(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!

2010Aussie have you seen Kaya Yanar's comedy show about Switzerland? It's fantastic, specially as he does a pitch perfect Zurich accent. I was like melting off the sofa laughing.

I’ve muddle up the verb to write and to wee many times in Russian. Same word, different inflection. Same with castle and key. And many many others!

Castle and lock even!

I have learnt to accept this.

My English is pretty good but some people still struggle to understand me . It varies enormously so I have no idea what the problem is. I just try to speak clearly, enunciate, use standard words etc.

My French is awful - pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. I cringe at myself every time I open my mouth. And yet in France I NEVER get the "what was that?", "pardon?", "Say that again" let alone the "oooh where are you from then?". Bizarre

So please be patient with non-speakers of your language. They are trying their best. Having a conversation in a language you are not fluent in is really mentally demanding. These people are trying to communicate and are not 100% in control of how they come across. Not that anybody is, but hopefully you see what I mean. Don't take it personally if the intonation is a bit off, the word choice is inadvertently raunchy or the "please" is at the beginning of the question instead of at the end.

I remember my sixth form Spanish teacher giggling a few times with mistranslations like using embarazada (pregnant) for embarrassed.

That said I remember having a conversation (actually numerous conversations) with a friend at university where she had no idea what I meant, and I couldn't work out why as I didn't realise the words I were using were regional and not used elsewhere.

Castle and lock

Ha, in German it's the same word, Schloß. Let's see what Mumsnet makes of that esszet...

My Polish colleague has come out with some absolute corkers to our customers. She didn't start learning English until she was 50 - she's done amazingly well, but in the early days she was literally translating each word in her head rather than thinking about the sentence as a whole.

For context, she's a tailor.

To one male customer: "Yes, I can do that but it will be a hand job." I jumped in, panicking slightly, and said "it will have to be sewn by hand." . Explained later to colleague what she'd said. She blanched. She'd been talking about hand jobs with customers for months without me knowing! Not one of them had said anything.

To another customer: "I don't work with shits like you." Which was quite apt actually, as he's an asshole. But what she meant was, it wasn't possible to make his shirt bigger.....

She also talked a lot about her "hot electric partner" the first winter I knew her, which turned out to be her electric blanket

I love her.

I learnt Mandarin as a small child, and was pretty fluent by all accounts. Then we moved, and I forgot the majority of the spoken language. It’s tonal, and that’s the bit that’s gone, so I can still understand other people sometimes, but not reply. I’m too scared my lack of tonality will mean I try to say something nice, and end up being rude!

DH tried to pick up some simple greetings when he was in Japan. Cue polite giggles from the hotel receptionist when he tried one ... he was copying what he'd heard her say, not realising that there are differences depending on the sex of the speaker.

OP is not being unreasonable, though how you can tell someone is not speaking their mother tongue is not easily apparent.

Though in the parts of Belgium where there is a dual language status, I deliberately ask or respond in the other language of the person speaking.

I like the insights you get into other languages with literal translations.

An undercup makes far more sense than a saucer after all, hand shoes too. I love that slugs can be naked/homeless snails, but admittedly chest warts don't sound very appealing.

DuploRelatedInjury

I always think the Spanish word for pregnant is ‘empanda’, which makes perfect sense when you think about it

An American girl stopped me and asked for directions to Suzyhall Street. She meant Sauchiehall Street. Which im guessing could be tricky for anyone not Scottish!

Oh Britain is HORRIBLE for placenames. My mother scolded me roundly for not magically knowing that Leominster is Lemster, and my aunt pissed herself laughing when I called Pontardawe Pont-Ard-Wee rather than Ponta-Deh-Wee....

My ex-boyfriend was surprisingly considerate when he did check I knew how to pronounce the name of the British city I was moving to, come to think of it

To be fair to the British, no one has visibly pissed themselves laughing at me while correcting me about my musings on Wor-chester-shire or anything like that. I even had a short, kind chat with a nurse in a GUM clinic once, where I learnt that vague is not vay-gewe but "you know, like Vogue" :) (Yes, my symptoms were vague, but it was all okay in the end!)

I don't know any of these English place names, this is really interesting! In Glasgow you have Milngavie, which I remember reading on a ginger bottle as a small kid but not matching up with "Mulguy" until I started driving lessons

I had to explain to my Italian colleague the other day that the word she was looking for was “stuffy” not “stiffy”...

I didn’t realise that Portuguese is a gendered language until a waiter politely (and v nicely) explained it to me when I was Lisbon. I can’t remember now whether I said “obrigada” when it should have been “obrigado” because he was male or if I said “obrigado” when I should have said “obrigada” because I am female.

It was years ago now and haven’t been since, so remember most clearly that he was nice about it and that I said something wrong based on gender.

Will have to check before I go to Portugal again.

Great thread! On a department store escalator in the West Midlands a man asked me which floor it was for for 'ties'. I pointed down to Ist floor, Menswear. The exasperated response was 'No, CHILDREN'S ties!'
I got it, 6th floor, Toys!

A bloke is standing at the side of a canal in Dudley with a fishing rod. Another man comes by and laughs at him, asking if he does it often and has he ever caught anything worthwhile.

The first chap says "I caught a whale last week!"

Of course, the passer-by naturally disbelieves him, but decides to humour this poor, simple soul and acts really amazed. He says "Wooooooowwwww!!! That's incredible!!! I'll bet you were absolutely over the moon, weren't you?"

"Not really," he sighs. "It only had two spokes left!"

My ex-boyfriend was surprisingly considerate when he did check I knew how to pronounce the name of the British city I was moving to, come to think of it

Was it York?

When I lived in Wales, some people struggled with the concept of bilingual road signs e.g. "Ysgol School" or "Ysbyty Hospital".

"We parked near a school."
"Which one, did you see its name?"
"Oh, yes, it was the Yuskoll School!"

Webuilt

A fair few of my English friends have asked why so many hotels in Wales are called “the Gwesty Hotel” 😂

Because English is the world lingua franca, we are used to hearing all kinds of spoken English and are therefore adaptable and willing to overlook mistakes or odd turns of phrase. We live in a world where Melania Trump’s barely comprehensible enunciation is considered adequate to be First Lady of the USA. So English speakers are used to our language being butchered!

German, on the other hand, is a pretty conservative language with one accepted standard, Hochdeutsch. I knew Germans who couldn’t even cope with Austrian or Swiss varieties of German, let alone foreigners’ mistakes. The only people I met in Germany who were more tolerant were Germans who had learned foreign languages themselves or were used to being around second language learners e.g. German teachers or university staff.

My sympathies, OP, it is tough and very tiring when you are trying to learn a language.

what I find particularly entertaining about Germans is when they correct native English speakers use of English

I used to teach EFL at a uni in Moscow, and the administrators took our passports to register us with the police. Fair enough, but we had no other acceptable ID (and police tended to do spot checks on foreigners, presumably after bribes or maybe just bored), plus we couldn’t change money. So after s couple of weeks we went down to the admin office to try to get at receipt or something we could wave at the police till we got our passports back.

My friend asked, in English, if we could “get a piece of paper to prove who we were”. The admin bloke smirked and said “would it not be more correct to say a sheet of paper?” And then fell about laughing with his friends, and walked off. No, arsehole, it would be entirely incorrect to say “sheet of paper”.

Still fuming 23 years later!

No funny stories to add but I do hope this ends up in classics!