(Lighthearted) To wish that native language speakers could realise that when foreigners (me) say impolite things it's usually a mistake and not a deliberate slight?

[toomuchtooold]

Lighthearted, don't flame me, but god I find this exhausting. I live in Germany, people are very friendly, but I get some serious side eye at times for mistakes I make in the language. A couple of times I've been searching for the informal dative plural pronoun (euch) and come up with the formal one instead (Ihnen) and seen my school run mum colleagues give me a hard stare.
There's also the thing where someone says something and I don't know the word and I repeat it with a questioning tone and get some massive justifying explanation for why it all went down that way and I'm like no, I wasn't questioning your version of events, I just don't know what that word means?

AIBU to expect people to remember that foreigners make mistakes? My German is nowhere near good enough for them to forget it's not my first language!

loogabarooga! I've just woke my baby up laughing at that

For example I routinely avoid saying the word cat in French as I've inadvertently talked about Fanjo way too often.

My old hairdresser is English with English as her only language and she said she was "ravishing" when she meant "famished"

Icannotremember - that made me laugh out loud and I'm still chuckling!!!!

I was once open-mouthed at check-in at Munich airport, when the woman on the desk told me matter-of-factly "You are overweight!" I genuinely thought she was just being rude and personal, until I realised that she meant my bag was slightly in excess of the limit.

My dad is South African and speaks a bit of Afrikaans. He went on a work trip to Amsterdam and thought 'how different can Dutch really be?' so altered his pronunciation to fit and said to an office receptionist 'Excuse me please'.

Except he didn't. He actually said 'Please change my nappy'.

Apparently in Afrikaans, 'excuse me' literally translates to 'clean me' but no one actually uses it in that context. Whereas in Dutch, 'clean me' becomes 'change my nappy'.

I don't know either, but the receptionist apparently fell off her chair she laughed so hard!

I used to get it a lot in Japan. Some were fine and laughed it off, other times were just horrible.

at Looga-barooga

Ke-narris-buroo. Knaresborough

I find some cities are different to others.

In Berlin, I usually desperately persisted in German throughout a conversation, with the German person switching to English, so we're both bizarrely switching language.

In Dusseldorf, they seemed far more easygoing. I told a stranger she had forgotten her hands (gloves), and even managed a chat with a man in a nightclub (he knew we were English because we had come to a club mostly populated by the over 40s when we were mid twenties, and thought we'd need help... I explained we preferred the music!)

My husband announced to me once that he was living “bi curiously” through his best friend.

I like to think he meant vicariously but you never know.

Great thread 😂

Shednik my friend's dad is non-native speaking and thought Loughborough was pronounced Log-barog! Clearly quite a difficult one to master

Actually, DP is from Australia and therefore a native English speaker, and even he can't get his head around a lot of British place names

I also inadvertently raised a laugh in Germany by confusing two verbs for 'smell' - 'riechen' and 'stinken'.

They obviously sound like two English verbs - 'reek' and 'stink' - both of which always suggest a horrid whiff, but whilst 'stinken' always means a bad stink, 'riechen' is more neutral, like the English 'smell' - and can either mean a pleasing aroma or a nasty pong, depending on context and the accompanying description of great, awful etc.

I told my hostess that the food stank really good! Thankfully, she knew what I'd meant to say....

I made some very bad mistakes in Russian. I said some really bad things. Russian verbs of motion are notoriously really hard. I occasionally said he was doing this, going there, fucking her.... etc. They just laughed and were really nice about it.

Maybe Germans are a bit unforgiving?

What I love about germans correcting my german is the fact they will happily completely derail the conversation that I am trying to have, to correct me “so I don’t make that mistake in future”.

I just love their optimism there! I’m an adult language learner, I will definitely make that mistake again in future, multiple times, so we might as well focus on what I am actually trying to communicate and not the fact I should have used dative with that preposition.

Non-native speakers of English often sound rude because they translate literally from their native language, which retains the tu/vous politeness distinction and use the imperative; so our Spanish au-pairs would say “Pass the potatoes” or “Give me the salt” at the table, because in Spanish using the polite imperative (or informal amongst friends) - is a normal way of making a request. Many languages also use please and thank you a lot less as politeness markers than British English.
I think this is behind a lot of negative perceptions of foreigners as being rude.

shashkin I’ve found many cultures are so enthusiastic about people that are learning their language and really helpful. However, because English is seen as “standard” native English speakers aren’t as patient or understanding when we make mistakes.

I think this is behind a lot of negative perceptions of foreigners as being rude.

I’ve had this argument lots of times! My husband is Russian, so he’s very direct. He’s not rude at all.

I only started learning English as a teenager, and you British have been very kind to me in this. If I ever make apologies for my English (which can be great one day and really crap another) people just tell me it's great. I do wish DH and my friends would correct me a bit more, though. I've gone on for years pronouncing things all wrong, and when I've realised and asked why no one told me, they just say "well, I knew what you meant." :)

My dad was on holiday in Germany last year and was chatting away to a barman in German until the barman asked him where he was from and when he said England the barman switched to English and said “well if I’m from California and you’re from England why are we speaking in German?”

I pretty much gave up on Cantonese when I discovered that the difference between saying "nine", "help" and "penis" was just context and inflection. Same word.

Dh is German/Austrian, although he has been here since he was a child.
One part of his “Austrian “ side he struggles to let go of is the opinion that it is ok to say something (anything) as long as it’s true. Me and the dc have taken the piss out of him often enough now that he knows saying “you are wrong” or “you have failed” is no time generally acceptable here. He seems to get on at work ok and is generally well liked but he recently began a new contract where his manager is Polish. The rest of the team warned him that said manger could be a bit of a twat but DH gets on great with him because they both just tell everyone when something hasn’t been done as it should be or isn’t good enough. DH finds it very refreshing to be able to just say “ no, you’ve done it wrong” rather than have to phrase it in a more sensitive way

The person in my Spanish class who used pene instead of pena has never quite lived it down (penis/pity)

You kind of get used to it I guess. I live in the UK and English is my second language. I probably encounter a 5% of rude judgemental people. 95% of good ones is not bad