Help me get over my vanilla cuntyness

Years ago in my Spanish oral gcse exam I had to talk about a trip to the supermarket I delivered a word perfect paragraph to my teacher who promptly stopped the recording and as kindly as she could broke the news I had spoke the whole thing in French not Spanish ! I hadn't done French for over two years previously so have no idea where it came from when given the chance to redo it in Spanish I had brain freeze, blanked completely and failed the exam 😱

Went to Paris with a group of friends, for a weekend, years back and one of the BFs really wanted to make an effort with the language despite not having done any research whatsoever. We went in to a coffee shop and ordered drinks and pastries from the board. He wondered why we all thought his choice of drink 'Cafe The Lait' was so hilarious and got quite sniffy about it. And yes, he did get served a coffee, a tea and a milk.

On holiday in France with DC (3 months) I needed to buy a breastpump. I just assumed if I said breastpump with a French accent they would know what I meant.... It took the entire staff of the pharmacy to interpret my mortified MIME.
( 15 years later, I still remember it's "tire- lait")

Thank you for this thread! I am crying into my wine here.

As someone put further up the thread, the Welsh words for sex and ice are very close indeed. My English DH was taking an WLPAN course, and picking me up from work at the pub I worked at one night, he was talking about the course with my uncle, who was the barman.

My uncle was keen to hear what my DH had learned and he subsequently asked for - a pint of beer, and an orange juice, with sex.

from my 60 something uncle...

Asked two teenage boys behind the counter of a shop in Mexico if they had huevos (eggs but also balls). Yes, big ones they gestured.

My mum was in France, had a yeast infection, went into a pharmacy and pointing to her pants asked for something for her small bird....she had asked a friend who is fluent for the word for thrush without giving the context.

Who was the American pop star who took off his jacket before a berlin crowd and said Ich bin warm which does not mean I am warm but I am gay and brought the house down?

And then of course there was JFK and Ich bin ein Berliner.

In a French pharmacy I was frantically trying to find some canestan for a bout of thrush and ended up telling the pharmacist I had mushrooms growing in my vagina😳 Luckily she understood perfectly 😂

At a wedding in france the sweet elderly great auntie of the bride (not French but speaks it well) announced loudly to the priest that the happy couple were so much in love, always kissing....

Except apparently she said 'always shagging' which caused a big pause and much looking at feet and sniggering (she thought it very amusing though).

A friend of mine hurt his finger while in Italy, and tried to form an Italian phrase based on a French verb (casser). He ended up telling the nurse that he thought his finger was an ice cream (cassata).

I have had a shitty day but reading these has made me howl with laughter - thank you all!

I once ordered logynon (contraceptive pill) instead of longan (fruit) for desert in a Thai restaurant

As a young (male) language assistant in Spain I tried to tell a class of teenagers that the phrase "gather me to you" in a song meant "embrace me" (abrazame) but actually said embarazame - impregnate me!

Also tried to tell an elderly landlady that I don't like jam and came out with "no me gusta comer preservativos" - I don't like eating condoms. The look on the faces of the rest of the family at breakfast was priceless but I didn't have a clue mat I'd said till later

A waiter in Austria got very cross with me when I insisted that I wanted the menu. Evidently I was asking for playing cards (kartenspielen) and should have said speisekarte. My 16 year old DD who had just got an A* in her GCSE German was too busy hiding under the table with embarrassment to help me out as the waiter and I just got crosser and shoutier.

I studied French and Spanish and then did a translation MA, this thread is absolutely hilarious I've actually been crying with laughter at some of them.

My FIL is German.
His English is very good but sometime he gets letters mixed up in his pronounciation of words (his English is 100 times better than my German btw). Anyway, the first time I met him many years ago, I laid on a lavish spread. He ate all he could, sat back and announced 'You have very nice nipples!' 😆
That was 13 years ago and I still have a snigger to myself when we are having 'nibbles'.

Not a translation mistake, but similar to a PP. I once sent an email to 60 pre-school parents reminding them that coats, bags and willies all need to be named so they can be returned to the correct child if lost.

Mortifying...

Drinking wine and almost crying with laughter! Pretty good for a Friday teatime!

Saying costipada-which means that you have a cold in Spanish to a lady at a playgroup who asked how I was doing.
She was from Venezuela, where it means constipated
May I add I'd just met her?
I realised what I've said when she touched her tummy and said : Me too!
I guess it's same as chips in America and crisps over here!
I must add I am quite fluent in Spanish, but not a native speaker and I've learned it mostly watching telenovelas

And I second all of BirdandSparrow's - bloody nightmare - and add grifo/grifa. Cue "Can I have a glass of marijuana water?" (instead of tap water)". Aaaargh.

I once asked my German ex-MIL if she wanted "Vorspielen" (foreplay). I meant "Vorspeisen" (appetisers). Ex-MIL was horrified; ex-husband fell about on floor in uncontrollable laughter...

When I lived in Spain I walked into the grocers and asked for a horse (caballo) instead of an onion (cebolla). Met with lots of blan faces. I also told my boyfriends mother, when she was trying to get me to have another helping, the equivalent of "I don't fucking feel like it", rather than "I really don't want anymore". Oops....

Another one who's had embarrassment from schwuel coming out as schwul - was trying to explain that it was so humid and muggy I felt faint, but exchange partner's father thought I was unhappy because I was kinda gay!
This was just after I thought he'd proposed a nice country walk but actually I'd been carted off cross-country running... (laufen can mean walk, but usually requires more energy, it turns out.)

Just before my A-level exam my teacher gave me a list of words I wasn't allowed to use. Schwuel was one, Quark another - the rest all had u-umlaut.

I used to work in an international lab with loads of miscommunications all the time, but my favourite was when a Greek lass asked me, very shyly, just why a wheelie bin was called a wheelie bin.

I tried very hard not to sound too patronising as I explained "Because it has wheels on it."

You could see the light bulb going on with her huge blush - she'd spent two years wondering why those wierd Brits called them willy bins...

I'm crying and crying with laughter about "Hello Whores!" in Tagalog from page 1.

Actual tears 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Oh this thread is making me chuckle out loud. Am a linguist, but best typo would be in English, filling in expenses form for my then boss - to be charged to Bustiness Development. I was mortified!!