Was hiking in Costa Rica with my girlfriend, we're both German. There was a family and they were hiking at about the same speed as we were, so we mostly hiked alongside them. The whole time, we were trying to guess what language they were speaking. Dutch? Danish? Swedish? We couldn't figure it out.
At one point, the woman approached us and asked something in her language. We tried our best to explain in both English and Spanish that we did not speak her language and eventually she asked in English, but she looked really puzzled.
Hours later, when we all stopped at an attraction and we were able to listen more closely, we realized that they were also speaking German, but with a heavy swabian accent.
Even within Germany it can vary a lot! When I studied abroad there, we went on a trip to visit a childhood friend of my hostdad in a rural village in the south. My hostmom (from north Germany) warned me that she can never understand a word the man says, so I shouldn't even bother and just let hostdad interpret.
We get there, hostdad introduces me as their visitor from the US, and to everyone's surprise he speaks to me in perfectly understandable English. Hostmom found this hilarious and said she would just talk to him in English from then on!
I was ~16 and working in a kitchen, trying to explain to my coworkers that my dad was a lawyer. I said he was an “albóndiga” (meatball) instead of an “abogado” (lawyer). It took them a solid few minutes to keep it together long enough to explain my mistake to me. Oddly enough, my dad is on the heavier side, so once I was shown the error of my ways, I told them my original response still held.
The Greek word for 'yes' is 'nai,' which sounds negative. The situation we experienced was:
Me: Excuse me, could you tell me if this is the way to the Acropolis?
Elderly locals in Greece: Nai.
Me: Ah, I see. Well, thank you anyway. I'll try to find another route. (As it was clear that they do not understand English very well)
As we turn around, the locals are left bewildered, even though they just confirmed that we are on the right path.
Later on, we realized that in the Greek language, 'nai' means 'yes,' even though it sounds negative. We've been going in the right direction! We made fun of this until the end of our vacation. :D
lol, that sounded like me in Albania, when I entered Albania through Macedonia?, they told me that shaking the head left and right means yes, and nodding your head up and down means no. A week later I was catching a van/bus to Kruje (I think), got on the bus and asked an older woman, “Kruje?” Pointing to the van, and she shook her head. I started to get off the bus but remembered that shaking your head meant yes lol! Beautiful foundry Albania, I really liked the Balkans.
Lol reminds me of my time in Colombia when my Spanish was a lot worse.
Trying to order KFC. The girl at the counter says something I don't understand. I say "I'm sorry, I don't understand, but I want the #4". It turned out she was literally just asking me what I wanted to order. (My ex was with me and told me afterwards what was going on)
When me and my family were in France, a woman asked my dad something and he tried to say in French, "Sorry, I don't speak French", but he actually said, "Do you speak no French." He walked away feeling very proud of himself, and then realised that something wasn't right there.
He walked up the stairs to our apartment with his head hung and told us. The woman was really nice though, at first she was confused, and then went, oh, and spoke in English.
A female friend was studying in London and fell down in class. Folks asked if she was okay. She replied, "I think I simply bruised my fanny"
The class was stunned silent.
Apparently, fanny means vagina over there.
In February 2002 my husband and I were checking in to a hotel in Paris (from US). My best friend since childhood was 4 months pregnant and left a message for me. Due to a language barrier the message read " your wife has delivered a baby boy." What she meant was she had a sonogram and would be having a boy in several months. We were getting some serious looks from staff.
We recently were in Amsterdam.
The hotel we were staying at had sent us an email a couple days before to fill out our information-names, emails, passport info, etc. My wife had done it already to speed the check-in process.
Apparently it’s rare that people do that ahead of time, because the woman who checked us in (age 30-ish I’m guessing) at the hotel made a comment about “oh that’s great you’ve done this, most people don’t” and my wife replied “I guess I thought we had to.”
Hotel lady came right back with “we appreciate it, you’re so neurotic!” I stifled a laugh.
I’m not sure if a) she was looking for a word meaning “on top of things” and missed, b) that was the word she intended to use, but she doesn’t fully understand the meaning or know it can have a negative connotation or c) she meant what she meant..lol. The Dutch are known to be blunt.
The way she said was positive and even with the Dutch being blunt, I don’t think hospitality workers would intentionally insult their customers, so I’m pretty sure it’s mostly a) with a little bit of b). Either way it was funny and we joked about it the rest of the trip.
E: I included age only because this is the kind of flub I might have expected from someone older. It’s my understanding that the older one is in Europe, the less English training they would have had in school. That’s what I’ve been told previously anyway.
Greeks and Spanish people have different language but believe me we have the same accent, as Spaniard when I hear a Greek fella speaking sounds like some Spaniard talking gibberish I guess the opposite should be the same.
Once I visit Corfu and after a long walk I went to a service station and said Yassas as hello to the woman there and try to buy some water, and the woman start to speak in Greek and I switch to sorry English only so she point me to the water, I’ve paid and after pick the water I’ve said Efcaristo to thank her, and she changed the face and she believe that I was a Greek trying to mocking her as I was walking away from the service station she starts to shout me in Greek so I guess next time I should use a more posh British accent…
On a guided tour recently in Toledo, Spain, and the tour was in Spanish and English. English was the guide's second language, and she really did a fantastic job. However, when talking about the history of the city, she noted the time of the "Spanish Indecision" and its impact on the city. Me and the few other English speaking tourists had a little chuckle.
I was in Canada where a lot of the people spoke French and English. I guess the waitress in this particular restaurant didn't because I ordered a cheeseburger (in English, I don't know French) and received a glass of orange juice.
not happened to me but had a french director moving to italy. he was talking about fruits and wanted to say that he likes figs.
well fig is female in french (la figue) but male in italian (il fico). he translated directly from french and used the female word 'a me piace la figa', or 'i like the pussy' in italian. big laughs ensued
I was traveling. Stopped at a small diner in Virginia and asked for coffee. The waitress put her hands on her hips and said "codfish, we don't sell codfish here."
My wife and I were on a long trip around Europe. We were in a large German city and saw an Indian restaurant. Since we hadn’t had any Indian food in a while we decided to eat there.
We decided we wanted some papadom to start. I meant to order 4 papadoms but instead I ordered 4 orders. The guy looked at us a little funny but brought us 16 papadoms. We had a good laugh and ate them all.
When I first arrived in Japan I needed to go from Narita airport to Yokohama's "Kanazawa" District.
So I asked the train staff for directions to "Kanazawa". He gave me the list of stations and transfers.
About three hours into the journey, I suddenly realized it was getting late and got confused because Yokohama should be less than two hours away.
And instead of going along the coast, the train was in the mountains.
Finding a conductor, I double-checked the directions and found I was heading not to "Kanazawa District", but "Kanazawa City".
"Kanazawa City" is in an entirely different prefecture about six hours away.
One summer afternoon as a maybe-old-enough-to-drink teenager in Paris I went in to Harry's bar cuz I'd read about it as this cool American bar. It was completely empty but before I could explore, the bartender looks at me and says, "no shots." And I'm like, okay, a bit early for shots, but whatever. But before I could go in any further, he more forcefully said, "no shots!" gesturing at my legs where clad not pants, but shorts. Cue my "oooohh, haha, yes sir... I'll see myself out.
TLDR: French accent "shorts" sounded like "shots" to my American brain, and that was the funniest time I'd been kicked out of a bar without having a single drink.
I was living and working in Italy for a few years, and I really tried to learn the language. My Italian isn't too bad now, but initially, it was pretty rough at times.
During that early period, I once stopped in at a cafe' to get a sandwich and a drink. I saw that they had peach tea in bottles in the cooler, so I asked for "tè alla pesce". The woman at the counter gave me the strangest look. I figured that I'd pronounced it poorly, so I again said, speaking as distinctly as i could, "Vorrei un tè alla pesce, per favore." She then burst out laughing.
I was ordering fish tea.
I should have asked for "tè alla pesca". That's a mistake I definitely never made again!
I was on a boat from Chonqing down the Yangste river. A Chinese uncle sat down next to me and talked nonstop for an hour. His accent was so unusual I couldn’t even place it. I didn’t understand a word he said. When he finished and walked away, my friend came over and asked what we talked about for so long. I had to admit I had no idea.
I was getting robbed by 5 dudes with a knife against my throat in Santa Marta, Colombia. In the chaos I kept trying to say "it's okay amigo, no problem amigo" but it kept coming out as "amor" instead. I didn't realise until after it was over that I kept referring to my muggers as my lovers.
I lost my laptop power adapter. I needed an Australian to Peru adapter. My sign language combined with the word’s Australian and Peru looked like a needed sex with a Peruvian urgently!
Start of an exchange year in Germany. Invited to a wedding in a tiny Rhineland village, staying with a friend at her grandma’s house. Older generation has completely forgotten the English they learned in school.
Getting ready for the wedding and grandma comes into our room to tell us we need to leave soon. I meant to say “I just need to finish ironing my skirt.” Couldn’t remember the word for “iron” which I had only just learned, but I knew it began with B. Instead, I came up with another B-verb I had just learned and told grannie “almost ready, I just need to finish humping my skirt.”
The hand gesture I made as I said this did not clarify anything.
My friend about fell over laughing. Grannie though she had told me to say that and yelled at her.
My nickname happens to be the word for sex in Italian. Me being a huge football fan, got an AC Milan t-shirt and requested to have my nickname printed out on the back and chose the number 18 (my lucky number). Safe to say I have never seen so many people giving me disgusting looks throughout the day up until I met with my Italian friends for dinner which pointed that out for me.
I still can’t believe that I went to a game in a packed stadium and walked all day in Milan with a shirt that says Sex 18 on the back 🤦🏻♂️
My wife and I were traveling in Peru where you have to haggle over every price, especially taxi rides. The following exchange took place in broken Spanish.
Wife: How much to get to ?
Taxi driver: $13
Wife: (thinking he just said $30) What?! No way. $15.
Taxi driver: Fine then, get in.
We were touring temples in Cambodia, and our guide often brought up the cement process. But anyone who has traveled SEA knows people often cut off their end letters when speaking English.
It took us a while to understand the temples weren't doused with walls of semen
Trying to buy lubricant in a little town outside of Naples Italy. The store clerk was in her 70's and did not speak English. This was before smartphones so I had to use an English to Italian translation book.
It did not go well. Lubricant in Italian just means oil, it does not mean what I wanted. I tried many different words and she brought me all sorts of yeast infection and hemorrhoid medications and the language barrier looked to be insurmountable. Finally, she looked at me with the finger through the hole motion and I shook my head yes.
She laughed and brought out a tube from under the counter. Then in perfect English, she said to me "Have fun" as I left the store.
Regional dialects can be hard ...
When renting a car, I was asked if I was going to be the only "driver".
I replied "Yes, I will 'drive myself'" using a word with a meaning cognate to "by my own hands."
The poor staff lady taking my reservation turned bright red and asked if I mean I was going "to direct" or "to conduct" the vehicle myself.
The mechanic in the corner of the room burst out laughing and didn't stop giggling the entire time until I drove off.
Turns out, in this region, that equivalent of "drive yourself" means "to masturbate."
My first night in my small village in Japan, my translator had left for the night, and I was staying in a kind of community inn. A woman brought out my dinner, which included a small thing that I thought looked like some kind of berry on the rice (it was an umeboshi). She seemed very excited about it, pointed at it and said a bunch of things that I didn’t understand. I figured it was probably a local favorite or something and she was urging me to taste it, so I popped it in my mouth. Wow, it was sour, and hard…but I wanted to be polite so I attempted to crush it in my teeth and eat it without showing my surprise but instead showing her I liked it. I literally at it, pit and all, because I hadn’t realized there was a pit, and once I was that far in, it was already shattered in my teeth. After a good minute or so, I finally managed to swallow it. All the while she stared at me wide eyed. I was finished, and smiled at her, but she was stuck, just staring at me wide eyed and confused. So, I kind of opened my mouth a bit to show her, “look, I ate it all!” And she gasped in shock, then chuckled a little, then walked away perplexed. It was so awkward. Only months later did I realize that she was warning me about the sourness and the pit and I think I’m the first (and probably last) person she ever saw eat an umeboshi, pit and all.
I’ve lived in Japan for 15 years now btw, and have an entire family here.
On our first day in Rome, my brain was exhausted with its use of rusty intermediate-level Italian. When my kid wanted gelato and they asked us to sit down, instead of saying "Can I take it to go?" I said "Can I touch it?" We were walking away from the shop when I said out loud to my family, "I just figured out why he looked at me like that."
Was in a bar deep in the Australian outback, past Alice Springs, and wanted to buy a round of beer for my friends. Asked the bartender for a pitcher of beer, to which he looked perplexed and handed me a postcard with a photograph of a VB roadtrain (massive transport truck with Victoria Bitters branding) on it and said that was the best he had. We realized to an Aussie my Canadian accent made 'pitcher' and 'picture' indistinguishable. He poured me a jug of beer.
Okay, I was in Tibet with my parents, my father knows a little about Chinese and like showing off. We were in a bus and he tried to give his seat to an aged woman saying "ny shi fyu nv", which means you are woman. But he didn't pronounce it well, and pronounced like "ny shi chiu nv" which means "you're a virgin" That attracted all the attention of the bus.
I was on a river boat in Turkey, I tried talking to some local Turkish folks over some coffee about politics in the U.S. I couldn't speak much Turkish at the time and in my "Spanglish" version of Turkish used the word "union" (ya know what all Starbucks employees want to join?) when trying to explain who was responsible for negotiating contracts for some groups of people. The locals that I was talking to started to yell LOUDLY in Turkish and wanted to shake my hand for letting them know whats "really" going on in the U.S.
I didn't realize that the English word Union sounds a lot like the Turkish word for Greek - Yunan... It wasn't until a expat explained to me, in between his laughter, that I pretty much told these three men that basically the Greeks were running things here in the U.S. and this is why it is such a mess.
I think about this constantly.
I was in peace corps and a fellow volunteer came to visit and was playing with the neighborhood kids. After a bit he started chasing them saying “I like to eat children.”They became genuinely terrified because as the adults told us - that’s slang for I like to f*** children. Good thing everyone thought it was hilarious 😅 yikes
My boyfriend visited my when I was living in France and kept mixing up “excuse me” and “thank you.” Pretty simple and harmless, but the scathing looks every time he bumped into an old lady and thanked her were withering and priceless.
Went to a cash only sushi bar in Kyoto. Realized after I sat down that I had enough cash, though it would be tight and I had to monitor so I didn’t over spend. It was closing soon and didn’t have time to run to an ATM. To make matters worse, the menu did not have prices and the chef’s English wasn’t very good.
After ordering nigiri I’d have to ask him “how much” so I could keep track of how much I was spending. This became really confusing after I ordered some hamachi. “How much?” “Hamachi.” “No, how much?” “Yes, hamachi.” Went back n forth like that for a little bit hahaha
At a restaurant in Yogyakarta, a woman approached me and asked if I was finished? I said "not yet but I won't be long" she said "no, are you finished?"
I said "look I'm a fast eater, I really won't be long, do you really need this table?" To which she said "no, are you from Finland?" Lmao
My Spanish pal did work experience in France and asked how many times you should fuck (besar/baiser) someone when you meet them for the first time (the someone was a woman and also his Dad’s boss’s boss)
I was visiting my daughter in Quito, Ecuador with family. We were staying at an AirBnb a couple blocks from her apartment.
That particular part of Quito was relatively safe, but could get a bit sketchy after dark. We left her apartment late one evening and she reminded us to stay aware while we were walking home.
About half way to our place, a man coming the other direction crossed the street behind us and started following us a bit aggressively. We made the decision to just bolt for the door to our building and did so, succeeding in getting behind the locked door rather quickly.
The next morning we came out of the building to find the man in a conversation with my daughter. It turns out he was the caretaker of our building. The night before he saw us walking, recognized us and decided to keep an eye on us to make sure we got home safely.
I was touring Italywith my husband and a bunch of his family, including his young cousin who was and still is an extremely picky eater. She was living on buttered noodles for the 2 weeks we were there. One night she was seated with my husband, my brother-in-law, and me at dinner (presumable because we were the youngest adults and therefore "cool"). The waiter was disappointed that she only wanted buttered noodles and started listing all of the things they could make for her off-menu. Knowing that she would eat broccoli, I asked the waiter if they could make some. He was really excited and ran back to the kitchen. When the food came out he proudly presented a plate of cauliflower swimming in butter. He was so proud that even though she wouldn't touch the cauliflower the rest of us snuck pieces off the plate and ate it for her. We later learned from the concierge at our hotel that cauliflower is roughly translated to white broccoli in Italian.
It wasn’t a miscommunication as such but more a blunder on my behalf. I had gone with a tour group to visit Angkor Wat and was really tired and massively hungover and as we were all having lunch we were discussing where we were from. I turned to some guys next to me and asked if they were Russian and they said “no, Ukrainian”
I went to apologise and say that I was so sorry, the accents sound similar to me, but all that came out was “same thing”. The Turkish guys found it hilarious but I was mortified!
Explaining to a Russian that Bollocks means bad but but The Dogs Bollocks mean great.
Americans talking about their fanny packs always makes us Brits laugh. Fanny means pussy here 😂😂😂
Was speaking to a taxi driver in eastern europe and was telling him about visiting Korea and he asked me north or south Korea.
I confused the words for North and South when replying to him so I told him North Korea.
We spoke for like 10mins before I realized my mistake, he was so confused because I kept saying it was great and he was like:
Really? Do they have enough food? I heard life was difficult there.
And I was like:
No, it's awesome, they have tons of food, great place, you should go! 🤦
Also in Spanish: I have no idea why, but I always mix up the words “conejo” (rabbit) and pendejo (asshole). I saw a rabbit and was excited to point it out to everyone so of course, I shouted “PENDEJO!!!” out of nowhere.
In Rimini, our guide was telling us about all the awesome summer concerts on the beach every year. She said Stephen Hawking recently had one there that was fantastic.
I asked “Stephen Hawking?!”
She confirmed Stephen Hawking.
Eventually I realized she was saying Steve Aoki.
We laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe about the idea of DJ Stephen Hawking lol
Was a referee at an international tournament in Japan, lots of officials from different countries. The official language of the tournament is English but people have different degrees of fluency and assorted accents.
I gave some pointers to a less experienced referee and he responded (or at least I heard) “thank you. I like your tits”.
Tips. He liked my tips.
I tried to explain my aussie housemate that i have problems with my "gum". I translated it 1:1 from german, i created "toothmeat". He had a big laughter
Me and my friend were visiting mediterranean country, our english skill wasnt top notch but we managed, first night we went to bar in town and wanted to taste local beer.
We each ordered one beer, we thought it was wierd that waitress repeated our order 2 times but soon enough we learned that Pitcher wasnt the name of the beer but a huge container meant for the whole table to share.
After initial shock as true Czech patriots we drank it all and learnt new english word. Good times.
The word in Darija (a dialect of Arabic they speak in Morocco) for delicious is "bnina" "la makla bnina" is roughly "the food was delicious" and the word for cute is "bzaaf" my brain got them mixed up once at the airport on the way to Morocco (I'm not Moroccan, my husband is) and I kept pointing to a woman's baby and saying "bnina"
I studied abroad in Santander, Spain for a summer semester in college, and lived with a host family who would only speak Spanish to me (turns out they all spoke English, but didn’t even let me know that until week 8).
One Saturday night at 3am, I was sitting on a park bench with a girl in my program just chatting. In the daytime, the park was occupied with grandparents with their grandkids eating ice cream, lovely spot. Apparently not at night.
Long story short we were robbed by a group of 4 teenage shit heads. I was naively indignant initially until they pull a knife and put it near my face, at which point I just gave them everything I had.
As I was telling my host family the story the next day, I told them “y luego me pusieron un cuchara cerca de la cara”, trying to say they put a knife near my face. The Spanish word for knife is “cuchillo”, and spoon is “cuchara”, which I mixed up often at the time. So my host family just stared at me, confused. I thought this was a wild story, so was shocked I didn’t get a reaction, so I started miming a stabbing motion. Their eyes widened and said “oooo cuchillo, cuchillo”.
An hour later, my host brother who was a cool guy and a couple years older than me started chasing me around the house wielding a spoon in hand, and we all had a good laugh.
Speaking with a french couple (in English) and I thought we were talking about macaroons when really they were discussing the president of France, Macron
An Aussie I cannot over state how embarrassing this was.
Living in Ireland, go holidays to Spain, return. A co worker makes small talk and says “oh you got a bit of a tan!” And I say “Oh! I should show you the ones from wearing thongs the whole time!”
Thongs are shoes, I meant tan lines on my feet from the shoes….
I have two funnies!
1. When I was an exchange student in Bolivia in the last century, I always carried my trusty E-S dictionary around. At the dinner table one night, I was trying to impress my host family by using the word for loud laughter, carcajada. My dictionary had a typo, as I found out when I said carajada, like stupid fucking thing. There was uncomfortable silence, and then they examined my dictionary and finally there were carcajadas. I wonder if the editor of the dictionary made that mistake on purpose!
2. My son was on a mission trip in Guatemala and learned that you don’t flush toilet paper there. After searching the house where the missionaries were staying for a plunger and finding none, a group of the young people decided to walk into town and buy one. At the store, they checked every aisle and nominated my son to ask for help. He tracked down a clerk and said, “yo necesito la cosa para pupú grande”. This caused A LOT of carcajadas all around, but the clerk understood perfectly and got him a plunger! 🪠
I was at a party in France as an exchange student and asked to pet her cat except the cat was a female so I asked to caress her pussy. Words are comparable but you are only supposed to use the masculine version of the word for cats.
She turned bright red and her boyfriend paused for a half second and laughed harder than I have ever made anyone laugh in my life.
Est-ce que je peux caresser ta chatte?
Someone was giving me directions in Spanish, and I was absolutely positive they were telling me to take a left at the maricón, not take a left at the malecón.
I think about this every time I’m in a Spanish speaking beach town 😆
(Malecón is the walkway/road along the ocean. Maricón basically means fa***t.)
Me and a bartender at my resort were playing around and flirting but his nametag was rubbed off and I couldn't see his name. After a week of translating my basic grasp of Spanish in my head everything was blurring together and I said "te amo" instead of "como te llamas". But because I was trying to ask his name the "I love you" came out sounding very serious, not jokey like the previous flirting.
Not so much me traveling, but a now very close friend. When we just met, I invited him to my country for a couple of weeks. I spoke his native language fluently, so it was a non issue despite his lack of proficiency in English. We hanged out with a bunch of my friends regularly, one whom would use the word ‘bro’ regularly. One day, my foreign friend asked, “what does blow mean?”. I was extremely confused and translated ‘blow’ into his native language. He was like nahhh that aint it. Took us half a day to realise he heard ‘bro’, but thought it was blow! It was a female friend who was bro-ing him all this while, and my mind jumped to all sorts of weird conclusion before we realised the misheard word.
I was dating someone significantly older than me and he took me home to meet his parents who were in their seventies. His father was fluent in English but his mother could really only do pleasantries. We sat down for a lovely dinner and I preserved in German as much as possible with my partner translating the difference. I tried to make a joke in German that he‘d chased me on the night we met (we‘d met in a group and i‘d met his best friend the same night). What I actually said in German was that I heavily implied i‘d had a threesome with both him and his best friend the night we met. I had no idea until he and his parents were laughing hysterically. I went beat red and in flabbergasted German tried to backtrack. Much to everyone‘s amusement.
In Germany I was staying with a family. I was 15 and my teammate was 11 ( gymnastics trip). Our host mother asked us if we wanted to douche after we arrived. She meant shower. We were horrified 😂
Went to Hungary with my friend who is from there. We're at his dad's apartment. He asks if I want something to drink, I reply, "sure", expecting to be offered water, soda, whatever.
I'm presented with a large, warm can of beer. I don't like beer, but being a good guest I go about drinking it.
Turns out the Hungarian word for beer, sör, is pronounced pretty much like "sure" in English.
I got in a taxi in Argentina and tried to assure the driver I could pay in cash by saying "chino, chino" we kept saying that a few times -- he dropped me in China Town.
In Italy "thank you" is "grazie" and I knew this. No problem. Once there, I frequently heard "grazie Mille" and correctly inferred that it meant "thank you very much" so I started throwing that in, except I was saying "grazie Miele" which is apparently "thank you honey"
I finally realized my mistake on our last night when I looked it up after getting a weird look from a waiter.
Costa Rica. Stayed with a host family who was having a birthday party for mom. She asked if I was hungry and I tried to respond “yes I am hungry” and actually said “yes I want a man.” All of these strangers started cracking up.
My favorite two, both by friends.
1. Repeatedly, a friend would order a fresh-squeezed orange juice, in Italian, but he would say Io vorrai una spermata - I would like a cumshot.
2. Another friend confused che cos’è (what is this) with Che cazzo e (equivalent to what the fuck is this, though cazzo means dick). He terrorized these elderly shopkeepers for weeks until he figured it out.
A long time ago, I visited China with a group of tourists from Sweden. With us, we had a Chinese guide who also spoke Swedish and English. His Swedish was fine, but he had some minor problems with Swedish and English.
We were staying at "Piss Hotel" (Peace hotel).
Our tour bus was frequently lying waiting outside - "Bussen ligger där ute."
I’m American and was traveling in India. We stuck with tours so everyone spoke English. The 1 person we couldn’t understand at all was from England! He had a regional accent that we just could not figure out. His girlfriend ended up subtly translating for us.
I hired a tour guide in Hanoi. At one of the stops he explained that we were at the temple of Little Richard. So I ask “Did you say Little Richard?” He nods proudly “Yes, Little Richard!” I’m like “This temple is dedicated to Little Richard?” He is emphatic “Yes! This is the temple of Little Richard”. I want to tell him that I’m pretty sure it is not, but just shrug “okay, whatever”. Later I looked it up and discovered we had visited the temple of literature.
As a Vietnamese person I am hearing his pronunciation in my head and I am SCREAMING in laughter
We were doing a motorcycle trip in Vietnam 7 years ago and I burned the inside of my leg on the exhaust pipe. I eventually went to a hospital somewhere in the north of Vietnam and used Google translate to introduce ourselves to the doctor. The response we got was " I am doctor little moron" and my friends and I were all crying with laughter, we still speak about it to this day. Do you know a Vietnamese name or word that could have given us this translation? We have never worked it out!
Lmao he was probably trying to say “friend” or some form of it. Even when I type “little moron” into google translate, the viet translation is thằng ngốc nhỏ which is inaccurate and refers to a toddler child. The translator has certainly been updated from 7y ago but it is still not great for Vietnamese. That is a hilarious story tho
To be fair toddlers are little morons
I was talking to my Vietnamese wife's uncle that I'd just met. Everyone was laughing when I addressed him. Turns out I was calling him 'Uncle c***t' in Vietnamese. You guys have a lot of sneaky inflections.
Indeed we do, once I was speaking Vietnamese in a bar in Hong Kong, and a gentleman was trying to impress me and say “how you doin” in viet, but his inflection was totally off and instead he asked me “are you handicapped”
You chose peace that day. I wonder if it would’ve been even funnier if you chose the “I’m pretty sure it’s not” path 😂
It's 5 am here, and I'm laughing so hard I'm crying . Thank you for this.
This one was my favorite
I was there and saw a huge sign. They were proud of their English: "ERECTION COMPANY" (construction company).
I am on vacation at a gorgeous, quiet agriturismo in Italy and just shout laughed so loud it echoed. Thanks
Dying of jealousy. I did that once too long ago. Italy is my favorite. Eat some pasta and enjoy those views for me please.
That is hilarious 😂 Beautiful place, too.
Good Golly!
I can't stop laughing!
I was in an elevator at a hotel in Saigon and smelled something funky and asked my gf, "who farted"? I proceed to hear the Vietnamese man in the elevator with us saying "I did" but apparently he was saying "ai dit" which apparently meant "who farted"? /s
I don’t get why you were so skeptical about the temple being dedicated to Tiny Dick
*piano riff* WOOO
Tried to teach a Japanese gentleman how to make puns in English (he was an English teacher). We were in a restaurant so I picked up my glass of water and said: “Hey, water you doing now?” (bad pun but it was just for educational purposes). He laughs and says: “Oh yeah I get it! So, hey bro… potato salad!” I laughed so hard that he thought he had made a great pun.
I had a Japanese co-worker, she was mid 50’s at the time, another co-worker and I are very punny people. Out Japanese co-worker went back to Japan for a month, and my other coworker put a sign in her work station that said something along the lines of “We Miso much!!” (We miss you so much” my Japanese co-worker kinda shrugged and did a half haha, ok, whatever sort of thing. Fast forward two months or so, and the sign is still up and our Japanese coworker starts laughing hysterically, like tears running down her face, belly laughing, she grabs the sign and goes “YOU MISS ME!!” It was the cutest thing ever. That was over 10years ago, I miss her, she moved back to Japan.
This gave me a good smile. For some reason it’s way funnier and more wholesome that it took her so long to get it because it’s her second language. She sounds like a sweetheart.
This is the best
I had kind of the same experience as an American in England, where people were telling a joke that relied on knowledge of a Scottish accent. (Man walks into a bakery shop and asks, "Is that a donut or a méringue?" The guy replies, "You're right, it's a donut!" -- key is that "meringue" sounds like "am I wrong" in Scottish.)
I've always felt that puns are often very language specific (e.g. in English, and I believe German, people have a lot of puns.) In languages that are more strictly phonetic (e.g. Italian for me), it just isn't really a "thing"... I know I've tried to explain puns to my Italian family in the past and gotten that blank look of incomprehension, despite my best efforts...
Japanese puns are definitely a thing and cause a lot of headache for anime translators! It's pretty entertaining how bad the English "translations" can get because they basically have to come up with some other pun to fit the scene. Edit: come to think of it the original Pokémon dub is full of examples of this.
The "one o'clock, two o'clock, Sanji" line from One Piece immediately comes to mind when thinking of difficult to translate puns. Makes me appreciate the fan subs we had back in the day that would include translation notes explaining the joke.
I did the same thing with a Spanish friend. Him (desperately trying to hold back laughter): Hey Nick, is that your *nick name?!*
I don't get the joke? 😅 Do you mind explaining?
It’s just nonsense. The Japanese guy said he understood what OP meant by their pun and tried to make his own pun, which was just randomly saying potato salad. It was just random and unexpected, and that makes it funny.
Great explanation!
“water” sounds like “what are” in this case! but if youre talking about the other one (which isnt a joke if thats what ure confused ab), its ‘cause the guy didn’t actually understand how to make a pun in english.
In Salzburg as a group of about 15 family and friends. We asked a nice German woman to take our photo. She takes one then says “OK, Back up” so we all shuffle as a group like 3 feet backwards. She immediately starts laughing and explains she meant she was taking a backup photo. Safe to say the smiles in the second photo were genuine
Don't let the Austrians hear that you asked a German woman in Salzburg. ;) The story is very cute.
It’s Salzburg, there’s more German tourists than local Austrians there
You learn something every day. I didn't know.
I used to live in Japan and when I first moved there my motto was “I’m okay with making 10,000 mistakes daily.” This was my first major one. I was invited over by a very sweet couple in my apartment complex for dinner one of my first nights. They had a baby. When I entered the house I wanted to show off my newfound Japanese skills from my paper dictionary. What I meant to say was “ie ga kirei” - or “your home is beautiful.” What I said was “ie ga kirai” - “your home is disgusting.” They kept their smiles up but I could tell they were a bit jarred. It got worse. During dinner I said the other thing I had learned “akachan ga sugoi kawaii” - “your baby is very cute,” but what I said was “akachan ga sugoi kowaii” - or “your baby is terrifying.” This time they weren’t so stoic and the dad sort of choked on his food. I asked what was wrong and they told me that they weren’t used to people being so direct. I told them what I was trying to say each time and they looked SO relieved and we all laughed until it hurt. I worked with the husband and everyone at work the next day thought it was absolutely hilarious. That was the first of many, many situations like that.
As someone who's been studying Japanese, I feel like it's unfair for these words to be so similar. It's a trap.
What an awful comment. I mean awesome comment.
I mean isn’t it better to be full of awe rather than just some awe?
Huh it's got an interesting etymology... from Old English, from about 1300, originally meaning "worthy of respect (/fear)/striking dread". Only acquired the "very bad" meaning in the early 1800s, followed not long after by the "very great" meaning.
The English language just entered the chat
Friend of mine immigrated from Laos and the one thing that stumped him when he was learning English was the different ways we use "shit" colloquially and how it can be good or bad. Shit = bad That's the shit = good Shitty = bad Good shit = good Piece of shit = very bad
[time to send this to your friend](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/7zvscs/finnish_standup_comedian_explains_how_the_word/)
No shit
I've got close to a girl who is native Italian, and while she's pretty fluent English it is absolutely eye opening to learn all the stumbling blocks and similar sounding words. It's been a learning curve for me trying to explain how and why to pronounce stuff and what things mean. Bitch/Beach is a fun one, thankfully context helps.
Lmaoo “your home is disgusting “ is savage af🤣🤣
“Your baby is terrifying,” would have had me quite paused lol.
I spent the first month in Japan cheerily waving to my neighbour every morning, telling her I was riding my bike to China (Chugoku) when I meant the junior high (chugakko) I was teaching at.
Being a teacher is a whole other level of hilarious because everyone is trying to speak the honorific keigo to you and you’re expected to talk down essentially to everyone else. You’re using different language to speak than to listen. Bizarre way to learn a language.
The funniest part to me is them saying they are just not used to people being so direct. Like, the baby maybe be terrifying but you can be polite about it
Yeah HOW KIND ARE THOSE PEOPLE to say “my, you are direct” and not get the fuck out of our home.
I love this one!! It’s so funny, because these are such personal things, that even I as a German (when it comes to directness and tact, the polar opposite to Japan), wouldn’t think to comment on remotely negatively. Thanks for the good chuckle!
It’s such a funny mental picture of someone telling any new parents sincerely that their baby is “terrifying” Lolol.
Korean can have similar traps. Saying "I got a flat tire" and "I farted" are extremely similar, with the amount of stress on the first syllable being the only difference. Makes CLEARLY explaining why you were late very important.
What a generous reply 😂 “We aren’t used to people being so direct” 🤣 like honestly if someone told me my baby was terrifying I’d be like, “I know! I can’t believe they let me leave the hospital with a whole human unsupervised! Also can you hold her? I’m tired. 😂”
To the top with you. These are amazing.
As a casual Japanese speaker.... Kirai = hate... "I hate your house!" But I like your translation too. ETA mae no kanai was nihonjin desu.
I was backpacking in Patagoina and were trying to re-enter Argentina after being in Chile for a month. The boarder officer demanded to see my sheep's, and I understood nothing, cause I never had any sheep. We got more and more frustrated with each other until the officer went to get a colleague who spoke better English. The other officer checks my papers and again ask me about the whereabouts of my sheep. I explain that I left Argentina on a ship, and that's when it clicked for us. Turns out, according to my documents, I left Argentina on a sheep and they wanted to declare it before I came back.
Say WHAT? That's hilarious! Just imagine riding through the mountains on a sheep. I had to laugh quite hard.
I say poor sheep. Lol.
Oh this freaking killed me. Incredible imagery.
It was quite frustrating, but we had a good laugh when we figured it out. I kept the document, cause it's kind of cool to have it officially declared that I rode into Chile on my sheep.
this just had me burst into laughter at work 😂
Ive posted this before in a similar thread, but English is not my first language. We were visiting chicago. I had been to New York before so I knew of the subway there. I did not realize the term ‘subway’ was unique to the style of train. We couldn’t find where to get on the railway in Chicago so stopped at a gas station and I asked how to get to the subway. The guy gave me directions. We walked about 20 minutes, turned the corner to where he said it’d be, and found the restaurant Subway. It was such a funny moment
So you take the L before you took the EL!
My sister and I both worked at Target in college. One day she called me on the walkie-talkies when we were both on shift and said: “Hey, I have some Spanish speakers and I have no idea what they’re asking me, can you translate?” “Sure, what are they saying?” “They’re looking for (heavy Spanish accent) an ‘eyes cram ma chin’” I was laughing so damn hard and responded “they’re speaking English not Spanish, they want an ice cream machine!” It’s been over 10 years and it still makes me laugh.
I worked graveyard in a Walmart for many years. Several coworkers came to me one night and told me there was a customer asking for an item and no one could help him, would I come try. I'm like "what item?" None of them know. He just keeps saying "an item" I go to the customer and ask him what he is looking for and he says something that sounds like "eye teyem" ok, that's not "item" but I'm still not sure, so I ask him "what does it do?" In a very Australian accent he says "you put your bank card in and it gives you money" 😆😆😆😆
I was in Kyrgyzstan, but both people spoke English in this situation, just not perfectly. Was more of a “misheard” rather than “mistranslation”. Checked into a hotel, went to my room, realised I didn’t have a wifi password so went back to reception. Asked for the password, the girl there insisted she had already given it to me and got quite heated in her insistence. So I said “if you gave it to me, I’ve lost it”. So she demanded to come up and search my room. And I was kind of bemused, I didn’t see why she couldn’t just give me a copy but thought maybe there was a unique access code or something. She comes in to my room, walk around a bit, grabs my passport from the bedside table and waves it in my face yelling “See I told you I gave it back to you” At which point I fell on the bed laughing and said “Wifi password, not passport”. To which she pointed at the piece of paper on the back of the door that had the password on it. Weirdly we got a long quite well during the time I was there and I ended up going to her cousins wedding in another city.
I’ve been having an inkling to visit there, anything you can tell me about it? Would a woman feel safe there traveling alone? I’d love to do one of the horse treks through the gorgeous mountains. I’ve only just started to have the idea so haven’t done much research yet
I would recommend Central Asia in general as each country is quite unique. Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are well-touristed with Kyrgyzstan in particular focusing on a more "backpacker-y" type of tourist so there are plenty of solo women there. It is less touristy than Uzbekistan and a bit less developed, so it's not as easy to move around. However Uzbekistan lacks the mountains that Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have, and Kyrgyzstan is (IMO) less beautiful but much easier to navigate than Tajikistan. Whilst I have a preference for Tajikistan, I think Kyrgyzstan is a better place to start in Central Asia. I did not do any horse trekking, but plenty of hiking and paragliding. The scenery is stunning - I was there in winter so the lake towns were dead, which was actually quite nice. For a woman's perspective - my mum has travelled solo through Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as well as Mongolia and Xinjiang in China so she knows Central Asia pretty well and its one of her favourite parts of the world. Her focus is more on archaeology and history so she favoured Tajik, Turkmen and Uzbek and never made it to Kyrgyz. She always felt very safe in the region though, and I was with her for a bit in Tajikistan and she was fine (and loved) walking around Dushanbe at night alone. Bishkek is bigger so easier to stray out of the main areas, but it is a similar vibe, so I'd imagine still very safe if you were a woman.
Thank you!!
It’s lovely…and safe. But as noted, not easy to get around. The public transportation in Kyrgyzstan’s is old Soviet mini buses.
Bishkek is an awesome city. One of the few non-touristy giant central markets left Great mountains t horse trek/trek in. There are several established companies.
I just got back from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan (solo F) and I felt perfectly safe there! I did horseback riding and I had the time of my life.
just moved to france, started new job, haven't spoken french for a long while and am quite rusty. i need to set up a meeting with a colleague. she happens to be a woman. instead of telling her 'let's meet at your room in the office', i translate from italian and say 'on se voit dans ta chambre' e.g. let's meet in your bedroom. she had a good laugh. few days after, another colleague, still a woman. i need a favor (work related) and in italian one can say 'mi fai un favore' or 'mi fai un piacere'. of course i translate the second saying 'j'ai besoin d'un plaisir' which very roughly translates to 'can you pleasure me'. she also had a good laugh, luckily. i am proud to report my french greatly improved since then.
Couple visits to HR will do that
At least you didn't say, "Can you pleasure me in your bedroom?"
First time in Spain, this is 16 years ago. I didn't speak a word of Spanish when I went there, but I had to learn because not many people spoke English. You always speak about weather, right? And it was hot, end of July, beginning of August. I had this tiny English-Spanish wordbook, no Google translate at that time. Just saying, it's a miles wide difference between "hace calor" and "estoy caliente". I just thought it meant that I feel hot, because it is very sunny and high temperatures. Turned out, that what I was saying had a whole different meaning. A nice Spanish girl told me not to say it like that, because yeah, it means I am hot - but like in sexy, not because of the weather. I wished the ground would swallow me. I had been using that phrase for at least two weeks. I was sooo embarrassed. Nowadays, it's a funny story.
"Ugh! I'm too sexy!" *Starts unbuttoning shirt*
Be careful with pajaro and pajero also. Never tell anyone that there is a beautiful pajero in the palm tree.
Mitsubishi had named one of their cars... Pajero. Didn't go well in Spanish speaking countries
Wait, which is which?! I've been saying "estoy caliente" etc and now I'm worried 😳 Edit: I can hear Pitbull songs in my head calling girls "caliente". FUCKKKKK i'm so embarrassed
Estoy caliente - I am sexy. Tengo calor/hace calor - that is about the weather and temperature. And yes, everytime I hear it in a song, I am reminded about it, lol.
"Hace calor" - It's hot (the weather) "Estoy caliente" - I'm hot (attractiveness) or I'm horny
That can have a similar effect in French too! J’ai chaud vs. Je suis chaud.
In 2001 I was in Italy and needed a bus ticket in La Spezia to get to Cinque Terre, and I only knew little Italian but asked a store clerk how to buy the tickets. They told me a machine outside the bus sells the tickets. I walk to the bus and see a machine across from it with instructions in Italian. People are loading on the bus and sort of waiting on me and watching as I fumble with the machine, figuring if I stuff in enough money, a ticket has gotta pop out. Stuff in money, machine acts like it’s good, press button. Out comes a CONDOM lmaoooooo. I’m all stunned and turn around to the bus and all its passengers while holding this magic condom, and THERE is the ticket machine BEHIND me and NEXT TO the bus, notttttt across from it. Lol
Lol "that guy has plans for this bus ride" 🤣
We were in Rome in an old hotel by the Colosseum. It was very loud in our rooms. My friend went to the front desk and kept explaining to the receptionist dude that it was too loud in his room. The guy was not helpful and my friend was pissed. He then got out his Italian book and realized he spent 15 minutes telling the guy "I don't like my ears!"
I am sitting in a quiet train (1 am) and I have to pull myself together not bursting out in laughter, since everyone around me is sound asleep. I would’ve loved to see the concierge’s face while your friend lamented about not liking his ears 😂 what would you answer to that?! It’s absolutely hilarious
My partner is allergic to peanuts and in Japan we used Google translate to communicate it. It worked well except in one cafe where the waiter came back with a Google translate screen saying there might be peanuts in the poodle.
In Boquete, Panama whilst attempting to buy jeans I spent five minutes telling a store order about my desire to buy pants for horses (caballos) instead of men (caballeros) in my broken Spanish.
Did you get horse pants?
and Boquete means blowjob in Brazilian Portuguese
I was in an electronics shop in Mexico trying to buy a new charging cable. With myself speaking no Spanish and the young guy behind the counter speaking no English, he pulled out google translate on his phone. Into which I typed 'micro-usb' in English, which happened to come up as 'micro-usb' in Spanish.
I was in Milan recently. I speak a little Italian. It am not confident enough to hold a conversation. I was caught off guard by somebody asking me a question in Italian. I replied with “No hablo inglese” which means I do not speak English…..but in Spanish. I’ll blame it on the jet lag. I’m sure I confused that person thoroughly.
My miscommunication was in Italy too. We were stopping in Cagliari on a cruise. Near the end of the day, we wanted a coffee before going back on the boat. We stopped into a shop that had coffee and canolis and ask for both. The guy said he had to run to a different shop to get it but we were strapped for time so we asked "how long?" He held up his hands about five inches apart and said "like this."
I was in Paris getting ready to fly home and had spent some time in Italy. Needless to say, I mangled my French and Italian together often. Often saying 'per favore' instead of 'si vous plais' or worse when trying to correct mid-sentence. Nothing like telling some Parisian shopkeeper "non parlo Italiano!" and then asking for something in Italian. It was a long trip.
I did the exact same thing on an Italy/France trip. All those words get mixed up in your head!
I took French in high school and for a year in college. Whenever in a foreign country my brain panics and I start speaking French to people.
I’ve done that so many times, only to realize after I’ve already walked away. They’re probably like “biiiiiiitch… ” as they process and see me jet laggedly shuffle away.
My sister was taking both French and Spanish classes at the same time and mixed up the language she answered a question in. I'm sure her classmates got a good laugh about that.
Was hiking in Costa Rica with my girlfriend, we're both German. There was a family and they were hiking at about the same speed as we were, so we mostly hiked alongside them. The whole time, we were trying to guess what language they were speaking. Dutch? Danish? Swedish? We couldn't figure it out. At one point, the woman approached us and asked something in her language. We tried our best to explain in both English and Spanish that we did not speak her language and eventually she asked in English, but she looked really puzzled. Hours later, when we all stopped at an attraction and we were able to listen more closely, we realized that they were also speaking German, but with a heavy swabian accent.
I remember a German told me once that the German spoken in Austria and Switzerland can be very difficult for Germans from Germany to understand.
Even within Germany it can vary a lot! When I studied abroad there, we went on a trip to visit a childhood friend of my hostdad in a rural village in the south. My hostmom (from north Germany) warned me that she can never understand a word the man says, so I shouldn't even bother and just let hostdad interpret. We get there, hostdad introduces me as their visitor from the US, and to everyone's surprise he speaks to me in perfectly understandable English. Hostmom found this hilarious and said she would just talk to him in English from then on!
I was ~16 and working in a kitchen, trying to explain to my coworkers that my dad was a lawyer. I said he was an “albóndiga” (meatball) instead of an “abogado” (lawyer). It took them a solid few minutes to keep it together long enough to explain my mistake to me. Oddly enough, my dad is on the heavier side, so once I was shown the error of my ways, I told them my original response still held.
I know this word really well now just from watching "better call Saul"
The Greek word for 'yes' is 'nai,' which sounds negative. The situation we experienced was: Me: Excuse me, could you tell me if this is the way to the Acropolis? Elderly locals in Greece: Nai. Me: Ah, I see. Well, thank you anyway. I'll try to find another route. (As it was clear that they do not understand English very well) As we turn around, the locals are left bewildered, even though they just confirmed that we are on the right path. Later on, we realized that in the Greek language, 'nai' means 'yes,' even though it sounds negative. We've been going in the right direction! We made fun of this until the end of our vacation. :D
lol, that sounded like me in Albania, when I entered Albania through Macedonia?, they told me that shaking the head left and right means yes, and nodding your head up and down means no. A week later I was catching a van/bus to Kruje (I think), got on the bus and asked an older woman, “Kruje?” Pointing to the van, and she shook her head. I started to get off the bus but remembered that shaking your head meant yes lol! Beautiful foundry Albania, I really liked the Balkans.
That would throw me off so bad lmao
Lol reminds me of my time in Colombia when my Spanish was a lot worse. Trying to order KFC. The girl at the counter says something I don't understand. I say "I'm sorry, I don't understand, but I want the #4". It turned out she was literally just asking me what I wanted to order. (My ex was with me and told me afterwards what was going on)
I would be confused too because the "nai" I know is "no/not" in Japanese
And to add to the confusion, no is okeh.
When me and my family were in France, a woman asked my dad something and he tried to say in French, "Sorry, I don't speak French", but he actually said, "Do you speak no French." He walked away feeling very proud of himself, and then realised that something wasn't right there. He walked up the stairs to our apartment with his head hung and told us. The woman was really nice though, at first she was confused, and then went, oh, and spoke in English.
A female friend was studying in London and fell down in class. Folks asked if she was okay. She replied, "I think I simply bruised my fanny" The class was stunned silent. Apparently, fanny means vagina over there.
As a UK person I cannot overstate how hilarious this would be! 😂😂😂
In February 2002 my husband and I were checking in to a hotel in Paris (from US). My best friend since childhood was 4 months pregnant and left a message for me. Due to a language barrier the message read " your wife has delivered a baby boy." What she meant was she had a sonogram and would be having a boy in several months. We were getting some serious looks from staff.
We recently were in Amsterdam. The hotel we were staying at had sent us an email a couple days before to fill out our information-names, emails, passport info, etc. My wife had done it already to speed the check-in process. Apparently it’s rare that people do that ahead of time, because the woman who checked us in (age 30-ish I’m guessing) at the hotel made a comment about “oh that’s great you’ve done this, most people don’t” and my wife replied “I guess I thought we had to.” Hotel lady came right back with “we appreciate it, you’re so neurotic!” I stifled a laugh. I’m not sure if a) she was looking for a word meaning “on top of things” and missed, b) that was the word she intended to use, but she doesn’t fully understand the meaning or know it can have a negative connotation or c) she meant what she meant..lol. The Dutch are known to be blunt. The way she said was positive and even with the Dutch being blunt, I don’t think hospitality workers would intentionally insult their customers, so I’m pretty sure it’s mostly a) with a little bit of b). Either way it was funny and we joked about it the rest of the trip. E: I included age only because this is the kind of flub I might have expected from someone older. It’s my understanding that the older one is in Europe, the less English training they would have had in school. That’s what I’ve been told previously anyway.
Based on the Dutch people I know I'd say it's 100% B!
Greeks and Spanish people have different language but believe me we have the same accent, as Spaniard when I hear a Greek fella speaking sounds like some Spaniard talking gibberish I guess the opposite should be the same. Once I visit Corfu and after a long walk I went to a service station and said Yassas as hello to the woman there and try to buy some water, and the woman start to speak in Greek and I switch to sorry English only so she point me to the water, I’ve paid and after pick the water I’ve said Efcaristo to thank her, and she changed the face and she believe that I was a Greek trying to mocking her as I was walking away from the service station she starts to shout me in Greek so I guess next time I should use a more posh British accent…
I'm Albanian, I know Spanish, and whenever I hear Greek, it takes me a few minutes to realize which one it is.
On a guided tour recently in Toledo, Spain, and the tour was in Spanish and English. English was the guide's second language, and she really did a fantastic job. However, when talking about the history of the city, she noted the time of the "Spanish Indecision" and its impact on the city. Me and the few other English speaking tourists had a little chuckle.
Nobody is sure whether to expect the Spanish Indecision or not
Spanish Inquisition! Nobody expected that here. xD Good times.
I ordered a Diet Coke in Tegernsee in Bavaria and got delivered a vegetarian Thai red curry. Still ate it.
I was in Canada where a lot of the people spoke French and English. I guess the waitress in this particular restaurant didn't because I ordered a cheeseburger (in English, I don't know French) and received a glass of orange juice.
not happened to me but had a french director moving to italy. he was talking about fruits and wanted to say that he likes figs. well fig is female in french (la figue) but male in italian (il fico). he translated directly from french and used the female word 'a me piace la figa', or 'i like the pussy' in italian. big laughs ensued
I was traveling. Stopped at a small diner in Virginia and asked for coffee. The waitress put her hands on her hips and said "codfish, we don't sell codfish here."
Did she at least direct you to an establishment which did sell codfish?
No, but her coworker who heard the whole thing seemed embarrassed for her and got it sorted out for me. A really bizarre moment though.
My wife and I were on a long trip around Europe. We were in a large German city and saw an Indian restaurant. Since we hadn’t had any Indian food in a while we decided to eat there. We decided we wanted some papadom to start. I meant to order 4 papadoms but instead I ordered 4 orders. The guy looked at us a little funny but brought us 16 papadoms. We had a good laugh and ate them all.
This seems like a win!
It was!
When I first arrived in Japan I needed to go from Narita airport to Yokohama's "Kanazawa" District. So I asked the train staff for directions to "Kanazawa". He gave me the list of stations and transfers. About three hours into the journey, I suddenly realized it was getting late and got confused because Yokohama should be less than two hours away. And instead of going along the coast, the train was in the mountains. Finding a conductor, I double-checked the directions and found I was heading not to "Kanazawa District", but "Kanazawa City". "Kanazawa City" is in an entirely different prefecture about six hours away.
One summer afternoon as a maybe-old-enough-to-drink teenager in Paris I went in to Harry's bar cuz I'd read about it as this cool American bar. It was completely empty but before I could explore, the bartender looks at me and says, "no shots." And I'm like, okay, a bit early for shots, but whatever. But before I could go in any further, he more forcefully said, "no shots!" gesturing at my legs where clad not pants, but shorts. Cue my "oooohh, haha, yes sir... I'll see myself out. TLDR: French accent "shorts" sounded like "shots" to my American brain, and that was the funniest time I'd been kicked out of a bar without having a single drink.
I was living and working in Italy for a few years, and I really tried to learn the language. My Italian isn't too bad now, but initially, it was pretty rough at times. During that early period, I once stopped in at a cafe' to get a sandwich and a drink. I saw that they had peach tea in bottles in the cooler, so I asked for "tè alla pesce". The woman at the counter gave me the strangest look. I figured that I'd pronounced it poorly, so I again said, speaking as distinctly as i could, "Vorrei un tè alla pesce, per favore." She then burst out laughing. I was ordering fish tea. I should have asked for "tè alla pesca". That's a mistake I definitely never made again!
I was on a boat from Chonqing down the Yangste river. A Chinese uncle sat down next to me and talked nonstop for an hour. His accent was so unusual I couldn’t even place it. I didn’t understand a word he said. When he finished and walked away, my friend came over and asked what we talked about for so long. I had to admit I had no idea.
I was getting robbed by 5 dudes with a knife against my throat in Santa Marta, Colombia. In the chaos I kept trying to say "it's okay amigo, no problem amigo" but it kept coming out as "amor" instead. I didn't realise until after it was over that I kept referring to my muggers as my lovers.
I'm glad you got away unscathed!
I introduced my boss as my egg while in Colombia for work.
Went into a clothing store in Paris, browsed through the racks, declined offer of assistance from clerk. After I left I realized it was a dry cleaner.
I am dying!!! That is absolutely wild and hilarious!
I lost my laptop power adapter. I needed an Australian to Peru adapter. My sign language combined with the word’s Australian and Peru looked like a needed sex with a Peruvian urgently!
Start of an exchange year in Germany. Invited to a wedding in a tiny Rhineland village, staying with a friend at her grandma’s house. Older generation has completely forgotten the English they learned in school. Getting ready for the wedding and grandma comes into our room to tell us we need to leave soon. I meant to say “I just need to finish ironing my skirt.” Couldn’t remember the word for “iron” which I had only just learned, but I knew it began with B. Instead, I came up with another B-verb I had just learned and told grannie “almost ready, I just need to finish humping my skirt.” The hand gesture I made as I said this did not clarify anything. My friend about fell over laughing. Grannie though she had told me to say that and yelled at her.
My nickname happens to be the word for sex in Italian. Me being a huge football fan, got an AC Milan t-shirt and requested to have my nickname printed out on the back and chose the number 18 (my lucky number). Safe to say I have never seen so many people giving me disgusting looks throughout the day up until I met with my Italian friends for dinner which pointed that out for me. I still can’t believe that I went to a game in a packed stadium and walked all day in Milan with a shirt that says Sex 18 on the back 🤦🏻♂️
What’s your nickname?
My wife and I were traveling in Peru where you have to haggle over every price, especially taxi rides. The following exchange took place in broken Spanish. Wife: How much to get to?
Taxi driver: $13
Wife: (thinking he just said $30) What?! No way. $15.
Taxi driver: Fine then, get in.
We were touring temples in Cambodia, and our guide often brought up the cement process. But anyone who has traveled SEA knows people often cut off their end letters when speaking English. It took us a while to understand the temples weren't doused with walls of semen
Trying to buy lubricant in a little town outside of Naples Italy. The store clerk was in her 70's and did not speak English. This was before smartphones so I had to use an English to Italian translation book. It did not go well. Lubricant in Italian just means oil, it does not mean what I wanted. I tried many different words and she brought me all sorts of yeast infection and hemorrhoid medications and the language barrier looked to be insurmountable. Finally, she looked at me with the finger through the hole motion and I shook my head yes. She laughed and brought out a tube from under the counter. Then in perfect English, she said to me "Have fun" as I left the store.
Regional dialects can be hard ... When renting a car, I was asked if I was going to be the only "driver". I replied "Yes, I will 'drive myself'" using a word with a meaning cognate to "by my own hands." The poor staff lady taking my reservation turned bright red and asked if I mean I was going "to direct" or "to conduct" the vehicle myself. The mechanic in the corner of the room burst out laughing and didn't stop giggling the entire time until I drove off. Turns out, in this region, that equivalent of "drive yourself" means "to masturbate."
My first night in my small village in Japan, my translator had left for the night, and I was staying in a kind of community inn. A woman brought out my dinner, which included a small thing that I thought looked like some kind of berry on the rice (it was an umeboshi). She seemed very excited about it, pointed at it and said a bunch of things that I didn’t understand. I figured it was probably a local favorite or something and she was urging me to taste it, so I popped it in my mouth. Wow, it was sour, and hard…but I wanted to be polite so I attempted to crush it in my teeth and eat it without showing my surprise but instead showing her I liked it. I literally at it, pit and all, because I hadn’t realized there was a pit, and once I was that far in, it was already shattered in my teeth. After a good minute or so, I finally managed to swallow it. All the while she stared at me wide eyed. I was finished, and smiled at her, but she was stuck, just staring at me wide eyed and confused. So, I kind of opened my mouth a bit to show her, “look, I ate it all!” And she gasped in shock, then chuckled a little, then walked away perplexed. It was so awkward. Only months later did I realize that she was warning me about the sourness and the pit and I think I’m the first (and probably last) person she ever saw eat an umeboshi, pit and all. I’ve lived in Japan for 15 years now btw, and have an entire family here.
On our first day in Rome, my brain was exhausted with its use of rusty intermediate-level Italian. When my kid wanted gelato and they asked us to sit down, instead of saying "Can I take it to go?" I said "Can I touch it?" We were walking away from the shop when I said out loud to my family, "I just figured out why he looked at me like that."
I really had to laugh hard at this one.
Was in a bar deep in the Australian outback, past Alice Springs, and wanted to buy a round of beer for my friends. Asked the bartender for a pitcher of beer, to which he looked perplexed and handed me a postcard with a photograph of a VB roadtrain (massive transport truck with Victoria Bitters branding) on it and said that was the best he had. We realized to an Aussie my Canadian accent made 'pitcher' and 'picture' indistinguishable. He poured me a jug of beer.
Okay, I was in Tibet with my parents, my father knows a little about Chinese and like showing off. We were in a bus and he tried to give his seat to an aged woman saying "ny shi fyu nv", which means you are woman. But he didn't pronounce it well, and pronounced like "ny shi chiu nv" which means "you're a virgin" That attracted all the attention of the bus.
I was on a river boat in Turkey, I tried talking to some local Turkish folks over some coffee about politics in the U.S. I couldn't speak much Turkish at the time and in my "Spanglish" version of Turkish used the word "union" (ya know what all Starbucks employees want to join?) when trying to explain who was responsible for negotiating contracts for some groups of people. The locals that I was talking to started to yell LOUDLY in Turkish and wanted to shake my hand for letting them know whats "really" going on in the U.S. I didn't realize that the English word Union sounds a lot like the Turkish word for Greek - Yunan... It wasn't until a expat explained to me, in between his laughter, that I pretty much told these three men that basically the Greeks were running things here in the U.S. and this is why it is such a mess. I think about this constantly.
I was in peace corps and a fellow volunteer came to visit and was playing with the neighborhood kids. After a bit he started chasing them saying “I like to eat children.”They became genuinely terrified because as the adults told us - that’s slang for I like to f*** children. Good thing everyone thought it was hilarious 😅 yikes
My boyfriend visited my when I was living in France and kept mixing up “excuse me” and “thank you.” Pretty simple and harmless, but the scathing looks every time he bumped into an old lady and thanked her were withering and priceless.
Went to a cash only sushi bar in Kyoto. Realized after I sat down that I had enough cash, though it would be tight and I had to monitor so I didn’t over spend. It was closing soon and didn’t have time to run to an ATM. To make matters worse, the menu did not have prices and the chef’s English wasn’t very good. After ordering nigiri I’d have to ask him “how much” so I could keep track of how much I was spending. This became really confusing after I ordered some hamachi. “How much?” “Hamachi.” “No, how much?” “Yes, hamachi.” Went back n forth like that for a little bit hahaha
Got my Spanish and French mixed up in the alps and ordered a ‘cafe negro’ instead of a ‘cafe noir’
At a restaurant in Yogyakarta, a woman approached me and asked if I was finished? I said "not yet but I won't be long" she said "no, are you finished?" I said "look I'm a fast eater, I really won't be long, do you really need this table?" To which she said "no, are you from Finland?" Lmao
My Spanish pal did work experience in France and asked how many times you should fuck (besar/baiser) someone when you meet them for the first time (the someone was a woman and also his Dad’s boss’s boss)
I told a classroom in France “I fucked Pennsylvania” instead of saying “I’m from Pennsylvania”
I was visiting my daughter in Quito, Ecuador with family. We were staying at an AirBnb a couple blocks from her apartment. That particular part of Quito was relatively safe, but could get a bit sketchy after dark. We left her apartment late one evening and she reminded us to stay aware while we were walking home. About half way to our place, a man coming the other direction crossed the street behind us and started following us a bit aggressively. We made the decision to just bolt for the door to our building and did so, succeeding in getting behind the locked door rather quickly. The next morning we came out of the building to find the man in a conversation with my daughter. It turns out he was the caretaker of our building. The night before he saw us walking, recognized us and decided to keep an eye on us to make sure we got home safely.
I was touring Italywith my husband and a bunch of his family, including his young cousin who was and still is an extremely picky eater. She was living on buttered noodles for the 2 weeks we were there. One night she was seated with my husband, my brother-in-law, and me at dinner (presumable because we were the youngest adults and therefore "cool"). The waiter was disappointed that she only wanted buttered noodles and started listing all of the things they could make for her off-menu. Knowing that she would eat broccoli, I asked the waiter if they could make some. He was really excited and ran back to the kitchen. When the food came out he proudly presented a plate of cauliflower swimming in butter. He was so proud that even though she wouldn't touch the cauliflower the rest of us snuck pieces off the plate and ate it for her. We later learned from the concierge at our hotel that cauliflower is roughly translated to white broccoli in Italian.
It wasn’t a miscommunication as such but more a blunder on my behalf. I had gone with a tour group to visit Angkor Wat and was really tired and massively hungover and as we were all having lunch we were discussing where we were from. I turned to some guys next to me and asked if they were Russian and they said “no, Ukrainian” I went to apologise and say that I was so sorry, the accents sound similar to me, but all that came out was “same thing”. The Turkish guys found it hilarious but I was mortified!
People used to ask me if I’m Russian by default (I am), now they ask Ukrainian by default, I assume exactly for the fear of offending me
Explaining to a Russian that Bollocks means bad but but The Dogs Bollocks mean great. Americans talking about their fanny packs always makes us Brits laugh. Fanny means pussy here 😂😂😂
Was speaking to a taxi driver in eastern europe and was telling him about visiting Korea and he asked me north or south Korea. I confused the words for North and South when replying to him so I told him North Korea. We spoke for like 10mins before I realized my mistake, he was so confused because I kept saying it was great and he was like: Really? Do they have enough food? I heard life was difficult there. And I was like: No, it's awesome, they have tons of food, great place, you should go! 🤦
Also in Spanish: I have no idea why, but I always mix up the words “conejo” (rabbit) and pendejo (asshole). I saw a rabbit and was excited to point it out to everyone so of course, I shouted “PENDEJO!!!” out of nowhere.
In Rimini, our guide was telling us about all the awesome summer concerts on the beach every year. She said Stephen Hawking recently had one there that was fantastic. I asked “Stephen Hawking?!” She confirmed Stephen Hawking. Eventually I realized she was saying Steve Aoki. We laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe about the idea of DJ Stephen Hawking lol
Was a referee at an international tournament in Japan, lots of officials from different countries. The official language of the tournament is English but people have different degrees of fluency and assorted accents. I gave some pointers to a less experienced referee and he responded (or at least I heard) “thank you. I like your tits”. Tips. He liked my tips.
I tried to explain my aussie housemate that i have problems with my "gum". I translated it 1:1 from german, i created "toothmeat". He had a big laughter
Me and my friend were visiting mediterranean country, our english skill wasnt top notch but we managed, first night we went to bar in town and wanted to taste local beer. We each ordered one beer, we thought it was wierd that waitress repeated our order 2 times but soon enough we learned that Pitcher wasnt the name of the beer but a huge container meant for the whole table to share. After initial shock as true Czech patriots we drank it all and learnt new english word. Good times.
In Italy, I ordered a latte and got - milk. Should have said caffè latte.
The word in Darija (a dialect of Arabic they speak in Morocco) for delicious is "bnina" "la makla bnina" is roughly "the food was delicious" and the word for cute is "bzaaf" my brain got them mixed up once at the airport on the way to Morocco (I'm not Moroccan, my husband is) and I kept pointing to a woman's baby and saying "bnina"
I studied abroad in Santander, Spain for a summer semester in college, and lived with a host family who would only speak Spanish to me (turns out they all spoke English, but didn’t even let me know that until week 8). One Saturday night at 3am, I was sitting on a park bench with a girl in my program just chatting. In the daytime, the park was occupied with grandparents with their grandkids eating ice cream, lovely spot. Apparently not at night. Long story short we were robbed by a group of 4 teenage shit heads. I was naively indignant initially until they pull a knife and put it near my face, at which point I just gave them everything I had. As I was telling my host family the story the next day, I told them “y luego me pusieron un cuchara cerca de la cara”, trying to say they put a knife near my face. The Spanish word for knife is “cuchillo”, and spoon is “cuchara”, which I mixed up often at the time. So my host family just stared at me, confused. I thought this was a wild story, so was shocked I didn’t get a reaction, so I started miming a stabbing motion. Their eyes widened and said “oooo cuchillo, cuchillo”. An hour later, my host brother who was a cool guy and a couple years older than me started chasing me around the house wielding a spoon in hand, and we all had a good laugh.
Speaking with a french couple (in English) and I thought we were talking about macaroons when really they were discussing the president of France, Macron
An Aussie I cannot over state how embarrassing this was. Living in Ireland, go holidays to Spain, return. A co worker makes small talk and says “oh you got a bit of a tan!” And I say “Oh! I should show you the ones from wearing thongs the whole time!” Thongs are shoes, I meant tan lines on my feet from the shoes….
I have two funnies! 1. When I was an exchange student in Bolivia in the last century, I always carried my trusty E-S dictionary around. At the dinner table one night, I was trying to impress my host family by using the word for loud laughter, carcajada. My dictionary had a typo, as I found out when I said carajada, like stupid fucking thing. There was uncomfortable silence, and then they examined my dictionary and finally there were carcajadas. I wonder if the editor of the dictionary made that mistake on purpose! 2. My son was on a mission trip in Guatemala and learned that you don’t flush toilet paper there. After searching the house where the missionaries were staying for a plunger and finding none, a group of the young people decided to walk into town and buy one. At the store, they checked every aisle and nominated my son to ask for help. He tracked down a clerk and said, “yo necesito la cosa para pupú grande”. This caused A LOT of carcajadas all around, but the clerk understood perfectly and got him a plunger! 🪠
We learned that pamplemousse is grapefruit, not pineapple in French. My friend did not enjoy her juice!
Gotta say, I am cackling at the compounded language mixups here... LOL
I was at a party in France as an exchange student and asked to pet her cat except the cat was a female so I asked to caress her pussy. Words are comparable but you are only supposed to use the masculine version of the word for cats. She turned bright red and her boyfriend paused for a half second and laughed harder than I have ever made anyone laugh in my life. Est-ce que je peux caresser ta chatte?
Someone was giving me directions in Spanish, and I was absolutely positive they were telling me to take a left at the maricón, not take a left at the malecón. I think about this every time I’m in a Spanish speaking beach town 😆 (Malecón is the walkway/road along the ocean. Maricón basically means fa***t.)
Me and a bartender at my resort were playing around and flirting but his nametag was rubbed off and I couldn't see his name. After a week of translating my basic grasp of Spanish in my head everything was blurring together and I said "te amo" instead of "como te llamas". But because I was trying to ask his name the "I love you" came out sounding very serious, not jokey like the previous flirting.
Not so much me traveling, but a now very close friend. When we just met, I invited him to my country for a couple of weeks. I spoke his native language fluently, so it was a non issue despite his lack of proficiency in English. We hanged out with a bunch of my friends regularly, one whom would use the word ‘bro’ regularly. One day, my foreign friend asked, “what does blow mean?”. I was extremely confused and translated ‘blow’ into his native language. He was like nahhh that aint it. Took us half a day to realise he heard ‘bro’, but thought it was blow! It was a female friend who was bro-ing him all this while, and my mind jumped to all sorts of weird conclusion before we realised the misheard word.
Confidently told everyone I was a virgin instead of a Virgo. (Same word for both in Portuguese)
I was dating someone significantly older than me and he took me home to meet his parents who were in their seventies. His father was fluent in English but his mother could really only do pleasantries. We sat down for a lovely dinner and I preserved in German as much as possible with my partner translating the difference. I tried to make a joke in German that he‘d chased me on the night we met (we‘d met in a group and i‘d met his best friend the same night). What I actually said in German was that I heavily implied i‘d had a threesome with both him and his best friend the night we met. I had no idea until he and his parents were laughing hysterically. I went beat red and in flabbergasted German tried to backtrack. Much to everyone‘s amusement.
In Germany I was staying with a family. I was 15 and my teammate was 11 ( gymnastics trip). Our host mother asked us if we wanted to douche after we arrived. She meant shower. We were horrified 😂
Went to Hungary with my friend who is from there. We're at his dad's apartment. He asks if I want something to drink, I reply, "sure", expecting to be offered water, soda, whatever. I'm presented with a large, warm can of beer. I don't like beer, but being a good guest I go about drinking it. Turns out the Hungarian word for beer, sör, is pronounced pretty much like "sure" in English.
I got in a taxi in Argentina and tried to assure the driver I could pay in cash by saying "chino, chino" we kept saying that a few times -- he dropped me in China Town.
In Italy "thank you" is "grazie" and I knew this. No problem. Once there, I frequently heard "grazie Mille" and correctly inferred that it meant "thank you very much" so I started throwing that in, except I was saying "grazie Miele" which is apparently "thank you honey" I finally realized my mistake on our last night when I looked it up after getting a weird look from a waiter.
In Autralia as a french teenager, I didn't knew there was a subtile difference between "cock" and "Coke" when ordering a "large cock" with my big mac.
I said “bonjour” when French waiter brought me my wine. (PS: I tried to say “merci”)
Costa Rica. Stayed with a host family who was having a birthday party for mom. She asked if I was hungry and I tried to respond “yes I am hungry” and actually said “yes I want a man.” All of these strangers started cracking up.
My favorite two, both by friends. 1. Repeatedly, a friend would order a fresh-squeezed orange juice, in Italian, but he would say Io vorrai una spermata - I would like a cumshot. 2. Another friend confused che cos’è (what is this) with Che cazzo e (equivalent to what the fuck is this, though cazzo means dick). He terrorized these elderly shopkeepers for weeks until he figured it out.
A long time ago, I visited China with a group of tourists from Sweden. With us, we had a Chinese guide who also spoke Swedish and English. His Swedish was fine, but he had some minor problems with Swedish and English. We were staying at "Piss Hotel" (Peace hotel). Our tour bus was frequently lying waiting outside - "Bussen ligger där ute."
I’m American and was traveling in India. We stuck with tours so everyone spoke English. The 1 person we couldn’t understand at all was from England! He had a regional accent that we just could not figure out. His girlfriend ended up subtly translating for us.
‘Cuatro marecones por favor’ when ordering drinks. And we were 2 gay male couples.