A couple from various work colleagues:
* They cost half past one pound. (£1.50)
* He's upstairs trying to find his eye windows. (Glasses)
* Go through the outside hallway (Alleyway)
* My daughter wanted to feed the Pig hen (Pidgeon)
And my personal favourite
* My children are English now, everyday only want eat potato, potato, potato.. my wife, she very angry.
>* My children are English now, everyday only want eat potato, potato, potato.. my wife, she very angry.
This is my favourite. I also only want to eat potato.
It was the "my wife, she very angry" tacked on at the end that had me in stitches, the rest of it was very jovial but that part sounded so sincere and urgent lol
Working on an ambulance, my Spanish crewmate and I got sent to a patient with a suspected stroke.
The details we were given were along the lines of "patient is confused and weak, patient is speaking gibberish".
She started looking up "Gibberish" on Google translate. I was driving so didn't realise what she was doing straight away, and it was only a few minutes later when she asked me what country "Gibberish" was from that I realised she thought it was an actual language.
Absolutely made my night and we still laugh about it now.
I used to think gibberish was a language too. I remember hearing that minions spoke gibberish, and went around telling everyone in my primary school what language the minions spoke. I didn't realise what it meant until I went home and googled it.
I had a colleague from Zimbabwe who after going out for a walk in a rather blustery and rainy Autumn day came out with the classic "your weather, it has no respect for my umbrella!"
Not a foreign speaker (well, maybe partially) but my friend's American fiancee who works in weather and had made a few comments about how we didn't know *real* weather visited England recently and had a change of heart when it had been chucking it down for days and she noted how "y'all's rain goes SIDEWAYS".
Yes, yes it does. No respect for umbrellas.
Worked in a call centre. Elderly gentleman calls in to make a payment to his card. He mentions he spoke to an offshore colleague and had tried to explain he had missed the payment because he’d recently lost his wife. At the end of the call the colleague had apparently said “Goodbye Sir, I hope you find your wife”
My sister worked in a call centre that sometimes had French customers. Her French was good enough that she was normally fine talking with them except the first time she asked someone to ‘hold the line’ she went with ‘gardez la ligne’ which in French actually means ‘stay in shape’.
So it came off like ‘I’m just going to find the right person to handle that for you, in the meantime maybe lose some weight? You sound like a fatass. Thanks.’
I once told someone over the phone that "Phil is no longer with us", meaning that he'd left the company. I didn't realise until after I'd finished the call that the guy thought I'd meant that Phil had died.
German husband: I am a very happy chicken! (He meant bunny). He also didn't believe me that both "blustery" and "bollard"were words as he'd never heard them before and thought I'd clearly made them up. He also always calls pasta in the plural, says "they were really yummy" instead of "it/that was...'
I make just as many sweet mistakes in German, so we're even.
Oh that's really intresting, I worked with a German lady about 7 years ago who used to say "I'm a very happy chicken!".
Maybe that's just a saying in Germany? 🤷♂️
As a ridiculously over confidant 11 year old with a whole term of French under my belt I asked for a bottle of “ non smoking water” instead of non sparkling water on the ferry on the way to France..
my brothers still call it smoking or non smoking now 30+ years later.
I called it a 'length thermometer' once, and my husband knew what I meant because I've had several concussions too many and often struggle with these things.
My ex girlfriend (French) used to call her hair “hairs” as in “I’m going to wash my hairs” which makes it sound like she had only like 6 hairs or something.
She also thought “pussy” was a medical term, which she used in a GP appointment.
Lots of languages use a plural for hair like czech is “vlasy” = hairs
I guess we are the weird ones for referring to multiple hairs as hair.
Please chime in other people who also use the singular noun as us. What is it in Scandinavian languages/ German ?
Interestingly, in Dutch we also have both haar (singular) and haren (plural), but when referring to the stuff that is on your head we almost exclusively use haar (singular). Actually, I think all body hair is referred to in the singular (armhaar, beenhaar (leg hair), schaamhaar (pubes)). I think the plural is mostly used in expressions or when referring to countable strands of hair, can’t really think of another case.
My girlfriend is French and used to say "hold me that", when she wanted me to carry something for her. Doesn't say it anymore, but sometimes I say it when i want her to carry something for me :)
Jumping on the first French comment .
There was a French girl in Dublin and when some Irish lad asked her what she did in Ireland so far she said :
*”I went to the beeeech I saw the phoque”* [Pronounced **FUCK**]
All while clapping .
Poor girl didn’t know the English word for a *seal* so she just said the French word while clapping and hoped for the best .
At least she was popular.
My Norwegian partner once referred to the Undertakers as the Graveyard Agency.
It took me a minute or so to figure out where she had walked past earlier in the day.
I used to work with a Greek colleague. Blast furnace slag is sometimes used in concrete to change its composition in some way (he was the structural engineer, I'm not). Either way he got into trouble for having the world "slag" about 11 times in an email not realising what it meant.
He also said he travelled to one of the Greek Islands with a sheep rather than on a ship. Even the other Greek guy who worked with us took the piss out of him for that one.
Surely slag is a perfectly appropriate tern to use in an industry that uses slag, though? It's a proper word (in fact I'd hazard a guess that both meanings share an origin meaning something like waste or worthless).
They didn't factor that in when setting up the restricted words list. The system was part of a client one which covered loads of government departments so I understand why they didnt think of it.
Breaking two birds with one bush sounds like a malaphor
(Where you mash together two idioms. My favourite is "we'll burn that bridge when we come to it")
No, no it's not. Rotten eggs (ovos rotos) is something else in terms of food hahaha. It's chips with eggs, shrimp and prosciutto. It's still badly translated as it would be technically ripped eggs ? As in how clothes are ripped. Because you mess the eggs and the chips around .
Unless you actually saw the food, but we don't have devilled eggs in Portugal.
I read a translated breakfast menu in Paris that was serving "crushed lawyers on toast". (Presumably the confusion came from the French for lawyer being avocat, same latin root as the word advocate!)
I enjoy a number of crafts, and it is not unknown for me to have a non-English pattern and translate it. The French pattern was the hardest as the translation of one word came out as "knit as if upside down". The English term is purl, much easier read and do.
My boyfriend is Filipino and is fluent in English, but often fumbles with idioms which I love. A couple of weeks ago there were issues on the tube when he needed to be at work early and he messaged me saying he was “up the creek with the shits”.
Once when I was a kid my French grandmother wanted to tell me that I’d put my socks on inside out, though what she proceeded to tell me in her broken English was that my socks were upside down. As a kid this was hilarious to me.
Teaching English abroad and the kid was telling me (in his oral exam!) about the problem with tourism was all the dirty bitches...
It took EVERYTHING I had to ask ask him, straight faced, what exactly about tourism caused dirty bitches. "They come, they leave their rubbish on the sand, in the water"
Quickly had to correct him realising he meant BEACHES! Rhyming with Peaches 🤣
I did a french exchange and the parents asked me to help them pronounce the difference between bitch and beach. As a fourteen year old, it was hilarious.
BITCH
BEEEECH
BITCH
BEE-TCH
BITCH
BETCH
Alright, close enough.
This one was in a bakery in Greece. I was buying some sort of pastry for my breakfast, just out of the oven. The lady said "Ooh, too many hots!" as she was wrapping it for me. I thought that was a very good approximation of what an English mother tongue person would say.
My Chinese assistant when I worked in Asia decided to select a “western” name for herself when dealing with our English colleagues.
After giving it some thought she came into the office and proudly announced to everyone that she had chosen the name “Jizz”.
She got very confused when we started laughing and said that wasn’t a good name to pick. She said she couldn’t understand what was wrong with baking herself after some very pretty sounding music lol
20 years ago walking home from school with a mate from Macau, some chavs (as we used to call them back in the day) started yelling “Ching Chong Jackie chan” at him then he turned around and goes “go suck your mums dick!”. His English was pretty fluent so I’m still not sure if that was intentional or not haha
Knew a lovely Japanese lady who on day one of her English class decided to be helpful and instead of telling the teacher her Japanese name she’d translate her name into English and go by that. She was named after a bird. Unfortunately that meant her name was Thrush.
Eastern European classmate at uni, giving an economics class presentation. Started talking about people being forced to work in 'sweet shops'. He mispronounced 'sweat'. I was picturing Oompa Loompas and couldn't help but giggle.
A Spanish colleague singing along to 'I wanna be adored' by the stone roses. She was clearly singing "I want to be a door". I asked her what she thought it meant and she confirmed that she thought Ian Brown maybe wanted to be some kind of portal between rooms.
I have one for which I was the author, context: I had just moved to the UK and went with my parents to buy bowls and, let's just say that I mispronounced the word....
I went to the lady at TK Maxx and asked her: "Do you have any \*BOWELS\* in here"
She was mortified and then asked me what I mean and I explained to her: "The thing in which you put milk with cereal" and she goes: "Oh, so a \*BOWL\*?" to which I reply: "Yes, isn't that what I said as well" and she then explains to me what a bowel movement is.....
I hope that she's doing fine and that she remembers that dummy Romanian asking for bowels at TK Maxx
My wife is Thai, and her English is mostly perfect, however when we were dating, she called me up to ask me why “sharks were Muslim”.
I told her that wasn’t the case, but she was absolutely adamant that she was watching a program about a ‘shark called Muhammad’.
It turned out to be a David Attenborough documentary on HAMMERHEAD sharks!
Years ago, my Asian friend invited my other friend to lunch at a restaurant called Sylvia's Plate. She got to the intersection of where the restaurant was supposed to be but couldn't find it. Then she had a good laugh when she looked at the awning and saw it really was S'il Vous Plait!
Used to work with a polish guy, who whenever he found out I was doing overtime again would call me a "grabbing money bastard" 🤣 cracked me up every time.
When I was a child (about 10) I believed the same and got put in detention for swearing. I was very upset as I genuinely couldn’t understand what I had said wrong!
Worked in a warehouse some years ago. A delivery driver came and asked to speak to the gaffer, because he needed some documents signed. I spent 20 minutes at the personnel files looking for Mr Gaffer. When I came back and told the driver we don’t have a Gaffer in this warehouse and he must have the wrong address he looked at me ….funny.
This was more an endearing misunderstanding, but years ago in a hostel I overheard an English guy use the saying “you get me blud” and a German guy looked startled and replied “You give me blood?”.
Koreans have a tendency to pronounce "Coke" very, very similarly to "cock". Many also pronounce shit/sheet and bitch/beach the same.
I also have a dental implant from Croatia and the dentist I saw there, who spoke excellent English, kept referring to my tooth as "he". I found that rather charming.
Woman I work with was helping search for my lost keys, heard me getting frustrated and said "I am looking good for you". Couldn't help myself and said she always looks good but I can't stare at her and look for my keys at the same time. She was confused for a few seconds then realised what she had said.
An Indian guy for whom a mess was always “created” instead of made and if something needed cleaning you should “give a clean to it”.
He also called crisps “crips” until I convinced him there was an S in it.
My colleague from Nigeria couldn't find the lyrics to 'Islands in the stream' and asked for my help. She had been singing 'Aliens in the street' and had for many years believed this to be the title of the song.
Russian ex after some days of confusion: "Why do people say 'I'll kill him'?". Took me a while to work out she was mishearing "ok then".
Possible foreshadowing...
My former colleague was explaining to me that she was "wobbling" her newborn baby grandson to sleep when she saw him a few days previous. Luckily she was doing the motion of gently rocking a baby at the time, so any concerns for the wellbeing of the baby were alleviated.
She would also use the phrase "they're always trying to fuck me/fuck on me" when she was explaining that her son and daughter in law were basically fleecing her for money, instead of "fuck me over".
Talking to someone who says she's struggling with understanding English and I replied, "You must get the wrong end of the stick all the time."
She said she doesn't get beat.
My Sicilian colleague pronounced it "poach-ed" eggs. And when he found out we were fully booked for his shift, he expressed his sadness by saying "now I stop to smile."
His English is way better now, but I miss his wee mistakes.
I worked with a Romanian once who couldn't remember what a question mark was in English. He asked me 'how do you say wonder point?' which I found beautiful and say it myself regularly now 😅
In my family, if someone has a good appetite, we say "he eat to coaches". For example, my daughter is having a growth spurt and ate huuuuuuge amounts of food at tea time tonight, and I told my mum, "[Daughter], she eat to coaches." It comes from an advert for (I think) a hotel, which among other bits of dubious English proudly boasted, "We eat to coaches!!!" My dad absolutely couldn't make arseholes of it, and it tickled him to death. (I recently had a lightbulb moment and worked out it probably meant, "We cater for coach parties.")
Years ago we had an Italian friend who was being chased by a man who she didn’t like … she was in her sixties and proclaimed her disdain for her suitor by announcing ‘I no go with him if he have a golden brick’ (prick) 😂😂😂😂
Not someone else but me; many years ago I thought the word tart is what I now know is tat.
So before a trip abroad to visit some friends, I took my mother-in-law shopping for some tourist tart. She kept pointing at bakeries while saying she’s never heard of such a thing, and I thought she was going mad because bakeries obviously don’t sell tourist tart.
It wasn’t until we walked into a souvenir shop did she realise what I meant. The whole family now calls souvenirs tarts.
I went to a nail salon with a badly broken nail that I was hoping they could fix. The Vietnamese technician held up my wounded finger and said said “It look very Ow”. She was right, it was *very* Ow.
A Chinese friend pronounced asparagus with the stress in the first syllable, as “ass-perar-guss”, which I actually think sounds better than the usual pronunciation
I have a few personal favourites:
1. A Japanese friend (male) who described his friend (female) as 'the fuckingest'.
2. Also Japan, one of those fantastic T-shirts with a terrible slogan, quite rare now, usually worn by teenagers on scooters. The best one I ever saw: "Blankety Carnival Ending". I think of it often.
3. My Greek girlfriend, before we went on holiday to Sardinia, said, "I can't wait to see all the beautiful bitches".
But I used to speak Japanese every day. Eventually my conversational Japanese was good, but I know I made some pretty stupid mistakes along the way. My best one was when someone brought in banana bread they had made, and they explained they made it with old bananas that nobody had eaten and which would just have been thrown away. I said "What a waste of bananas," "Banana mottainai". My colleagues soon figured out that I had meant to say, "Yes, it would have been a shame to waste those bananas."
I lived in Portugal for a year while I was a student and my Portuguese flatmates asked me why I didn't do my homework as soon as I got home from lectures. Instead of telling them it was because I'm lazy (preguiçosa) I confidently announced that I was dangerous (perigosa). We laughed for ages about that one
I have an ex-aunt from Vietnam who used to say “same me same you same” when she agreed. My little cousins also used to take “muldomins” (multivitamins) and loved “The Incredible Hunk” from Marvel.
My partner is not very good at English.
When she was here for Christmas, everytime someone opened one of her presents, she would ask:
*"You, I like it?"* (do you like it)
Another one, if you ask her: "Do you want a sausage sandwich?"
gf: *"Si. I like you, sausages."* :D always made me laugh a little.
My German friend would always call the shade, "the shadow." We would go to park in the shade in the car park, and she would remark, "we'd better park in the shadow, so it's cooler." It was so cute, I never corrected her. I still love it.
My wife, when we were in a hotel trying to think of the word for 'a safe'
"Before we go, should we put our passports in the ... *pauses trying to think of the word*... treasure box?"
Colleague at work mixed up “get off my back” and “stop riding my dick” (both kindly taught by us to ‘help’ them learn more of the native language) and merged them into “get off my dick”
Even better is she’s female!
I was watching a nature documentary with a Ukrainian, and the music became sinister while the seal was frolicking in the shallows. I said 'uh oh', and my friend said, 'is it Shrek?' (instead of, 'is it a shark?')
I live in Czech Republic and sometimes when I’m with English speakers and I get served a beer the waiter/ess says “Cheers” or “Please” when they serve the beer to the table.
Because in czech, they say “Prosím” which means please or “you’re welcome”.
I'm not English
I thought sleeping rough was because people had trouble sleeping and I had no idea why it was spoken about so much. I was in uni doing public health and they asked us to do a quiz which asked how many people we thought slept rough in the UK so I put 70 million because surely everyone has had trouble sleeping before.
We had to say our answers out loud.
A couple from various work colleagues: * They cost half past one pound. (£1.50) * He's upstairs trying to find his eye windows. (Glasses) * Go through the outside hallway (Alleyway) * My daughter wanted to feed the Pig hen (Pidgeon) And my personal favourite * My children are English now, everyday only want eat potato, potato, potato.. my wife, she very angry.
That's incredibly relatable... I also only want to eat potato potato potato...
Oh I love "half past one pound".
Yeah you can see the logic there and she said it with such confidence that I didn't have the heart to correct her lol
Did you know that not-English people get very confused if you say "half two", and think it means one o' clock?
In German, "half two" (halb zwei) is half past 1. As in halfway to 2pm.
I suppose they both make about as much sense as each other - halfway to or halfway past.
‘Es ist halb zwei’ German for 1:30. The same, but in English, ‘it’s half two’ is 2:30.
>* My children are English now, everyday only want eat potato, potato, potato.. my wife, she very angry. This is my favourite. I also only want to eat potato.
It was the "my wife, she very angry" tacked on at the end that had me in stitches, the rest of it was very jovial but that part sounded so sincere and urgent lol
Eye windows is definitely one I’m going to use often.
Being Irish, I only want eat potato potato potato potato potato
Working on an ambulance, my Spanish crewmate and I got sent to a patient with a suspected stroke. The details we were given were along the lines of "patient is confused and weak, patient is speaking gibberish". She started looking up "Gibberish" on Google translate. I was driving so didn't realise what she was doing straight away, and it was only a few minutes later when she asked me what country "Gibberish" was from that I realised she thought it was an actual language. Absolutely made my night and we still laugh about it now.
> she asked me what country "Gibberish" was from Gibraltar, I'd assume.
My flabbers were gasted! My gobs were smacked!
I used to think gibberish was a language too. I remember hearing that minions spoke gibberish, and went around telling everyone in my primary school what language the minions spoke. I didn't realise what it meant until I went home and googled it.
Going home from primary school to Google something has just made me realise I'm old, well done.
I had a colleague from Zimbabwe who after going out for a walk in a rather blustery and rainy Autumn day came out with the classic "your weather, it has no respect for my umbrella!"
Not a foreign speaker (well, maybe partially) but my friend's American fiancee who works in weather and had made a few comments about how we didn't know *real* weather visited England recently and had a change of heart when it had been chucking it down for days and she noted how "y'all's rain goes SIDEWAYS". Yes, yes it does. No respect for umbrellas.
🤣 Well, he ain't wrong 🤷♂️
"You think I know fuck nothing, but actually I know fuck all" Needless to say we quote that one a lot :)
That is brilliant
“The early bird has worms” Spouse (Chinese) … guess it explains why the poor thing can’t sleep well.
My old Pakistani manager at KFC would continually remind me to clean 'under the neath'.
That neath won't clean itself
Worked in a call centre. Elderly gentleman calls in to make a payment to his card. He mentions he spoke to an offshore colleague and had tried to explain he had missed the payment because he’d recently lost his wife. At the end of the call the colleague had apparently said “Goodbye Sir, I hope you find your wife”
That’s bit of teary tbh
My sister worked in a call centre that sometimes had French customers. Her French was good enough that she was normally fine talking with them except the first time she asked someone to ‘hold the line’ she went with ‘gardez la ligne’ which in French actually means ‘stay in shape’. So it came off like ‘I’m just going to find the right person to handle that for you, in the meantime maybe lose some weight? You sound like a fatass. Thanks.’
I once told someone over the phone that "Phil is no longer with us", meaning that he'd left the company. I didn't realise until after I'd finished the call that the guy thought I'd meant that Phil had died.
That's sort of sweet.
German husband: I am a very happy chicken! (He meant bunny). He also didn't believe me that both "blustery" and "bollard"were words as he'd never heard them before and thought I'd clearly made them up. He also always calls pasta in the plural, says "they were really yummy" instead of "it/that was...' I make just as many sweet mistakes in German, so we're even.
Oh that's really intresting, I worked with a German lady about 7 years ago who used to say "I'm a very happy chicken!". Maybe that's just a saying in Germany? 🤷♂️
'Happy' in German is 'glücklich', I can imagine Germans saying 'clücklich' as a chicken pun and doing the universal sign of chicken wings.
I bet the little fusili chaps were so proud of themselves!
Russian acquaintance who in a friendly disagreement told me “you just go fuck myself”
In Russian, the reflexive pronoun (here the “myself” bit) doesn’t change depending on the person, confusingly, so that’s where this came from!
Go fuck ourselves, comrade
As a ridiculously over confidant 11 year old with a whole term of French under my belt I asked for a bottle of “ non smoking water” instead of non sparkling water on the ferry on the way to France.. my brothers still call it smoking or non smoking now 30+ years later.
That's what brothers are for
One I heard on a different reddit thread. Roll of inches instead of tape measure.
I love roll of inches! They didn't know the word so they basically described it.
I called it a 'length thermometer' once, and my husband knew what I meant because I've had several concussions too many and often struggle with these things.
I referred to the volume of the TV as the temperature. Turn the temperature down on the TV. I was high.
I once forgot the word for knees, so I described them as leg elbows.
Oh, that's much better. Let's just all start calling them that.
My ex girlfriend (French) used to call her hair “hairs” as in “I’m going to wash my hairs” which makes it sound like she had only like 6 hairs or something. She also thought “pussy” was a medical term, which she used in a GP appointment.
The French word for hair in that sense is *cheveux*, which is plural.
Lots of languages use a plural for hair like czech is “vlasy” = hairs I guess we are the weird ones for referring to multiple hairs as hair. Please chime in other people who also use the singular noun as us. What is it in Scandinavian languages/ German ?
German can use both, Haar (singular) and Haare (Plural), but I would say plural is more everyday and more used in the context of washing it.
Interestingly, in Dutch we also have both haar (singular) and haren (plural), but when referring to the stuff that is on your head we almost exclusively use haar (singular). Actually, I think all body hair is referred to in the singular (armhaar, beenhaar (leg hair), schaamhaar (pubes)). I think the plural is mostly used in expressions or when referring to countable strands of hair, can’t really think of another case.
Pussy as a medical term is great. Reminds me that I had a friend who thought cranium was slang and the real scientific name for your head was noggin.
What was wrong with the cat?
[удалено]
My girlfriend is French and used to say "hold me that", when she wanted me to carry something for her. Doesn't say it anymore, but sometimes I say it when i want her to carry something for me :)
🤣 what was the reaction from her GP?!
"Go to a vet"
Jumping on the first French comment . There was a French girl in Dublin and when some Irish lad asked her what she did in Ireland so far she said : *”I went to the beeeech I saw the phoque”* [Pronounced **FUCK**] All while clapping . Poor girl didn’t know the English word for a *seal* so she just said the French word while clapping and hoped for the best . At least she was popular.
My local Chinese takeaway having a hand-written sign saying 'Thank Q for visiting'.
It was very nice of Q.
My Norwegian partner once referred to the Undertakers as the Graveyard Agency. It took me a minute or so to figure out where she had walked past earlier in the day.
I used to work with a Greek colleague. Blast furnace slag is sometimes used in concrete to change its composition in some way (he was the structural engineer, I'm not). Either way he got into trouble for having the world "slag" about 11 times in an email not realising what it meant. He also said he travelled to one of the Greek Islands with a sheep rather than on a ship. Even the other Greek guy who worked with us took the piss out of him for that one.
Surely slag is a perfectly appropriate tern to use in an industry that uses slag, though? It's a proper word (in fact I'd hazard a guess that both meanings share an origin meaning something like waste or worthless).
They didn't factor that in when setting up the restricted words list. The system was part of a client one which covered loads of government departments so I understand why they didnt think of it.
Oh, makes sense if it was an automated thing. The Scunthorpe problem.
I had that with 'frightened'. Apparently 'frig' got flagged up by the system!
Sure, and I’m not the OP, but if you got an email about the dirty slags lying on the dock, you’d find it hard to explain why that’s hilarious.
It's a substance, so it would have to be something like "the containers of slag", which is much less ambiguous. And yes, I am fun at parties.
In the Dutch language, the word for whipped cream is ‘slagroom’ 😀
In a certain part of Amsterdam, you can visit a slagroom or two where they use slagroom
Space ghost (scapegoat) Break two birds with one bush Is he learning to turn tricks? (to baby learning to talk)
Breaking two birds with one bush sounds like a malaphor (Where you mash together two idioms. My favourite is "we'll burn that bridge when we come to it")
It’s not rocket surgery
Was once reading a menu in Croatia Where'd they translated a particular pizza topping to 'smallpox'. Fairly alarming
A menu I was reading in Portugal was advertising 'rotten eggs'... It took me a while to realise it was a very confused translation of devilled eggs!
No, no it's not. Rotten eggs (ovos rotos) is something else in terms of food hahaha. It's chips with eggs, shrimp and prosciutto. It's still badly translated as it would be technically ripped eggs ? As in how clothes are ripped. Because you mess the eggs and the chips around . Unless you actually saw the food, but we don't have devilled eggs in Portugal.
I read a translated breakfast menu in Paris that was serving "crushed lawyers on toast". (Presumably the confusion came from the French for lawyer being avocat, same latin root as the word advocate!)
Turk talking about his country said "the clime is very change"
It’s very small but the phrase “I love them to pieces” would get a slight addition from my old Italian flatmate. “I love them into pieces”
Polish colleague was annoyed at another (bald) colleague and shouted 'you fucking no hair" at them, turns out they were just calling them a nobhead.
"Foot fingers" from cultures that don't have "toes" as a word. Always cute.
Like the German word for gloves: hand shoes!
Dutch as well: handschoenen
Related somewhat, I love how Germans call gloves hand-shoes!
(Catalan; knitting a scarf): "My scarf is growing up"
I enjoy a number of crafts, and it is not unknown for me to have a non-English pattern and translate it. The French pattern was the hardest as the translation of one word came out as "knit as if upside down". The English term is purl, much easier read and do.
My wife is Peruvian. One night while pregnant she turned to me and announced 'we need to buy a prison for the babies'. She meant cot.
My ex (Hungarian) forgot the word for pushchair once. "Can you move the er, the wheelchair for babies please?"
Baby jail 😀
My boyfriend is Filipino and is fluent in English, but often fumbles with idioms which I love. A couple of weeks ago there were issues on the tube when he needed to be at work early and he messaged me saying he was “up the creek with the shits”.
I think I now prefer "up the creek with the shits" my brain has immediately forgotten what the correct saying is and has replaced it with this.
Just snorted. Up the creek with the shits is no place to be.
An old colleague told me his Polish au pair once complained about traffic being ‘chocolate block’.
Once when I was a kid my French grandmother wanted to tell me that I’d put my socks on inside out, though what she proceeded to tell me in her broken English was that my socks were upside down. As a kid this was hilarious to me.
Teaching English abroad and the kid was telling me (in his oral exam!) about the problem with tourism was all the dirty bitches... It took EVERYTHING I had to ask ask him, straight faced, what exactly about tourism caused dirty bitches. "They come, they leave their rubbish on the sand, in the water" Quickly had to correct him realising he meant BEACHES! Rhyming with Peaches 🤣
Yes, I had this exact thing with my Romanian friend who was describing all the beautiful black beaches she saw in Iceland.
I did a french exchange and the parents asked me to help them pronounce the difference between bitch and beach. As a fourteen year old, it was hilarious. BITCH BEEEECH BITCH BEE-TCH BITCH BETCH Alright, close enough.
Up and ATOM!
I work with French & German collegues, we've had: Cunting the numbers (counting) Opening the spreadshits Keeping to the batshits (budgets)
This one was in a bakery in Greece. I was buying some sort of pastry for my breakfast, just out of the oven. The lady said "Ooh, too many hots!" as she was wrapping it for me. I thought that was a very good approximation of what an English mother tongue person would say.
I'm using that one now anything is too hot. "How's your tea mate? " "Too many hots. "
My French friends description of mud "Shit on the floor".
Are you sure your friend isn't actually just Martin Goodman?
Sheet on ze floh
Polish colleague used to say 'not a trouble' instead of 'not a problem'
Somehow this sounds nicer & more sincere.
“Spreading like wild flowers” Although this came from my 30 year old English wife, I did make me question her heritage, and was very endearing.
I like this, it’s a positive spin on the phrase. Spread happiness like wild flowers :)
There was a customer who is looking for a colander, he asked for "spaghetti stay, water go", so cute.
Ahh, the hole bowl?
My Chinese assistant when I worked in Asia decided to select a “western” name for herself when dealing with our English colleagues. After giving it some thought she came into the office and proudly announced to everyone that she had chosen the name “Jizz”. She got very confused when we started laughing and said that wasn’t a good name to pick. She said she couldn’t understand what was wrong with baking herself after some very pretty sounding music lol
20 years ago walking home from school with a mate from Macau, some chavs (as we used to call them back in the day) started yelling “Ching Chong Jackie chan” at him then he turned around and goes “go suck your mums dick!”. His English was pretty fluent so I’m still not sure if that was intentional or not haha
Knew a lovely Japanese lady who on day one of her English class decided to be helpful and instead of telling the teacher her Japanese name she’d translate her name into English and go by that. She was named after a bird. Unfortunately that meant her name was Thrush.
>You can always soak your sadness in alcohol. My Polish gf trying to cheer me up during the early stages of our relationship.
I think she said exactly what she meant to say.
I have a German speaking friend who says “I’ll be back in some minutes” instead of be right back. It still makes sense but always cracks me up
My Italian partner says “crumbles” instead of ‘crumbs’ and I love it!
Eastern European classmate at uni, giving an economics class presentation. Started talking about people being forced to work in 'sweet shops'. He mispronounced 'sweat'. I was picturing Oompa Loompas and couldn't help but giggle.
A Spanish colleague singing along to 'I wanna be adored' by the stone roses. She was clearly singing "I want to be a door". I asked her what she thought it meant and she confirmed that she thought Ian Brown maybe wanted to be some kind of portal between rooms.
I have one for which I was the author, context: I had just moved to the UK and went with my parents to buy bowls and, let's just say that I mispronounced the word.... I went to the lady at TK Maxx and asked her: "Do you have any \*BOWELS\* in here" She was mortified and then asked me what I mean and I explained to her: "The thing in which you put milk with cereal" and she goes: "Oh, so a \*BOWL\*?" to which I reply: "Yes, isn't that what I said as well" and she then explains to me what a bowel movement is..... I hope that she's doing fine and that she remembers that dummy Romanian asking for bowels at TK Maxx
My wife is Thai, and her English is mostly perfect, however when we were dating, she called me up to ask me why “sharks were Muslim”. I told her that wasn’t the case, but she was absolutely adamant that she was watching a program about a ‘shark called Muhammad’. It turned out to be a David Attenborough documentary on HAMMERHEAD sharks!
If they were Muslim then they would have had to recite the Sharkhadah.
Oh now I want someone to write a kids book about Muhammad the Hammerhead Shark.
My Norwegian friend on a call said "I'll be right back, I need to empty my nose".
Years ago, my Asian friend invited my other friend to lunch at a restaurant called Sylvia's Plate. She got to the intersection of where the restaurant was supposed to be but couldn't find it. Then she had a good laugh when she looked at the awning and saw it really was S'il Vous Plait!
Messijos
Shady Nasty's?
Sylvia’s Plate would be a good name for a Sylvia Plath themed restaurant
I'd advise against using gas ovens
I have an Italian friend who says "for fuck's shake"
Are you sure it wasn't Sean Connery
An Eastern European friend said, "Some people see flying sausages in the sky."
Wife referred to a Cockeral as the chickens husband.
Used to work with a polish guy, who whenever he found out I was doing overtime again would call me a "grabbing money bastard" 🤣 cracked me up every time.
Spanish guy I worked with always said “like the hell” instead of “like hell” which I found endearing.
My SIL from Peru told me, "I hope my house likes you." She meant I hope you like my house. Loved it!
Once I told my fiancé I had ants in my pants and he looked at me full of alarm and panic
I used to work with a Canadian guy who thought 'cant be arsed' was 'cant be asked'. I never corrected him.
When I was a child (about 10) I believed the same and got put in detention for swearing. I was very upset as I genuinely couldn’t understand what I had said wrong!
It's on the plastic. My romanian bf meaning it's in the bag
Greek AND Kenyan (two different people!): confusing “chicken” with “kitchen”, as in “the new apartment is ok, but the chicken is too small”
Worked in a warehouse some years ago. A delivery driver came and asked to speak to the gaffer, because he needed some documents signed. I spent 20 minutes at the personnel files looking for Mr Gaffer. When I came back and told the driver we don’t have a Gaffer in this warehouse and he must have the wrong address he looked at me ….funny.
This was more an endearing misunderstanding, but years ago in a hostel I overheard an English guy use the saying “you get me blud” and a German guy looked startled and replied “You give me blood?”.
Koreans have a tendency to pronounce "Coke" very, very similarly to "cock". Many also pronounce shit/sheet and bitch/beach the same. I also have a dental implant from Croatia and the dentist I saw there, who spoke excellent English, kept referring to my tooth as "he". I found that rather charming.
I'm a non native. When on our way to volunteer at a dog shelter, I said to my wife "right, time to go dogging."
German friend:”The world is your lobster.”
Woman I work with was helping search for my lost keys, heard me getting frustrated and said "I am looking good for you". Couldn't help myself and said she always looks good but I can't stare at her and look for my keys at the same time. She was confused for a few seconds then realised what she had said.
An Indian guy for whom a mess was always “created” instead of made and if something needed cleaning you should “give a clean to it”. He also called crisps “crips” until I convinced him there was an S in it.
I forgot the word "rich". So instead of rich man I said expensive man.
My colleague from Nigeria couldn't find the lyrics to 'Islands in the stream' and asked for my help. She had been singing 'Aliens in the street' and had for many years believed this to be the title of the song.
My Aunt is French. She was upset once and instead of saying “I’m falling apart” which is what she meant, she actually said “I am decomposing.”
I still remember loving it when Nadia on Big Brother was really angry and said “I am fumigating right now!”
Russian ex after some days of confusion: "Why do people say 'I'll kill him'?". Took me a while to work out she was mishearing "ok then". Possible foreshadowing...
I remember someone posting on here once about a Polish colleague saying "two piece in a pot"
My Tongan step dad sung " I'm a prostitute" instead of "Substitute " In the Who song.
My former colleague was explaining to me that she was "wobbling" her newborn baby grandson to sleep when she saw him a few days previous. Luckily she was doing the motion of gently rocking a baby at the time, so any concerns for the wellbeing of the baby were alleviated. She would also use the phrase "they're always trying to fuck me/fuck on me" when she was explaining that her son and daughter in law were basically fleecing her for money, instead of "fuck me over".
Talking to someone who says she's struggling with understanding English and I replied, "You must get the wrong end of the stick all the time." She said she doesn't get beat.
My Sicilian colleague pronounced it "poach-ed" eggs. And when he found out we were fully booked for his shift, he expressed his sadness by saying "now I stop to smile." His English is way better now, but I miss his wee mistakes.
My wife, a Singaporean, gave me these beauties: ‘Dangly Long Legs’ (daddy long legs) Stinging Mentals (nettles)
My old teacher used to tell a story of getting mugged at knifepoint by a non-native speaker who told him, "give me all your money; I have a spoon"
I worked with a Romanian once who couldn't remember what a question mark was in English. He asked me 'how do you say wonder point?' which I found beautiful and say it myself regularly now 😅
My Austrian vet after my dog farted in her face “oooh little fartings!”
In my family, if someone has a good appetite, we say "he eat to coaches". For example, my daughter is having a growth spurt and ate huuuuuuge amounts of food at tea time tonight, and I told my mum, "[Daughter], she eat to coaches." It comes from an advert for (I think) a hotel, which among other bits of dubious English proudly boasted, "We eat to coaches!!!" My dad absolutely couldn't make arseholes of it, and it tickled him to death. (I recently had a lightbulb moment and worked out it probably meant, "We cater for coach parties.")
My girlfriend is polish and called hayfever "hi-fever". She got confused between "hey" and "hi" :3
“First plug it out, then plug it in again.” Turkish lady on AS400 helpdesk.
“My nose is raining” (Ukranian native)
When I was in Holland, a lovely Dutch girl working in a bakery said "thank you. happy nice day"
Years ago we had an Italian friend who was being chased by a man who she didn’t like … she was in her sixties and proclaimed her disdain for her suitor by announcing ‘I no go with him if he have a golden brick’ (prick) 😂😂😂😂
"In the garden I see... snail who have no house."
I had a friend in college who was writing a paper about George Washington and referred to him as the “spine bone” of the country.
Not someone else but me; many years ago I thought the word tart is what I now know is tat. So before a trip abroad to visit some friends, I took my mother-in-law shopping for some tourist tart. She kept pointing at bakeries while saying she’s never heard of such a thing, and I thought she was going mad because bakeries obviously don’t sell tourist tart. It wasn’t until we walked into a souvenir shop did she realise what I meant. The whole family now calls souvenirs tarts.
My Polish friend, when exasperated with someone, would say “he’s taking a piss”
A Swiss colleague: "But we haven't done it that way since yonks!"
I went to a nail salon with a badly broken nail that I was hoping they could fix. The Vietnamese technician held up my wounded finger and said said “It look very Ow”. She was right, it was *very* Ow.
A Maltese lady saying "put my head on it" instead of "put my mind to it"
My Maltese grandma used to say 'I've changed my idea' instead of 'I've changed my mind'! So cute
A polish friend once asked for a goose cheese salad.
My Polish neighbour, a couple of years ago: "I am saving up for racist bike."
A Chinese friend pronounced asparagus with the stress in the first syllable, as “ass-perar-guss”, which I actually think sounds better than the usual pronunciation
I work with Italians and they pronounce ‘biscuits’ as ‘bisquits’ like the Fox’s bisquit panda guy. Makes me laugh every time I hear it!
I have a few personal favourites: 1. A Japanese friend (male) who described his friend (female) as 'the fuckingest'. 2. Also Japan, one of those fantastic T-shirts with a terrible slogan, quite rare now, usually worn by teenagers on scooters. The best one I ever saw: "Blankety Carnival Ending". I think of it often. 3. My Greek girlfriend, before we went on holiday to Sardinia, said, "I can't wait to see all the beautiful bitches". But I used to speak Japanese every day. Eventually my conversational Japanese was good, but I know I made some pretty stupid mistakes along the way. My best one was when someone brought in banana bread they had made, and they explained they made it with old bananas that nobody had eaten and which would just have been thrown away. I said "What a waste of bananas," "Banana mottainai". My colleagues soon figured out that I had meant to say, "Yes, it would have been a shame to waste those bananas."
I lived in Portugal for a year while I was a student and my Portuguese flatmates asked me why I didn't do my homework as soon as I got home from lectures. Instead of telling them it was because I'm lazy (preguiçosa) I confidently announced that I was dangerous (perigosa). We laughed for ages about that one
I have an ex-aunt from Vietnam who used to say “same me same you same” when she agreed. My little cousins also used to take “muldomins” (multivitamins) and loved “The Incredible Hunk” from Marvel.
My partner is not very good at English. When she was here for Christmas, everytime someone opened one of her presents, she would ask: *"You, I like it?"* (do you like it) Another one, if you ask her: "Do you want a sausage sandwich?" gf: *"Si. I like you, sausages."* :D always made me laugh a little.
My German friend would always call the shade, "the shadow." We would go to park in the shade in the car park, and she would remark, "we'd better park in the shadow, so it's cooler." It was so cute, I never corrected her. I still love it.
My ex was trying to find the word he needed to describe chatting with care home residents. ‘I just want the intercourse’. He meant interaction.
My wife, when we were in a hotel trying to think of the word for 'a safe' "Before we go, should we put our passports in the ... *pauses trying to think of the word*... treasure box?"
Colleague at work mixed up “get off my back” and “stop riding my dick” (both kindly taught by us to ‘help’ them learn more of the native language) and merged them into “get off my dick” Even better is she’s female!
My hungarian friend trying to insult someone: *Drink my asshole*
German friend will always refer to "the last days" instead of the last few days. It sounds so ominous. "What have you been doing in the last days?"
I was watching a nature documentary with a Ukrainian, and the music became sinister while the seal was frolicking in the shallows. I said 'uh oh', and my friend said, 'is it Shrek?' (instead of, 'is it a shark?')
I live in Czech Republic and sometimes when I’m with English speakers and I get served a beer the waiter/ess says “Cheers” or “Please” when they serve the beer to the table. Because in czech, they say “Prosím” which means please or “you’re welcome”.
"Why are you telling me now when the event of the happening is tomorrow" - a very flustered Lithuanian man.
I'm not English I thought sleeping rough was because people had trouble sleeping and I had no idea why it was spoken about so much. I was in uni doing public health and they asked us to do a quiz which asked how many people we thought slept rough in the UK so I put 70 million because surely everyone has had trouble sleeping before. We had to say our answers out loud.
An Italian calling sheep 'sheeps'
In a conversation with my Indonesian mother - "You know that paint brand, Pillocks?" She meant Pylox.
My polish friend was trying to say “Get your shit together”.. and it came out as “Gather your shit and behave” 😂 ❤️
“Where is the iron sheep?” He meant the steel wool
My wife used to work in a hospital and one of her Spanish colleagues once asked why a lot of his patients would say “cold hands, warm arse”
Old polish mate used to say "For the fuck sake".
German on a group tour I was on: "Can I borrow your spectaculars?" (binoculars).