When using another language goes (badly) wrong...

[scottswede]

This is our latest TV commercial for supermarket chain here in Sweden.

www.ica.se/ica-kort-bank/icas-reklamfilmer/

Completely inappropriate in my opinion but Swedes don't have any proper swear words in their language and tend to adopt lovely english ones instead.
If you can't get the link. It's a supermarket employee who thinks he has won lots of money and tells his boss "F¤¤¤ Y¤¤" with middle finger gesture too.
I thought a little light-hearted weekend entertainment.

I had a wonderful moment in a class where a girl was out of breath having climbed the stairs. I told her "you should try to get fitter" Of course, the boys all laughed. "Do you know what you said miss? That means pussy in Swedish"

And you are supposed to want to buy your food and groceries there???

An English friend once told me how the only meat she likes to eat is "polla" I couldn't stop laughing, she meant to say "pollo" which is Spanish for chicken but instead she said cock.

I was trying to show I'd made the effort to learn a little Spanish and apparently told my friend's boyfriend that he had a pink penis rather than a pink comb in his pocket!

Yes, I have done:

Pizza con polla (cock pizza)

Ocho coños (8 fannies instead of 8 beers = cañas)

I told students I'd been to Ikea and bought a set of cojones not cajones (bollocks instead of drawers).

Went to the doctor because of chronic heartburn, I translated it directly as 'a fire in my heart' he said "congratulations, I hope he buys you flowers"

My list of talking diabolical Spanish is endless!

I arrived in Italy on holiday once to find no one in the hotel spoke English, but they did speak French.

So I tried to explain, in French that I wanted to go to a shop to buy some cheese and bread.

It was some while later I thought and realised that I had actually told them I wanted to go to a shop to sell some cheese and bread.

My DS had just moved from Germany to France and managed to say Good Morning in German to half the staff before he realised what he'd done - need to speak French in France - doh!

My favourite is still one I read on here (I think!) once. Someone in Spain who was trying to ask for soya milk in a restaurant and earnestly kept repeating to the waiter: 'soy leche, soy leche' (literally: 'I am milk')

Swedes have form for unfortunate advertising as evidenced one New Year when this advert for an estate agents popped up all over Stockholm: imgur.com/fDAQd

I was chatting to one of my pupils after the Xmas break.

She told me that she had been to France, but that she found the French really miserable.

"Why?", I asked her, "What made you feel that way?"

Apparently she bought a bag of chips and the bloke slammed them down on the counter.

I asked if she had tried to order them in French.

No, she used Spanish as she doesn't take French.

When we were living in Russia, my DH spoke to a female shop assistant in the fruit and veg section of a supermarket and said ''I'm looking for large pears''

Unfortunately, he got it wrong and actually said ''I'm looking for large breasts''

Sorry, if it wasn't clear, the above was the English translation of what he said in RUssian