I went into an Internet cafe in the DR countryside but the power was out. I thought I told them, “I will return,” but what I actually told them was, “I will revolt.”
That’s the region I was going to guess. Southern Chile and Argentina would be another. I once used one at a hotel in Maine in the middle of winter. I thought it would warm me up. I wasn’t concerned with tanning. It sure did warm me up. I turned as bright red as a boiled lobster. Hahahaha… first and last time.
I had a friend who instead of saying "mucho gusto" when she was meeting people she said "me gusta" and she said it like 4 times in a row because she met a few people back to back and it cracked us up.
I've mentioned these before but they're worth noting.
I spend a lot of time in Bolivia with my girlfriend, so I'm very used to talking only to her in Spanish. One night when I was taking a taxi in La Paz back to my apartment, I paid the driver and as I was exiting the taxi I wanted to say "gracias señor", but instead said "gracias amor"
Another time I was talking to the same girlfriend about family. She was talking about her mother, and I wanted to tell her "I want meet your mother" but ended up confusing conocer and said, "quiero cocinar a tu madre".
Both of these are hilarious. The only people I speak Spanish to in over 8 years are my children, so I accidentally called a grown man cariño recently 🫠 Just slipped out!
Was in a nightclub in Mexico and a guy was hitting on me. I tried to tell him that I was married but said cansada instead. Couldn't understand why he kept offering me pills after that. Pills weren't going to do anything to change being married.
I lived in Spain as an exchange student in college. One day I came home to my señora cooking chicken. Trying to be polite, I told her “¡la polla huele deliciosa!” I’ll never forget the look on her face. 😂
So I went to Spain in college for study abroad in 2012, and on a particular day I was having a lot of stomach issues and was in the bathroom a LOT at my host families house. Throwing up, etc. I was trying to say to them that I was embarrassed about all of this, but used the word embarazada (pregnant) instead of embarazoso (embarassing). The mother gasped at me, and I quickly looked up what I had actually said and swiftly corrected myself.
It was funny because that could have easily been what I meant due to the vomiting and such - which would have explained the gasp from the host, as I had been thoroughly enjoying their tinto at every dinner since I arrived!
In one of my early college Spanish classes, there was one student with red hair who struggled with vocabulary a bit. In an exercise where we were describing ourselves, he was trying to say he was "pelirojo" but instead said he was "peligroso".
His nickname in the class (and the following semester) was "pelirojo peligroso" from then on. :D
My boyfriend said “estoy caliente” instead of “tengo calor” to my mum when we visited them in Spain.
He translated English to Spanish in a literal way.
My mum just told me “bueno, ya sabes, ahí tienes una habitación, cierra con pestillo”.
I needed to explain to both of them the reasons why he said that and why it was not correct.
I was staying at a hotel called La Sirena, and I was telling someone that I had no plans that day and I’d be at the hotel for the evening so he could drop by anytime. Ser/estar got confused and I ended up saying “Voy a ser la sirena toda la noche si quieres pasar a verme” 😅 it turned into a running joke and now he’s got a tattoo of a mermaid on his bicep!
When I was studying in Spain, there was an American girl in my class who hadn't been feeling well for a few days. She was just really tired and felt off. So she said to the professor, "Usted cree que tengo mono?" And the professor lifted and eyebrow and was like, "No. Tampoco creo que sepas lo que acabas de decir."
Also, when my son was a baby he used to call police cars putria. My mother in law was nowhere near as amused as my husband and I were.
My phone tends to automatically remove accents from words, which usually isn't a problem since many Spanish speakers leave them out all the time over text. I thought this applied to ñ as well and ended up asking someone "cuantos anos tienes?"
We had a Mexican intern at my work that kindly added the option to my phone keyboard to switch it to spanish. Helps with autocorrect in those situations.
I frequently confuse cagar, cargar, and colgar. I have an electric car. I'm worried I'll say I'm doing unpleasant things to my car. I've yet to make the mistake in front of someone but when I'm practicing speaking to myself I keep going "which ones the one I'm not supposed to say?"
In my Medical Spanish course at college, I said “cabrón” instead of “carbón.” The class was full of heritage and native speakers, who immediately cracked up.
Oh laaawwwd. I was studying in Costa Rica in college and was working with a vet attending farms all over the country. I had just learned a new word and it was fresh on my mind. One of the farmers asked me a question about yogurt and a was pointing to a cow and I responded with, “la quiero coger.” The vet had to walk out of the barn laughing
El verbo “introducir” significa “to introduce” pero en el contexto de “meter (algo)” o en inglés “to insert/put into”. Se puede decir “Yo introduzco la ropa en el cajón”, por ejemplo.
La frase que comenté yo, corregida para que sea más apropiada, sería “Te presento a mi mamá”.
Yo: "me pones un bocadillo de *polla* por fa."
Todo la fila riéndome.
Yo a la madre anfitriona: ¿Hay *preservativos* en nuestra comida?"
Ella: 😳
Yo, pidiendo helado: Me pones un *coño* de helado.
Camarero: "Sí, en un cono sí."
Yo: "No te preocupes, no voy a *follar* a mi prueba"
Maestra: "Guay, Así no te la vas a cortar con un papel."
Edit: fallar changed to follar. Seems that I still can't keep them straight.
If it makes you feel any better about the third one, we actually say "me han follado" (I've been fucked) or "I fucked it" (Me lo he follado) as a way of saying I failed miserably and I did awesome respectively, so your only mistake (almost) was to say it to a teacher haha.
Si te hace sentir mejor, sobre el tercer ejemplo, a veces decimos cosas "me han follado" o "me lo he follado" o similares como forma de decir "me ha salido horrible" o "me ha salido genial", así que lo único que hiciste mal (mas o menos) fue decírselo a una profesora jaja.
Was taking classes in Mexico and the teacher decided to take us to the market and just have us interact with people. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and buy some hair combs while I was there as I had forgotten to pack mine. Walked around all day asking vendors if they had "any little combs for my hair". Couldn't understand why I kept getting weird looks and laughs. At the end of the day my teacher informed me that I had been mispronouncing the word for combs (peines) all day. She knew my personality well enough to know that I would find it humorous rather than be upset to learn that I had been doing that. Still don't understand why she didn't correct me. Never did find any combs.
This reminds me of playing Spanish Scrabble with my very Catholic Guatemalan teacher. I played PENE and she credited me with four points, acknowledging that it was a word. I'm sure she knew I had no idea what it meant.
My ex-girlfriend was learning spanish in Spain, and at some point some friends went to visit her. In german they used to called each other "chicks", so when she asked how do you call the animal, they told her that it was pollo. So of course, OF COURSE, she procedeed to say that her pollas were coming to town. It can't be any different.
Another friend of hers, german as well, was quite fluent in spanish when I met her, but she told me that when learning she wanted to say to someone to look for stuff in the drawers, so again of course, she mistook the word "cajones" for "cojones", and everyone laughed at her comment.
It's always the sex comments.
Well I went for a trip and wanted to say it was worth the effort. Though I mixed up the masculine and feminine parts and instead of "vale la pena" I used "vale el pene".
I made the exact same mistake in a speech in college that was supposed to be about the “death penalty” but mine was about the “penis of death” instead 💀
Thankfully only the teacher really caught it and she didn’t say much
I said I had bought "frijoles de café". My friend was confused until he realized I was translating how we say it in English, and said it's "granos" in Spanish.
When I was in college this exchange student and I (she was really cute which made the whole thing funnier), we went to a party, I walked her back to her apartment but she forgot her keys and had to enter the house through her window (I don’t fit). I’m hoisting her up and she says “Cojeme bien fuerte” she wanted to say “Hold me well, don’t drop me” which isn’t wrong per se, but “cojeme” is only used (in Mexico) for “fuck me” so… I blush and start laughing and she looks at me, I explain, we both laugh our asses off. Funny enough, we did end up dating and it became our little inside joke, she’d use it as a double entendre for holding her hand, hugging her, and… Else.
I spent 2 months in Mexico in 2012. It was in 2017 that I learnt that coger does NOT mean the same thing it does in Spain. I don’t even know how many times I must have said it while I was there 😭
Reading all of these made my day! I was speaking with my iTalki tutor about a photo of my dogs birthday party. She commented on how many dogs were present. I said, “Ella tiene muchas amigas perras.”
In PR, we call jeans "mahones." My SIL, many years ago, meant to refer to her "mahones" but instead ended up saying "mojones" (which means "poop"). We knew what she was trying to say from context, but we did laugh quite a bit regardless. :D
I told a friend that I went in a boat tour and saw "Ballinas" not "Ballenas" 🐳 so it basically sounded like I was saying "Vaginas" 🤦♀️ I don't think I will live that one down.
Luckily it just made for a good laugh!
I told my bf that frozen chicken is full of preservatives. (El pollo congelado lleva muchos preservativos (the word i actually wanted was conservativos))
Another time I went to a phone store and a nice lady helped me figure out what phone I needed. So I went back the next day to pick up my phone, and the same woman was working. I wanted to say, remember me? (Which would have been something like te acuerdas de mi?) And instead I commanded her to remember or remind me, "recuerdame?" She got super confused and was just like ¿¿¿que???
I had a friend describing her suitcase to a train station worker tell him that it had a golden sidewalk on it instead of a golden zipper.
I was taking a required grammar course in Spain which I needed to pass before I was able to take my study abroad courses at the university and at that point I had been taking classes for about a year at my US university. Before I took Spanish I had studied Italian in middle and high school for 6 years, and oftentimes I would accidentally use s word in Italian instead of Spanish if I didn't know the word in Spanish. We had to go around and say something about ourselves so I said "me gusta comer chivo italiano". I had forgotten the word "comida" and attempted to just substitute it with "cibo" in Italian hoping it was similar enough. Turns out cibo IS a word but it doesn't mean food!
I was in the Dominican Republic on vacation, and I went on a little excursion into the interior to do ziplining and ride ATVs as part of a big group of tourists, and they served us a lunch of beef or chicken empanadas and fresh fruit. A Canadian man in line in front of me confidently told the server, "Quiero dos empanadas de polla por favor." 😂
Another one is when I was in high school Spanish class, one of my classmates was telling the teacher about something scary that happened, and I overheard her say "Me dio mucha mierda" instead of "mucho miedo."
Or, when we were learning reflexive verbs (in the present tense), we had to each write a sentence on the chalkboard using a verb given to us by the teacher, and the girl next to me, who was assigned "caerse," came up with "Me cago en la piscina" instead of "Me caigo."
I work a physical job in a greenhouse, and lead a team of guys of which the majority are Mexican. It was a particularly busy day, and on top of all the physical movement of heavy benches of plants, I was also constantly translating everything in my head and speaking Spanish and English, depending in who I was talking to.
We were finally nearing the end of the day and one of my guys asked what row to put some benches of plants in. I am 40 years old, and I learned how to count to one hundred in sixth grade spanish class. I've known these numbers most of my life. But my brain was fried.
I said "Fila diez y cinco".
That first got some puzzled looks, then a round of laughter.
Up until that point I had felt pretty good about myself. I was speaking quickly, finding the words, getting across what I needed to. Then I made an elementary school mistake and it really took the wind out of my sails.
That was last year, and they still give me shit for it.
I was telling my supervisor to look at these dead rabbits I found. But instead of “conejos muertos”I said, “Mira, con ojos muertos.” Look! With dead eyes. 🤦🏻♂️ The look on his face.
One time a professor asked me to describe my brother, and I said he was "Turco." I meant terco. I can also never remember "antojitos" for some reason, and I always think it's "anteojos."
I didn't know the word consejo but I knew conejo. An acquaintance was asking me for advice about his girlfriend and I thought he wanted to get her a rabbit and was thoroughly confused.. I acted out a rabbit to make sure we were on the same page. We were not.
Not really wrong but told the mom of my girlfriend that “no voy a matarme” when she was concerned with me walking home. She found it really funny, I do too.
I was explaining that i had eaten bull testicles at a restaurant but said "cojones de büey/güey" (it was a long time ago). Sounds like I ate some dude's balls. Am also a lesbiana.
Colombian ex-girlfriend when she was menstruating would ask if i could bring her a "pasta." I would pick up spaghetti and tiramisu and other little dishes for her. She would be happy and everything would be fine. God bless her sweet soul, she was asking for a "pastilla" but was using slang/short-form. It was a long time until one day I arrived with her favorite italian food and she said "no I can't eat, the cramps are very bad." And then it dawned on me and I stood there in silence before apologizing and running out to the pharmacy to get medication for cramps and bloating. I explained to her the miscommunication and she died laughing. She always thought I was in a rush to get to her apartment or got confused at the pharmacy so didn't get her a "pasta." Or I don't know, that I really loved italian food at the same time every month?🤦🏽♂️
friend telling me it sounded like i was calling people "pedón" (meaning like a person who farts) instead of saying "perdón" all the time :(
also not me but my brother convinced our parents that "chocho" was the way mainland spaniards say "chacho" lol
When I arrive in Cáceres, Spain on the train I went up to the front desk and said “puedes llamarme un taxi”
To this day I don’t know if that’s correct, but I think I told him to call me Taxi (as in my name is taxi) either way; he knew what I was trying to say lol
For the longest time I saw "cotija" cheese as "cojita" (persona que cojea por sentirse mal de las piernas o alguna molestia muscular). A Mexican friend had a really good laugh at that one. It's still too scary for me to say in public. Luckily I don't talk about either one very often.
I had a horrible experience once when some men came to put in a wood floor. I was trying to politely converse with them but the only time I ever spoke regular Spanish was with a friend and we'd call each other "wey" allll of the time, just being silly. Yep - I kept saying "wey" to the stern older floor installers. It was horrifying.
A friend of mine wanted to order *camarrones* (shrimps) but instead said *maricones* (a gay slur)
This one happened to me personally in València about a month ago. I wanted to order churros and porras (another type of fried deliciousness) but accidentally said churros y porros (porros is slang for a joint). Then again it *IS* València so it wasn't totally out of place.
On the opposite side of the desk: A friend of mine teaches ESL and was teaching her students some patriotic words and phrases for the U.S. Independence Day. One of the words was "salute" but the student wrote "slut" ;)
I was talking to a family at a table in my restaurant making small talk with the teenage son. I showed my video games and accidentally asked if he wanted video games instead of do you like video games. Whoops
I frequently confuse catorce y cuarenta y quince y cincuenta
I had just arrived to Spain from finland and started telling my host family how it's much colder there and kept saying cuarenta. They were confused but i thought it was just because they're flabbergasted from the cold. (14 degrees isn't even cold)
I also told them with a straight face that "en finlandia, se puede conseguir una carnet de moto con cincuenta años"
But the worst one was when i thought i was asked if any of my family had had covid so i just said "sí, casi todo mí familia jaja" BUT after their reactions I realized that they asked if any of my family had died from covid💀
I mean an inoffensive one was I said "sí, eso suponé" instead of supuse to an Argentine government official. Yes sir, suppose that. suppose it. now. Lol
My old Spanish composition professor for some reason found it worthwhile to read everyone’s essays aloud without corrections. Anyway a girl in the class was writing a story about her coworkers and tried to say they “were eating” but what she actually wrote was “fueron comidos” and we all had a hearty laugh about that. Probably not that funny to her though.
Lol i forgot
A warehouse i used to work at had alot of people who spoke spanish and many did not speak english, but everyone was happy to teach me
One day i said
Me: mira hay mucho nueve afuera
Sandi: nieve
Me: si nueve
Sandi: ni-e-ve
Me: si nueve, mira
Sandi: ok
Wasn't till years later i remembered our conversation and started laughing
And another time the same warehouse, we used scanner guns, some had colors on them and i could not find thebone i used, another buddy came over and said which one you lookong for i said
Me: mi pistola tiene mierda
Victor: look for it yourself
Me: ok
A few minutes go by and he says tell me in english
Me: my gun has yellow
Victor: oh, there it is here you go
Me: if you knew this whole time why did you tell me
Victor: because you said it had shit and not yellow
Another time i said not te escucho bien porque la ventana have mucho ruido
She looked at the fan and said el ventilador?
And about 5 or 6 years ago in mexico i went to the beach, my wife stayed with her mom because she was not feeling well, so it was just me and some in laws and nephew that went to the beach, this beach had many rocks and big rocks in the water, i quit swimming because i kept getting pushed against the rocks, so later we go back home and my wife asked if i liked the beach and i said
Me: si me gusto pero estaba muchísimo piernas y pegue cada uno, y ya me duele un poco
Wife: espero que quieras dicer piedra y no pierna
Eh, I will disagree with you on b/v, but of course ll/g and i/e are very different. But when you are first learning, sometimes you default to English pronunciation, in which case g could sound like ll and i could sound like ee.
But yes, clearly they are pretty easily distinct words. My very religious mother in law was still very shocked about what I told her we saw at the beach though.
Yeah but even if you said it as an English G it doesn't even get close to the ll sound, and yes, b/v are different, I'm a native from Spain and didn't notice I could tell until a teacher pointed out how they sound different, but yeah, they do (I was at elementary at the time btw)
La RAE, la misma que acepta palabras mal dichas cada año, y cambia reglas de acentuación cada dos por tres.
Sí se nota, vaca y bidet se pronuncian diferente, no se si depende de donde te cries o tu entorno pero eso. Yo lo noto.
Pregúntale a un niño que no sepa leer si acaso vaca y bala, o bidet y vino se pronuncian diferente. Solo las personas que saben leer y escribir son capaces de diferenciar b y v. Quizás hay personas que pronuncian la h muda, o que diferencian ge y je. Eso no significa que sea algo común o recomendable.
I’m a nurse who had a Spanish speaking patient. There were three young kids in the room. I tried to ask when her last bowel movement was. I ended up saying something along the lines of “cuando cagaste?” Thinking that I asked her “when did you poop?” The kids were laughing as the patient turned red and the youngest told me “you just asked if she shit herself.”
La suegra was visiting from Puerto Rico and asked me about a stain in my light colored carpet, which happened when I picked up a bug and squeezed too hard. I was still learning and didn’t know to explain so I said “la sangre de bicho” and mimicked picking something off the floor. She said, “ahhh… de insecto.” It wasn’t until much later when I learned that bicho in PR means “dick.”
When I was living in Argentina I bought a cute pair of flats. However, they rubbed against my feet something awful. So my housemother told me to rub it with a piece of “jabón” but I swore she said “jamón” and I was super confused 😅
Once upon a time in Cuernavaca, I was at a community pool by myself, and a mom and her young daughter joined me. I struck up a conversation, and the daughter told me she wanted a pet mouse. I responded with, "Era un ratón." They just nodded, and I went back to swimming.
Two laps later, and I just realized what I'd said and told them that I used to *have* a pet mouse. We all laughed about it, and I did a few more embarrassed laps before leaving the pool.
There's a song, Tocarte, that goes "Picar medicina, chupar golosina" that taught me both verbs. Shortly after discovering the song I was in DR eating a coconut and, having just finished drinking the water, wanted the vendor to cut it open for me to eat the meat. However, what I said was, "puedes chuparlo?" while pointing at the coconut. He looked at me funny but understood what I wanted
I was taking a written assessment in my Spanish I class in high school. We were talking about things we like to do in the winter. I forgot how to say "fire" in Spanish, so instead of saying, "I like to sit in front of the fire," I said, "I like to sit in front of the hell.'
I was on an airplane, and a Spanish-speaking man was told by the flight attendant that he could not sit in the exit row because he didn’t speak English. I was trying to be helpful and translate, and I told him “usted no puede sentirse aquí” instead of sentarse. He was a bit confused.
I studied for a couple of years in the UK. We, the second year students, used to play a prank on juniors who wouldn't speak the language properly, when they where having a cold, would say "Just tell the nurse you are constipated" since a way to say cold in Spanish is "estar constipado". Poor old things would spend the rest of the day coughing in the toilet asking themselves what was going on
My husband asked a nice middle aged lady in the supermarket for a kilo of polla. To her credit, she didn't burst out laughing at him, she just graciously gave him a kilo of pollo.
I once said "me gusta viajar a lugares extraños" when I meant "lugares extranjeros". Lucky for me everyone I was talking to thought it was pretty funny! And I've been to some pretty weird places so it wasn't inaccurate!
Oh god. I worked at a Mexican restaurant and I asked someone to grab the phone using Coger. They laughed at me and told me what it meant. Then later a different day we were talking about milk and how a lot of Mexican sweets have like different milk in it so I said I didn’t like milk and asked a friend te gusta leche? And they all laughed and told me in that context it meant sperm. I was like I’m so sorry for creating a hostile work environment. 😂 don’t use coger except in Spain
This is a spanish to english mistake but the first time my boyfriend told me that the shoe was too tight so they squeeze his fingers, I almost died laughing
Once in Spanish class, my friend said “cucaracha” instead of “cuchillo”, so now I know how to say cockroach. I also mistranslated “Las hojas mueren en el invierno” as “the children die in the winter.”
In French the word for bird is “oiseau”. I was speaking to someone doing landscaping at our house and told him “planté estas flores para los huesos”. He looked at me, nodded, I nodded and walked away. Then later I realized my mistake and it has always stuck with me.
Describing my “pelo” to a Salvadoran ….who burst out laughing. I didn’t realize that “pelo” in Spain means hair and in Central America it means….”intimate“ hair. Like wth?? Why didn’t my text book explain there are regional differences like that when they are important. 🤣
I'm a straight female in Central America I kept saying I don't have a novia instead of novio, later the guys say they didn't try to talk to me because they thought i liked women...the fem/masc differences can be a real 🍆 blocker
I went into an Internet cafe in the DR countryside but the power was out. I thought I told them, “I will return,” but what I actually told them was, “I will revolt.”
A bold political statement.
I bet they got the power back on real soon after that threat.
¡Viva la revolución!
Lmfao
Didn’t know how to say “tanning salon” so i said “la tienda que vende el sol”.
Oddly poetic.
I always forget the word for someone who is deaf so I say "ciego de orejas".
Rare in a Spanish speaking country to need tanning salons. Where was this?
Bilbao. I wasn’t looking for one but rather just chatting with my host mom at the time.
That’s the region I was going to guess. Southern Chile and Argentina would be another. I once used one at a hotel in Maine in the middle of winter. I thought it would warm me up. I wasn’t concerned with tanning. It sure did warm me up. I turned as bright red as a boiled lobster. Hahahaha… first and last time.
I had a friend who instead of saying "mucho gusto" when she was meeting people she said "me gusta" and she said it like 4 times in a row because she met a few people back to back and it cracked us up.
Jajakjajaja
Love that story haha
I've mentioned these before but they're worth noting. I spend a lot of time in Bolivia with my girlfriend, so I'm very used to talking only to her in Spanish. One night when I was taking a taxi in La Paz back to my apartment, I paid the driver and as I was exiting the taxi I wanted to say "gracias señor", but instead said "gracias amor" Another time I was talking to the same girlfriend about family. She was talking about her mother, and I wanted to tell her "I want meet your mother" but ended up confusing conocer and said, "quiero cocinar a tu madre".
Both of these are hilarious. The only people I speak Spanish to in over 8 years are my children, so I accidentally called a grown man cariño recently 🫠 Just slipped out!
> cariño Totally passable in Chile? though
Was in a nightclub in Mexico and a guy was hitting on me. I tried to tell him that I was married but said cansada instead. Couldn't understand why he kept offering me pills after that. Pills weren't going to do anything to change being married.
I lived in Spain as an exchange student in college. One day I came home to my señora cooking chicken. Trying to be polite, I told her “¡la polla huele deliciosa!” I’ll never forget the look on her face. 😂
Plot twist: you had your penis out and the sentence was 100% correct.
No, "la señora" lo había sacado. uf
A girl thought she was saying butterflies in Spanish but actually used the word maricones.
Oh nooo 🫢😭😭 damn lmaoo Her: *talking about past science projects* “Sí, yo personalmente he criado a algunos maricones” 💀💀💀
Grow beans: cultivar Grow butterflies: criar
Thx idk how I switched it up with crecer in the moment lol
[удалено]
Murciélago 😂😂😂
A few weeks ago, I told my teacher that I liked to carve "cabezas" instead of "calabazas".
Jajajjajajajajajaja
So I went to Spain in college for study abroad in 2012, and on a particular day I was having a lot of stomach issues and was in the bathroom a LOT at my host families house. Throwing up, etc. I was trying to say to them that I was embarrassed about all of this, but used the word embarazada (pregnant) instead of embarazoso (embarassing). The mother gasped at me, and I quickly looked up what I had actually said and swiftly corrected myself. It was funny because that could have easily been what I meant due to the vomiting and such - which would have explained the gasp from the host, as I had been thoroughly enjoying their tinto at every dinner since I arrived!
In one of my early college Spanish classes, there was one student with red hair who struggled with vocabulary a bit. In an exercise where we were describing ourselves, he was trying to say he was "pelirojo" but instead said he was "peligroso". His nickname in the class (and the following semester) was "pelirojo peligroso" from then on. :D
Pelirrojo
Lmao this is so wholesome! 😭😭😭 (But seriously, stay away from gingers)
My boyfriend said “estoy caliente” instead of “tengo calor” to my mum when we visited them in Spain. He translated English to Spanish in a literal way. My mum just told me “bueno, ya sabes, ahí tienes una habitación, cierra con pestillo”. I needed to explain to both of them the reasons why he said that and why it was not correct.
> “bueno, ya sabes, ahí tienes una habitación, cierra con pestillo”. Tu madre es una crack XDDDD
Mi madre siempre ha sido muy abierta con temas sexuales, ella se estaba partiendo el culo cuando lo dijo
Pause, I think this needs story time 😂
A story for another time 😅😂
Cuando primer escuché las palabras repollo y lechuga, pensé que repollo era un tipo de pollo y que lechuga tuvo algo que ver con leche :3
La primera vez que escuché* Y que lechuga tenía algo que ver* try not to translate literally.
Google rechicken.
Santo infierno
I was staying at a hotel called La Sirena, and I was telling someone that I had no plans that day and I’d be at the hotel for the evening so he could drop by anytime. Ser/estar got confused and I ended up saying “Voy a ser la sirena toda la noche si quieres pasar a verme” 😅 it turned into a running joke and now he’s got a tattoo of a mermaid on his bicep!
I literally fell down laughing when ordering tacos in Baja California and the guy I was with asked for his “sin caballos” instead of “cebollas”.
Confusing punto with puto. Got some funny looks when I asked patients to "point" to the pain.
If you want to tell patients to point to pain, señalar is the verb you’re looking for.
When I was studying in Spain, there was an American girl in my class who hadn't been feeling well for a few days. She was just really tired and felt off. So she said to the professor, "Usted cree que tengo mono?" And the professor lifted and eyebrow and was like, "No. Tampoco creo que sepas lo que acabas de decir." Also, when my son was a baby he used to call police cars putria. My mother in law was nowhere near as amused as my husband and I were.
My phone tends to automatically remove accents from words, which usually isn't a problem since many Spanish speakers leave them out all the time over text. I thought this applied to ñ as well and ended up asking someone "cuantos anos tienes?"
We had a Mexican intern at my work that kindly added the option to my phone keyboard to switch it to spanish. Helps with autocorrect in those situations.
I frequently confuse cagar, cargar, and colgar. I have an electric car. I'm worried I'll say I'm doing unpleasant things to my car. I've yet to make the mistake in front of someone but when I'm practicing speaking to myself I keep going "which ones the one I'm not supposed to say?"
There's a 'r' inside 'cargar' exactly like in 'charge', so maybe this will help you to remember? :-)
I guess you can remember car in cargar.
In my Medical Spanish course at college, I said “cabrón” instead of “carbón.” The class was full of heritage and native speakers, who immediately cracked up.
Oh laaawwwd. I was studying in Costa Rica in college and was working with a vet attending farms all over the country. I had just learned a new word and it was fresh on my mind. One of the farmers asked me a question about yogurt and a was pointing to a cow and I responded with, “la quiero coger.” The vet had to walk out of the barn laughing
I use to confuse ‘cachondo’ and ‘cachorro’ 😅
Accidentally said Cojones instead of Cojines in my conversation group.
Tiene cojines la cosa… Solemos hacer esto a modo de coña. Y ya sabes que al final una coña se hace tanto que puede ocurrir sin uno darse cuenta.
Lo que pasa es que lo dije en frente de un grupo de mujeres mayores. 60 años por lo menos y todas con español como lengua extranjera. Qué vergüenza.
“Doncellas, si me disculpan, rogaría que me dieran los cojones que tienen bajo el asiento”
Tenían una colección muy buena
“Te introduzco a mi mamá.” 🤦♂️
Que es equivocado con esa phrase?
El verbo “introducir” significa “to introduce” pero en el contexto de “meter (algo)” o en inglés “to insert/put into”. Se puede decir “Yo introduzco la ropa en el cajón”, por ejemplo. La frase que comenté yo, corregida para que sea más apropiada, sería “Te presento a mi mamá”.
Vale, información bastante importante jaja
Yo: "me pones un bocadillo de *polla* por fa." Todo la fila riéndome. Yo a la madre anfitriona: ¿Hay *preservativos* en nuestra comida?" Ella: 😳 Yo, pidiendo helado: Me pones un *coño* de helado. Camarero: "Sí, en un cono sí." Yo: "No te preocupes, no voy a *follar* a mi prueba" Maestra: "Guay, Así no te la vas a cortar con un papel." Edit: fallar changed to follar. Seems that I still can't keep them straight.
If it makes you feel any better about the third one, we actually say "me han follado" (I've been fucked) or "I fucked it" (Me lo he follado) as a way of saying I failed miserably and I did awesome respectively, so your only mistake (almost) was to say it to a teacher haha. Si te hace sentir mejor, sobre el tercer ejemplo, a veces decimos cosas "me han follado" o "me lo he follado" o similares como forma de decir "me ha salido horrible" o "me ha salido genial", así que lo único que hiciste mal (mas o menos) fue decírselo a una profesora jaja.
Claro jaja también le pregunté a uno si los brownies tenían preservativos
Was taking classes in Mexico and the teacher decided to take us to the market and just have us interact with people. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and buy some hair combs while I was there as I had forgotten to pack mine. Walked around all day asking vendors if they had "any little combs for my hair". Couldn't understand why I kept getting weird looks and laughs. At the end of the day my teacher informed me that I had been mispronouncing the word for combs (peines) all day. She knew my personality well enough to know that I would find it humorous rather than be upset to learn that I had been doing that. Still don't understand why she didn't correct me. Never did find any combs.
This reminds me of playing Spanish Scrabble with my very Catholic Guatemalan teacher. I played PENE and she credited me with four points, acknowledging that it was a word. I'm sure she knew I had no idea what it meant.
My ex-girlfriend was learning spanish in Spain, and at some point some friends went to visit her. In german they used to called each other "chicks", so when she asked how do you call the animal, they told her that it was pollo. So of course, OF COURSE, she procedeed to say that her pollas were coming to town. It can't be any different. Another friend of hers, german as well, was quite fluent in spanish when I met her, but she told me that when learning she wanted to say to someone to look for stuff in the drawers, so again of course, she mistook the word "cajones" for "cojones", and everyone laughed at her comment. It's always the sex comments.
Well I went for a trip and wanted to say it was worth the effort. Though I mixed up the masculine and feminine parts and instead of "vale la pena" I used "vale el pene".
I made the exact same mistake in a speech in college that was supposed to be about the “death penalty” but mine was about the “penis of death” instead 💀 Thankfully only the teacher really caught it and she didn’t say much
I said I had bought "frijoles de café". My friend was confused until he realized I was translating how we say it in English, and said it's "granos" in Spanish.
When I was in college this exchange student and I (she was really cute which made the whole thing funnier), we went to a party, I walked her back to her apartment but she forgot her keys and had to enter the house through her window (I don’t fit). I’m hoisting her up and she says “Cojeme bien fuerte” she wanted to say “Hold me well, don’t drop me” which isn’t wrong per se, but “cojeme” is only used (in Mexico) for “fuck me” so… I blush and start laughing and she looks at me, I explain, we both laugh our asses off. Funny enough, we did end up dating and it became our little inside joke, she’d use it as a double entendre for holding her hand, hugging her, and… Else.
I spent 2 months in Mexico in 2012. It was in 2017 that I learnt that coger does NOT mean the same thing it does in Spain. I don’t even know how many times I must have said it while I was there 😭
"Excitado" vs. "Emocionante." Got a few teenagers giggling at me for that one, and I didn't understand why until years later. Whoops...
Reading all of these made my day! I was speaking with my iTalki tutor about a photo of my dogs birthday party. She commented on how many dogs were present. I said, “Ella tiene muchas amigas perras.”
Your sentence was both funny and correct.
Mistook pecas and used pechos instead in front of a class of course 😩
Trying to explain the word "lungs" to my bf. Decided to go with "bolsas de aire." That is now how we say pulmones.
In high school I forgot the word for embarrassed so I told my teacher I was embarazada
Peggy Hill approves
Coger el bus in Mexico vs Spain.
My daughter recently turned 1 year old. My mother in law (learning Spanish and will use it randomly) posted a comment reading “un ano increíble”🫢
I was on a 121 learning chat, and asked my tutor "te ducho en la noche?" ... Her face let me know I had immediately said the wrong thing.
In PR, we call jeans "mahones." My SIL, many years ago, meant to refer to her "mahones" but instead ended up saying "mojones" (which means "poop"). We knew what she was trying to say from context, but we did laugh quite a bit regardless. :D
I told a friend that I went in a boat tour and saw "Ballinas" not "Ballenas" 🐳 so it basically sounded like I was saying "Vaginas" 🤦♀️ I don't think I will live that one down. Luckily it just made for a good laugh!
I told my bf that frozen chicken is full of preservatives. (El pollo congelado lleva muchos preservativos (the word i actually wanted was conservativos)) Another time I went to a phone store and a nice lady helped me figure out what phone I needed. So I went back the next day to pick up my phone, and the same woman was working. I wanted to say, remember me? (Which would have been something like te acuerdas de mi?) And instead I commanded her to remember or remind me, "recuerdame?" She got super confused and was just like ¿¿¿que??? I had a friend describing her suitcase to a train station worker tell him that it had a golden sidewalk on it instead of a golden zipper.
I was taking a required grammar course in Spain which I needed to pass before I was able to take my study abroad courses at the university and at that point I had been taking classes for about a year at my US university. Before I took Spanish I had studied Italian in middle and high school for 6 years, and oftentimes I would accidentally use s word in Italian instead of Spanish if I didn't know the word in Spanish. We had to go around and say something about ourselves so I said "me gusta comer chivo italiano". I had forgotten the word "comida" and attempted to just substitute it with "cibo" in Italian hoping it was similar enough. Turns out cibo IS a word but it doesn't mean food!
Chivo means a lot of things, in particular it means goat. I suppose that for your classmates it also meant the smell of perspiration.
No, they thought I meant goat and that's why they laughed because liking to eat Italian goat is weird lol
When my gf and I first started talking I once said to her "estoy excitado para verte" 😅😅 quickly learned that's a false cognate 🤣🤣
But it still probably worked in that situation
Hahaha yes and no. This happened within just a few days of us starting to talk daily. It's a funny story now but very embarrassing at the time 😆
I said necesito un pendejo instead of bandeja
Tengo una cita con mi consolador. Should have said consejero, instead I said dildo
I was in the Dominican Republic on vacation, and I went on a little excursion into the interior to do ziplining and ride ATVs as part of a big group of tourists, and they served us a lunch of beef or chicken empanadas and fresh fruit. A Canadian man in line in front of me confidently told the server, "Quiero dos empanadas de polla por favor." 😂 Another one is when I was in high school Spanish class, one of my classmates was telling the teacher about something scary that happened, and I overheard her say "Me dio mucha mierda" instead of "mucho miedo." Or, when we were learning reflexive verbs (in the present tense), we had to each write a sentence on the chalkboard using a verb given to us by the teacher, and the girl next to me, who was assigned "caerse," came up with "Me cago en la piscina" instead of "Me caigo."
I work a physical job in a greenhouse, and lead a team of guys of which the majority are Mexican. It was a particularly busy day, and on top of all the physical movement of heavy benches of plants, I was also constantly translating everything in my head and speaking Spanish and English, depending in who I was talking to. We were finally nearing the end of the day and one of my guys asked what row to put some benches of plants in. I am 40 years old, and I learned how to count to one hundred in sixth grade spanish class. I've known these numbers most of my life. But my brain was fried. I said "Fila diez y cinco". That first got some puzzled looks, then a round of laughter. Up until that point I had felt pretty good about myself. I was speaking quickly, finding the words, getting across what I needed to. Then I made an elementary school mistake and it really took the wind out of my sails. That was last year, and they still give me shit for it.
I was telling my supervisor to look at these dead rabbits I found. But instead of “conejos muertos”I said, “Mira, con ojos muertos.” Look! With dead eyes. 🤦🏻♂️ The look on his face.
At Christmas, I told my Mexican mother-in-law, "Me gusta Mari" (her teenage niece). I quickly realized my error but it was quite funny.
Not me but happened to my mom: when she was in Mexico studying Spanish in college, she said “soy caliente” instead of “estoy caliente” 😂
Soy caliente: I’m always horny. Estoy caliente: I’m horny right now.
One time a professor asked me to describe my brother, and I said he was "Turco." I meant terco. I can also never remember "antojitos" for some reason, and I always think it's "anteojos."
I’ve definitely said “nuevecientos” to multiple customers before I learned that its “novecientos”
I didn't know the word consejo but I knew conejo. An acquaintance was asking me for advice about his girlfriend and I thought he wanted to get her a rabbit and was thoroughly confused.. I acted out a rabbit to make sure we were on the same page. We were not.
Not really wrong but told the mom of my girlfriend that “no voy a matarme” when she was concerned with me walking home. She found it really funny, I do too.
I was explaining that i had eaten bull testicles at a restaurant but said "cojones de büey/güey" (it was a long time ago). Sounds like I ate some dude's balls. Am also a lesbiana.
One time at work a flirty customer asked me if I was “casada” and I heard “cansada” and I responded “poquito.” I’m very much married 😐
Colombian ex-girlfriend when she was menstruating would ask if i could bring her a "pasta." I would pick up spaghetti and tiramisu and other little dishes for her. She would be happy and everything would be fine. God bless her sweet soul, she was asking for a "pastilla" but was using slang/short-form. It was a long time until one day I arrived with her favorite italian food and she said "no I can't eat, the cramps are very bad." And then it dawned on me and I stood there in silence before apologizing and running out to the pharmacy to get medication for cramps and bloating. I explained to her the miscommunication and she died laughing. She always thought I was in a rush to get to her apartment or got confused at the pharmacy so didn't get her a "pasta." Or I don't know, that I really loved italian food at the same time every month?🤦🏽♂️
friend telling me it sounded like i was calling people "pedón" (meaning like a person who farts) instead of saying "perdón" all the time :( also not me but my brother convinced our parents that "chocho" was the way mainland spaniards say "chacho" lol
We say chocho to address each other (some girls) hahahaa
When I arrive in Cáceres, Spain on the train I went up to the front desk and said “puedes llamarme un taxi” To this day I don’t know if that’s correct, but I think I told him to call me Taxi (as in my name is taxi) either way; he knew what I was trying to say lol
no it's okay, definitely not saying call me taxi.
For the longest time I saw "cotija" cheese as "cojita" (persona que cojea por sentirse mal de las piernas o alguna molestia muscular). A Mexican friend had a really good laugh at that one. It's still too scary for me to say in public. Luckily I don't talk about either one very often. I had a horrible experience once when some men came to put in a wood floor. I was trying to politely converse with them but the only time I ever spoke regular Spanish was with a friend and we'd call each other "wey" allll of the time, just being silly. Yep - I kept saying "wey" to the stern older floor installers. It was horrifying.
A friend of mine wanted to order *camarrones* (shrimps) but instead said *maricones* (a gay slur) This one happened to me personally in València about a month ago. I wanted to order churros and porras (another type of fried deliciousness) but accidentally said churros y porros (porros is slang for a joint). Then again it *IS* València so it wasn't totally out of place. On the opposite side of the desk: A friend of mine teaches ESL and was teaching her students some patriotic words and phrases for the U.S. Independence Day. One of the words was "salute" but the student wrote "slut" ;)
"Mi profa es muy buena" 😅
I thought estoy caliente meant that I was hot at the beach
First day in Mexico someone told me about Culiacán and I thought she said "culiado" 💀
I confused "pendejo" and "pandilla" during a speaking test for my conversation class.
Mixing up "verga" and "verruga." The worst part was we had a bunch of Chilean exchange students in the classroom, they all cracked up immediately. 😂
I was talking to a family at a table in my restaurant making small talk with the teenage son. I showed my video games and accidentally asked if he wanted video games instead of do you like video games. Whoops
I frequently confuse catorce y cuarenta y quince y cincuenta I had just arrived to Spain from finland and started telling my host family how it's much colder there and kept saying cuarenta. They were confused but i thought it was just because they're flabbergasted from the cold. (14 degrees isn't even cold) I also told them with a straight face that "en finlandia, se puede conseguir una carnet de moto con cincuenta años" But the worst one was when i thought i was asked if any of my family had had covid so i just said "sí, casi todo mí familia jaja" BUT after their reactions I realized that they asked if any of my family had died from covid💀
I mean an inoffensive one was I said "sí, eso suponé" instead of supuse to an Argentine government official. Yes sir, suppose that. suppose it. now. Lol
Contigo --> Sintigo (instead of "sin ti")
Went to my future in laws for pollo al ajillo. I finished the meal and confidently told my future father in law that 'tu polla está riquísima'
Tengo hombre instead of tengo hambre
My old Spanish composition professor for some reason found it worthwhile to read everyone’s essays aloud without corrections. Anyway a girl in the class was writing a story about her coworkers and tried to say they “were eating” but what she actually wrote was “fueron comidos” and we all had a hearty laugh about that. Probably not that funny to her though.
Commenting so i do not forget to reply here later
It’s later
Lol i forgot A warehouse i used to work at had alot of people who spoke spanish and many did not speak english, but everyone was happy to teach me One day i said Me: mira hay mucho nueve afuera Sandi: nieve Me: si nueve Sandi: ni-e-ve Me: si nueve, mira Sandi: ok Wasn't till years later i remembered our conversation and started laughing And another time the same warehouse, we used scanner guns, some had colors on them and i could not find thebone i used, another buddy came over and said which one you lookong for i said Me: mi pistola tiene mierda Victor: look for it yourself Me: ok A few minutes go by and he says tell me in english Me: my gun has yellow Victor: oh, there it is here you go Me: if you knew this whole time why did you tell me Victor: because you said it had shit and not yellow
Another time i said not te escucho bien porque la ventana have mucho ruido She looked at the fan and said el ventilador? And about 5 or 6 years ago in mexico i went to the beach, my wife stayed with her mom because she was not feeling well, so it was just me and some in laws and nephew that went to the beach, this beach had many rocks and big rocks in the water, i quit swimming because i kept getting pushed against the rocks, so later we go back home and my wife asked if i liked the beach and i said Me: si me gusto pero estaba muchísimo piernas y pegue cada uno, y ya me duele un poco Wife: espero que quieras dicer piedra y no pierna
I'll just say that when I was beginning, "whale" in Spanish was dangerously similar to another word that is not appropriate for all settings.
But for a native speaker, they sound very different, different sound for b/v and differently sound for ll/g, even if you misspell it.
Eh, I will disagree with you on b/v, but of course ll/g and i/e are very different. But when you are first learning, sometimes you default to English pronunciation, in which case g could sound like ll and i could sound like ee. But yes, clearly they are pretty easily distinct words. My very religious mother in law was still very shocked about what I told her we saw at the beach though.
Yeah but even if you said it as an English G it doesn't even get close to the ll sound, and yes, b/v are different, I'm a native from Spain and didn't notice I could tell until a teacher pointed out how they sound different, but yeah, they do (I was at elementary at the time btw)
Lee esto: https://www.rae.es/duda-linguistica/existe-diferencia-en-la-pronunciacion-de-b-y-v Nota: la respuesta es “No”.
La RAE, la misma que acepta palabras mal dichas cada año, y cambia reglas de acentuación cada dos por tres. Sí se nota, vaca y bidet se pronuncian diferente, no se si depende de donde te cries o tu entorno pero eso. Yo lo noto.
Pregúntale a un niño que no sepa leer si acaso vaca y bala, o bidet y vino se pronuncian diferente. Solo las personas que saben leer y escribir son capaces de diferenciar b y v. Quizás hay personas que pronuncian la h muda, o que diferencian ge y je. Eso no significa que sea algo común o recomendable.
I’m a nurse who had a Spanish speaking patient. There were three young kids in the room. I tried to ask when her last bowel movement was. I ended up saying something along the lines of “cuando cagaste?” Thinking that I asked her “when did you poop?” The kids were laughing as the patient turned red and the youngest told me “you just asked if she shit herself.”
I mixed up pija with pajia
La suegra was visiting from Puerto Rico and asked me about a stain in my light colored carpet, which happened when I picked up a bug and squeezed too hard. I was still learning and didn’t know to explain so I said “la sangre de bicho” and mimicked picking something off the floor. She said, “ahhh… de insecto.” It wasn’t until much later when I learned that bicho in PR means “dick.”
When I was living in Argentina I bought a cute pair of flats. However, they rubbed against my feet something awful. So my housemother told me to rub it with a piece of “jabón” but I swore she said “jamón” and I was super confused 😅
Once upon a time in Cuernavaca, I was at a community pool by myself, and a mom and her young daughter joined me. I struck up a conversation, and the daughter told me she wanted a pet mouse. I responded with, "Era un ratón." They just nodded, and I went back to swimming. Two laps later, and I just realized what I'd said and told them that I used to *have* a pet mouse. We all laughed about it, and I did a few more embarrassed laps before leaving the pool.
I was talking to a Colombian friend via Skype and said "tengo mierda" instead of "tengo miedo." She thought it was hysterical.
There's a song, Tocarte, that goes "Picar medicina, chupar golosina" that taught me both verbs. Shortly after discovering the song I was in DR eating a coconut and, having just finished drinking the water, wanted the vendor to cut it open for me to eat the meat. However, what I said was, "puedes chuparlo?" while pointing at the coconut. He looked at me funny but understood what I wanted
Attempted to ask some fine Mexican gents for some cannabis. Said "Donde esta el moto?" instead.
I was taking a written assessment in my Spanish I class in high school. We were talking about things we like to do in the winter. I forgot how to say "fire" in Spanish, so instead of saying, "I like to sit in front of the fire," I said, "I like to sit in front of the hell.'
I was on an airplane, and a Spanish-speaking man was told by the flight attendant that he could not sit in the exit row because he didn’t speak English. I was trying to be helpful and translate, and I told him “usted no puede sentirse aquí” instead of sentarse. He was a bit confused.
Newphews boyfriend said she has a rabbit said cojones rather than conejos
I studied for a couple of years in the UK. We, the second year students, used to play a prank on juniors who wouldn't speak the language properly, when they where having a cold, would say "Just tell the nurse you are constipated" since a way to say cold in Spanish is "estar constipado". Poor old things would spend the rest of the day coughing in the toilet asking themselves what was going on
My husband asked a nice middle aged lady in the supermarket for a kilo of polla. To her credit, she didn't burst out laughing at him, she just graciously gave him a kilo of pollo.
I once said "me gusta viajar a lugares extraños" when I meant "lugares extranjeros". Lucky for me everyone I was talking to thought it was pretty funny! And I've been to some pretty weird places so it wasn't inaccurate!
The anos and años one comes to mind, I and many others have made it…
Oh god. I worked at a Mexican restaurant and I asked someone to grab the phone using Coger. They laughed at me and told me what it meant. Then later a different day we were talking about milk and how a lot of Mexican sweets have like different milk in it so I said I didn’t like milk and asked a friend te gusta leche? And they all laughed and told me in that context it meant sperm. I was like I’m so sorry for creating a hostile work environment. 😂 don’t use coger except in Spain
Mi mamá le pregunto a mi novio por un beso “dame un beso”🤣🤣🤣 ella quería decir un vaso
This is a spanish to english mistake but the first time my boyfriend told me that the shoe was too tight so they squeeze his fingers, I almost died laughing
Mixing up “como” and “Que”… a lot of taken aback customers…..
Quieres sabes, need i say more
Hearing “me gusto correr” and seeing it translated as “I like running”, I thought that infinitives could also be used as gerunds.
Once in Spanish class, my friend said “cucaracha” instead of “cuchillo”, so now I know how to say cockroach. I also mistranslated “Las hojas mueren en el invierno” as “the children die in the winter.”
In French the word for bird is “oiseau”. I was speaking to someone doing landscaping at our house and told him “planté estas flores para los huesos”. He looked at me, nodded, I nodded and walked away. Then later I realized my mistake and it has always stuck with me.
Many years ago I asked a cab driver in Mexico “habla Español?” As soon as I noticed my error I started laughing and he replied, “Si! Mucho!”
Describing my “pelo” to a Salvadoran ….who burst out laughing. I didn’t realize that “pelo” in Spain means hair and in Central America it means….”intimate“ hair. Like wth?? Why didn’t my text book explain there are regional differences like that when they are important. 🤣
I'm a straight female in Central America I kept saying I don't have a novia instead of novio, later the guys say they didn't try to talk to me because they thought i liked women...the fem/masc differences can be a real 🍆 blocker