(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!

I once suggested in French that my friend might like to sleep on the sailor that I keep under my bed.

What @LightDrizzle said is right. I am forever tired of saying please and thank you for everything because in my native tongue you get the politeness of the tome by the way you construct the sentence, hence please is implied.
So here I struggle and then I end up saying it too much

I was in a shop yesterday and a very polite Asian lady was trying in her best broken English to return a faulty bag and came out with “it is significantly shit” the assistant was lovely and didn’t so much as break a smile.

When I was 13 I went on a German exchange trip. I had only been studying German for about a year (and am not a natural linguist) so my grasp of the language was still very week.

I caused confusion from the first morning. I had taken a present for my hosts and handed it over intending to say "I have bought you a little present." However, I always got the words for gift(Geschenk), face (Gesicht) and shop(Geschaft) mixed up, so I solemnly handed over the package announcing I had brought them a little shop.

Actually, compared to some of the other misunderstandings and mishaps that occurred on that trip that was nothing!

I'm still laughing at "with tits?!"

Oh this is my daily life. Ffs I needed Canestan - it’s the same word but with a different emphasis and you’d have thought I was saying I needed “ibuprofen” for my thrush!! The pharmacist looked at me like I was crazy.
I’m generally not bothered tho - I’m trying my best & if they don’t like it then tough shit

Sometimes it's because the people you think are natives aren't!

I speak enough Serbo-Croat to order a round of drinks or a simple meal. This isn't much help when the servers are from Slovakia as they don't understand me

@sonjadog

Also, the thing with people not understanding everything just because you have one emphasis or sound slightly wrong - it really pisses me off. I teach philosophy in Norwegian. I work at a high academic level in Norwegian. Yet apparently someone in the local shop can't understand me when I ask for a bag because it is so hard to understand my foreign accent... Says a lot more about their attitudes than my language skills, I reckon.

I feel you, but it’s not limited to foreign languages- I am Scottish living in London and stupidly chose to live in a street called “Bow Road”. In 5 years I never once got a taxi driver who understood where I wanted to go until I said “near Mile End”. Often get blank stares in shops too.

jessie my brain cannot process Scottish at all! I think we are I built with a certain ear for certain accents. I find separating the tones in mandarin really easily whereas my brother can’t distunguish them at all. My husband can’t understand Irish people.
After the “laurel and yanny” thing I’d like to research the tonal influence of certain accents and how we process them.

I think I might just use "significantly shit" next time I return anything.

In fact, it should be an option on returns labels.

Namaste throw in Towcester and Belvoir, I think we deliberately designed our pronunciation of words to confuse the hell out of everyone.

Place names can be a bugger... the company I work for used to have its headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts. Taxi drivers - most of whom were Eastern European - would look at me in puzzlement as I enunciated 'Waltham' ever more crisply... till I finally realised I needed to pronounce it Waaalthham not 'wolthm'. That was my mistake not theirs!

I think when it comes to understanding people who aren't native speakers, it's sometimes a bit easier for brits than others - firstly because so many people do have a reasonable grasp of conversational English, but also because English is such a mongrel language. I had a a French colleague, who would occasionally be stumped for the correct English word but would use the French one. Usually this was quite readily comprehensible in context because we'd have a similar word derived from French/Latin rather than the common German/Norse. He always wanted to know what the correct word was, it was just a really effective way to communicate - with goodwill on both sides.

Re place names... an American who asked me how to pronounce Cirencester was very surprised

@halfwitpicker I avoid all mentions of necks in French for similar reasons.

I learned French here and picked some things up a bit wrong. A lowlight was saying to a friend’s lovely respectable mother “I really don’t give a shit” when I thought I was saying “i really don’t mind”.

I agree that getting a pronunciation slightly wrong and having people stare at you in confusion is annoying, but I’ve also been on the other side of it and been genuinely confused. I had someone say to me recently, “This is a dye-ling song, yes?”
He meant Dylan...it was a Bob Dylan song.

My Chinese colleague and I were discussing dating and boyfriends one day. When I said i didnt want a boyfriend she responded very concerned with 'are you a lizabee?'

I thought she meant 'are you lazy?' so i responded 'what?'

She clarified 'you know, a lady gay'
She had been pronouncing lesbian.

Took something broken into a shop in Spain to see if it could be fixed, went back to get it and the Spanish shop assistant enunciated very carefully in English the words "It's fucked" we couldn't stop laughing but at least he left us in no doubt whatsoever as to what he meant!

Crying at lady gay!

A Chinese colleague once plonked herself down next to me and announced she wasn't going to sit next to our other colleagues because they were speaking aerobics. They were speaking Arabic, which I suppose is similarly incomprehensible

A German seller in a bakery once giggled at me when I attempted to order a pretzel. Proper hand over her mouth tittering. I didn't know whether to be embarrassed, cross or amused was definitely hungry

I once said to the very handsome director of my childrens school that we needed to make an erection, I was trying to say band/group

I work in a shop with a lot of polish customers. When you ask them if the want a bag or cash back or something and they don't want it they say No, but the way they say it is very abrupt so it can come across as rude.
I once served a French man who asked me for something I couldn't work out. After a while he started jutting his hips and said intercourse intercourse. He wanted condoms lol.

I live in Northern Ireland and some of the way non residents pronounce place names can be quite funny. My mum lives in Ahoghill which is a good one.

Love this thread!

Sprouts
I've done something very similar involving my French in-laws and the word "branlette"

My dh speaks English as an additional language. When his best friend came over to meet our first baby he sat down and said with a big smile "how are you feeding him? With tits?"

My favourite.

My Taiwanese friend can often be very blunt in conversation and I have to remind myself that sometimes she doesn't quite say what she means.

I once told a very proper Spanish Lawyer that my cunt wasn’t very nice ( meant sister in law) but it was ok because I didn’t see it very often

In Germany this summer a very nice man in a fishing shop told my 10 year old son in English that a certain lake wasn’t great to fish in because “ the fish were all a bit fucked up and spazzy “
DS was in a great hurry to tell me ( repeatedly)