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Embarrassing Language Mistakes


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Another "homestay in Japan" story...

While I was staying in Tokyo I did quite a bit of roaming about and wandering into shops and so on. In one store I saw a souvenir that I thought my mum would like, so I tried to ask the shopkeeper how much it was.

"Iruka desu ka?"

I repeated myself several times, getting stranger and stranger looks, before I realised that the word I wanted was ikura.

The question I'd been asking was "Is it a dolphin?"

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A few months ago in French we were reading 'Bonjour Tristesse' aloud as a class. It was my turn to read and all was going well until I mispronounced something, I think it was queue (or however it's spelt) and let's just say it made it REALLY REALLY sus. Only one guy in the class picked up upon what I had said and looked at me and lolled. Let's just say it turned something EXTREMELY BORING AND MUNDANE into something really sexually suggestive hahahahahaha ahhhh French :blush:

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Another "homestay in Japan" story...

While I was staying in Tokyo I did quite a bit of roaming about and wandering into shops and so on. In one store I saw a souvenir that I thought my mum would like, so I tried to ask the shopkeeper how much it was.

"Iruka desu ka?"

I repeated myself several times, getting stranger and stranger looks, before I realised that the word I wanted was ikura.

The question I'd been asking was "Is it a dolphin?"

Hahaha omg this was sooo funny.....!!

Gee, I've made thousands of funny language mistakes. Last week I was in Russia to visit relatives, and I attempted to ask my cousin "ah, so you want to become an optician?" but ended up asking him if he wants to become an alcoholic... lol. That was for many reasons a bit embarrassing, but otherwise if I make language mistakes in classes and such I usually just laugh at it, I believe you learn from experience...

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I was asked to read the French text from a cheese package just to amuse (I don't know any French) the others, but then I pronounced "qui" wrong, leading to me saying "boiled cheese". Apparently that was very funny.

Another good one was when my IB coordinator was talking about CAS, saying "C, A, and ass". We had a good laugh then :P

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It took us 2.5 semesters of spanish to fully grasp the difference between "yo tengo hambre" and "yo tengo hombre"

I have hunger vs I have man.

I'm in redneck country.

Learning new spanish vocabulary, the english translation was chest of drawers.

in a class of 27, 3 knew what a chest of drawers was.

everyone else honestly thought it was called a chester drawers and that chester was a shade of brown, or chester is the person they were named for.

LOL! (chest of drawers in redneck speak becomes chester drawers)

greatest language moment. ever.

my 7th grade history teacher taught us about the Treaty of "Ver-saylees" rather than the Treaty of "Ver-sigh". (Versailles). till this day most of us still mentally say "versaylees".

Edited by simplisticwonders
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In an writing task my class did my friend wanted to say that he was excited about his friend coming to Australia from Japan so he used koufunsuru which he thought meant 'to be excited', but it means 'to be sexually excited', which gave the letter a kind of weird, dark dimension :confused:

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In grade 9 French, we had to learn expressions like "I'm hungry", which is "J'ai faim", or literally, "I have hunger". Everyone would pronounce the "m" in "faim" and we weren't supposed to, because it sounds like "j'ai femme". Our French teacher got upset and said "OK, guys, for the last time, you do not pronounce the 'm'. You would never go into a restaurant and say (he would yell the next bit)

I HAVE WOMAN!"

And we never did it again.

HAHA :) nice one. I like how you emphasize the phrase with large text :D

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