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Worst mistakes?

  Tags: Error
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
23 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3  Next >>
Tyr
Senior Member
Sweden
Joined 5783 days ago

316 posts - 384 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Swedish

 
 Message 1 of 23
22 February 2013 at 3:48am | IP Logged 
What are the worst mistakes you've ever made in speaking a foreign language?
I don't mean a 0 out of 10 on a test mistake. I mean saying something which was technically in the language but really not what you meant to say.


I was at a Japanese class yesterday and outside there was a big noise going on. A group of blind guys were playing some sort of blind man's ping pong which uses a noisy ball rolled along the table. This happens sometimes and it really distracts me from concentrating. I said to my teacher, "in the future can we be in a different room maybe? Its hard to concentrate with the....." I searched for the word, this was a word which I'd learned recently with its kanji, "Mekura....." I said.
Mekura though, despite being the standard reading of the kanji for a blind person, is apparently a very offensive word for blind people. Woops.


Another incident came at work a few weeks ago. On Friday one of my co-workers had told me he was going to a gokon event that weekend- gokon is a sort of group dating thing Japanese people do.
Now it was Monday morning I decided to ask him how his weekend went, "Hey! How was your gokan, did you get a girl?".
Around us the conversations other staff members were having stopped and all eyes were on us.
It seems instead of gokon; innocent dating event, I'd said gokan; rape. Woops.....
5 persons have voted this message useful



Darklight1216
Diglot
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5101 days ago

411 posts - 639 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German

 
 Message 2 of 23
22 February 2013 at 5:11pm | IP Logged 
I once told a guy that if he ate too many donuts he would have grossesse (pregnancy) when I was really going for something along the lines of gross or graisse (fat).



Edited by Darklight1216 on 22 February 2013 at 5:11pm

5 persons have voted this message useful



Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5382 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 3 of 23
22 February 2013 at 5:26pm | IP Logged 
I once wrote to a girl "You'll miss me" instead of "I'll miss you".

Never heard from her again.
11 persons have voted this message useful



htdavidht
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 4624 days ago

68 posts - 121 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: French

 
 Message 4 of 23
22 February 2013 at 5:28pm | IP Logged 
I was in college, we where dong an assignment in teams, one of my teammates offer to bring some CDs (compact disks) with some software that would make it more easy for us to work.

So at the end of this meeting i decided to summarize so we are all clear what each one is going to do, so I tell this guy something like this: "So... you going to bring the disks on Friday?"

Seam like everybody else have a problem understanding my pronunciation of the word "disks"
4 persons have voted this message useful



QiuJP
Triglot
Senior Member
Singapore
Joined 5856 days ago

428 posts - 597 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 5 of 23
22 February 2013 at 5:43pm | IP Logged 
Arekkusu wrote:
I once wrote to a girl "You'll miss me" instead of "I'll miss you".

Never heard from her again.


Hmm.... Is it written in French? This is a very common mistake.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5382 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 6 of 23
22 February 2013 at 5:48pm | IP Logged 
QiuJP wrote:
Arekkusu wrote:
I once wrote to a girl "You'll miss me" instead of "I'll miss you".

Never heard from her again.


Hmm.... Is it written in French? This is a very common mistake.

I was in English, but I had indeed followed French word order.
1 person has voted this message useful



sillygoose1
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4637 days ago

566 posts - 814 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French
Studies: German, Latin

 
 Message 7 of 23
22 February 2013 at 5:48pm | IP Logged 
I was having a little Italian conversation. We were talking about music. I wanted to say how one of my favorite artists is very sensual (not a word I'd ever use in English, but I wanted to expand my vocab). So rather than "sensuale", I wrote "sessuale". Woops.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Kadin.Goldberg
Newbie
United States
Joined 4434 days ago

30 posts - 34 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian, Swedish

 
 Message 8 of 23
22 February 2013 at 6:11pm | IP Logged 
I was taking a Spanish class in Bolivia and was talking with my teacher. He asked me to
talk about my grandparents. I said that my grandmother really loved "pajeros" (don't
know how to spell it but the emphasis was on e... like pajEros) instead of "pajeros"
(with the emphasis on A) which means birds. He started busting up laughing and couldn't
stop.... apparently pajEros is the word for young people that masturbate. Whoops.


3 persons have voted this message useful



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