Help me get over my vanilla cuntyness

English is not the first language for my MIL.

Although she is fluent in English she still occasionally gets words muddled up, the most memorable time being when she told us about a car park that had bollocks in! . (She meant bollards)

German.

I remember a germane chap refusing the offer of a drink because, he said, he had an overdraft. It turned out he meant a hangover.

Oh, yep, I've accidentally encouraged German kids to swear. We were playing some kind of dodgeball in English and I kept shouting out "missed!" aka "You missed me!" But "mist" in German is, literally, crap.

(I have learnt all of my German swearwords from the kids I teach actually, so I don't feel toooo bad.)

Spanish is a bitch for this kind of thing, because of all the regional differences in the way things are said.

The very normal 'to grab' in Spain means 'to fuck' in Argentina, so when my Spanish colleague went on a business trip to Argentina, was phoned to come urgently away to something and announced 'I'll just grab/fuck Maria and come along' he got many open mouthed stares from all the middle aged men around the table.

He will never, ever live it down.

I had a really really bad case of tonsillitis after I moved to Germany aged 15, ended up having emergency surgery to have them removed, and so learnt that 'mandeln' is German for tonsils. A month or so later, I saw a sign at the fair that proudly proclaimed 'Geröstete Mandeln' and was absolutely horrified that people ate roasted tonsils.

After killing themselves laughing at my reaction, my friends let me know that 'mandeln' also means almonds.

W just thought of another one told me by an ex work colleague when she first went out for a meal with her rather well to do future in laws. The dishes were all in French and being unable to understand what any of the dishes were she panicked and just ordered the last one at the bottom. Unfortunately it just said '* When available' which she pronounced with an attempt at an exotic accent saying she would have the 'Von Aval-abul' please .

It's not a rude one, but I made my German father in law giggle like a little girl when I asked him if the new neighbours were going to 'colour in their house' instead of paint it.

It just tickled him.

I proudly demanded 10 55cent wallets in the post office, too, instead of stamps (Brieftaschen v. Briefmarken).

And my best moment was telling my mil that I had lunch at the stripclub instead of at my neighbour's house. (Nakt Bar v. Nachbar)

You learn to roll with it. Dh once asked me where the small sauce bin was. I guessed, and handed him a gravy boat. He was after a saucepan.

A friend of mine worked years ago in a posh Parisian hairdresser's. He cut one particularly snooty lady's hair, then held up a mirror and asked, "Maintenant, Madame, voulez-vous aussi que je vous coupe les poils du cul?"

Rather than offering to trim the hair at the back of her neck, he'd asked whether she wanted her pubes cutting...

My sister asked the ice cream man for a 69 instead of 99

I lived in Japan for a while, and generally when I made mistakes I was unintelligible rather than rude.

I did manage to announce once "when I was smelly (kyu-sai)" instead of "when I was nine years old (ku-sai)". The rest of the teachers nodded politely and it was only a few drinks later that they corrected me.

My best story was a misunderstood English one. I used to teach elementary school once a week - it was my favourite part of the week - 5 and 6 year olds who just thought I was amazing. One day we were doing body parts. I pointed to a body part and said the name twice - once at regular speed and once much slower. All fine until I got to the face.

"Chin. Chhhiiiiinnm."

Class full of 5 and 6 year olds scream with laughter and can't stop. Japanese class teacher looks very disapproving.

Chin chin is the equivalent of saying "willy".

I was in france at 11 and was looking for the station. I asked "Ou est la guere", instead of "Ou est la gare". The old chap looked confused and said "La guere est finis"... I still cringe

In Turkish I was fucked and I'm bored are just one dot on a letter i different (as my friend discovered much later after repeatedly declaring how fucked she was to all her new colleagues, bosses and bigwigs in her new job).

Will out me but hey ho, when I'd recently moved to Germany and got lost in the new town, I was stuffed I thought. Then an elderly woman stopped and offered to help, but she didn't speak English and I didn't speak German at that point - however - turns out we both spoke French!

So almost 20 years ago a German woman gave a Scotswoman directions home in French!

Also when I was on school exchange to France host parents were out and me, the Penpal and her older sister were getting ready for a dance thing at their school. The Penpal (who was a spoilt little madam!) began crying and wailing and OMG what is wrong? Eventually the older sister says to me

'She thinks she is dying' at which point I of course go and 'shouldn't we call an ambulance?' Although she wasn't visibly in pain/injured

The sister then realised her mistake and said

'No no sorry I mean to say - she said she wants to die'

Turns out she was paranoid about a zit and the boy she liked was going to be at the event

I had a dutcb employee, as we went into s meeting she announced to the room it was supposed to be hot today so she had come out without her panties on and was now really cold and wished she'd put them on.

I honestly just stared at her and couldn't quite get my head round it, I mean what do you even say to that, "yes that would be chilly"? It was only later someone told me panty was tights in Dutch. 😂

We had to take my 4 year old Godson to hospital when on holiday in Spain (we had a police motorbike escort through the streets of Granada, but that's another story!), and his Mum, my friend, wanted to tell the staff that she was a nurse. But she told them that she was a hospital.

Picking up various goodies from my Chinese class. The trouble is Chinese is a tonal language.

So baba (falling tone on the first syllable, think toddler throwing a strop and stamping its foot) means father.

On the other hand, the slightest hint of hesitation in that foot stomping moment, and you (well, I) produce a turning tone instead on the first syllable, and inadvertently say poo-poo.

So, I give you:
Your mother, your poo-poo, are they well?

In a grocers in Arles my husband asked for some batteries and was presented with a box of tampons.

I've no idea if this was a linguistic error or just the French being cocks.

Either way it made my holiday :-)

You know you really can get vanilla cunts from Morrisons?

groceries.morrisons.com/webshop/product/Carousel-Oyster-Delights/217382011?dnr=y

With coconut sprinkles.

Not quite the same but there was a child at my kids' school last year called Coco Jones. Spanish speakers found this very amusing.

Also "embarazada" in Spanish doesn't mean "embarrassed" and "constipada" doesn't mean constipated.

A long while ago now, but I confused "le moule" and "la moule". Instead of saying that you had to enter into the mould, I said enter into the vagina.

My flatmate when I lived in Spain was French, and her language skills weren't the best. She made a right tit of herself in the bakery by asking for "bragas pequenas" when shopping for bread - "barra pequena" is a small loaf, "bragas pequenas" are small knickers.

Time to throw my favourite Spanish word into the mix - gillipollas.

It is Je suis fatigué though

And Je suis fatiguée for the feminine form.

Loving these! Has cous-cous been mentioned yet? Means pussy-pussy in quite a few languages!

A French friend that should have said!

A Japanese friend of mine had a high flying job in a city bank. One day his mum phoned and had a chat. As he put the phone down it rang again. Without thinking he answered in Japanese 'moshi, moshi' only to find it was his very important client calling from Frankfurt. In German Muschi is a slang word, possibly more pussy than cunt IYSWIM but it still took some explaining.