Deciding to have a go at this topic I've been meaning to open for quite some time (niggling sense I may have already done so...?). Alluded to re SK's comment in wtg's thread on unique words in other languages.

Soliciting embarrassing experiences in second languages - either in misreading or mis-speaking a term.

That and/or being embarrassed by inability to describe a term one is desperate to articulate. Preferably, ones personal experience.

To begin with a couple that still make the back of my neck prickle with relived blushes. Perhaps they won't strike others as embarrassing as they did me at the time, but there's something banana-peelish about such faux-pas especially when body functions and/or flirtation are involved.

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That day shopping in the Marseilles fish market, when I asked a hunky fish-monger if he had any "muscles" [meant "moules", as in mussells.)

After pause to fathom my intentions, "Mais, oui, mademoiselle, je crois bien!" Flexes muscles to loud appreciative chorus of laughter at my expense.
*******

Two head slaps in one...

Struggle in Paris as I attempt a day's hike through the city with a new friend, while trying to cope with the runs (Guess you can't have Montezuma's revenge in a European country).

Finally, I stop in pharmacy seeking medical relief for [X - i.e., unknown medical term being diarrhea]. I gradually become surrounded by a large crowd, evidently attracted by my extreme distress while attempting to communicate my symptoms privately.

****

Similar humiliation in Beersheva when I stopped in a pharmacy seeking [X - unknown word being"tampons"].

Without going into the specifics of my primitive graphic attempts to describe my needs, I'll just pass on the FYI solutions arrived at on the spot.

That the French word is "la diarrhée".
The Hebrew word is "tamponim" ("-im" being plural ending).

Strongly recommend carrying a pocket dictionary EVERYWHERE overseas.

*****

When my new landlord in Jerusalem asked me if I had syphillis.

Mutually excruciating exchange in Hebrew followed (Me: WHAT??? He: repeats self, with attempts at explication, until we realize our radical miscommunication. BOTH furiously blushing by the end. Turns out the Hebrew word for a soda cartridge - they had them long before we did - is "sypholux")

*****

Turkish boyfriend's crestfallen look after I expressed my gratitude for his "invaluable" help studying for statistics exam. Finally, I think to explore its meaning.
He: "Well, it's just that I thought I had, you know, helped you a lot".
I debrief him on meaning intended - i.e., "very valuable", not worthless.

Iranian suitor appeals to my ego by explaining "what most attracts me to you, Amanda, is that you are a eunuch".
Me: ?????
Many repetitions reveal his accent had misrepresented my perceived uniqueness.

And your linguistic mishaps?

When in England, in a stationery store, asked for an eraser and got blank stares. I was supposed to ask for a RUBBER (totally different implication in America).

Also surprised that in English pharmacies they don't have the little wraps we call Band-Aids or bandages. They are called Elastoplasts!

Grabbing a cab in La Paz (Mexico) with a group, hoping to hit the beach. The guy who ended up sitting next to the driver asked him to take us to a puta arenosa, not punta arenosa. Oopsie. (Puta - whore, so he was asking for a sandy whore).

RP - my daughter once made the mistake of telling her Aussie friends during a party that she rooted for the entire Packers football team. Hilarity ensued.

I cannot think of a particular incident.. may be once in ordering food in a restaurant?

But in general, mistakes (with a smile) are a good thing! If you are not sure, ask!

I always ask for help when I cannot accurately describe something...It often leads to a great conversation..

So I do not consider it embarrassing, just a learning experience..

From one who has a long conversation every morning with our office cleaner..She is in our kitchen at 10:30 every morning..We catch up on gossip, family, politics..generally in Spanish but in English as well.

I'll have to see what I can remember. My more recent "embarrassing" language mistakes are mostly in English!

When I first got married, I used to have some funny misunderstandings with my mother-in-law. First because my Japanese language repertoire included less household/daily living vocab than it does now, and second, because she uses a lot of local dialect, which I was less familiar with at that point. Basically, before I got married, my Japanese was much more "workplace" oriented, whereas now it's much more well-rounded since Mr SK and I use Japanese as our home language.

Anyway, here are some that I remember, not so much embarrassing, but anyway.

I was helping my mother-in-law in the kitchen at their house one time, and I asked if she was making "chikin" (the loan word for chicken), but she said no, she was making "tori-niku" (the Japanese word for chicken) and I was completely baffled. I later learned that although younger generations don't really make this distinction so sharply, to her, "chikin" mainly referred to a particular way of preparing chicken (which was a more western style of cooking) while for any traditional Japanese dishes that used chicken, she would always use the Japanese word.

Oh, thinking about this story reminds me that I ran into lots of problems with loan words in my first few years in Japan. Japanese has a very large number of loanwords, and as is often the case with loanwords (and as the above example shows), often when a word gets imported, its definition may be altered or made narrower or more specific. A good example of that is the word "jersey," which, although it does refer to a particular type of fabric, in the US is most closely associated with shirts (as in a sports team's jersey). But, to 20-some year old me, I had no idea that it was even a type of fabric, and as far as I was concerned, a "jersey" referred to a particular type of shirt.

So in my first job in Japan (at a junior high school) all the teachers had matching gym suits (sweatpants and tops) that they wore for an annual event. After only being in Japan for a few months, it was time for the event and I was invited to participate, so when the sporting goods supplier came to school to take people's orders, he sat down with me to get my order for this matching gym suit.

I should add that there is a high level of awareness on the part of native Japanese speakers that many foreign loanwords come from English (to the point that people often think a loanword is from English even when it's not, and this causes a lot of confusion in its own right in conversations between Japanese speakers and English speakers)

Anyway, I ordered the "jersey" and he got up to leave, and I was like "hey wait a minute, I have to have pants" (this was all happening in Japanese of course) and he was like "yeah, you ordered the jersey" and I was like "right, so what kind of pants go with it" and he was like "jersey" (Japanese also doesn't have plurals btw, so that confounds things a lot), and I was like "yeah, and I need pants too." And he was like "right, that's why you ordered jersey." ...

This went on for an embarrassingly long time, and I was starting to think either he was giving me a hard time because I was a foreigner, or maybe he thought I wouldn't fit the size options he had, and OMG he thought I was fat! How rude! .... I think I tended to be more paranoid back then, and I also hadn't had that many experiences of miscommunication, and I was overconfident in my own language skills, so rather than thinking it was a language problem, I was thinking the problem was something else, which of course made things much worse.

Anyway, at some point, he was getting annoyed and said, practically yelled, something like "jersey - top! bottom! Set!!" and then I was yelled back "what the hell, are you telling me you're calling that thing there [pointing at the pants] jersey?!?" And he said "yes, don't you speak English?" And I was like "Of course. And that.is.not.a.jersey!!"

There was an odd silence while he looked at me, and I looked at him, and the entire office was totally silent, waiting to see what would happen next. (The teachers' room in Japanese public schools is an open office with desks for all the teachers plus principal and head teacher, so pretty much the entire teaching staff was there, and the health nurse and the tea lady...)

And then, to make it even worse, I launched into a very long (and totally unnecessary) explanation of how that was wrong, it was wrong to use the word jersey to refer to pants, jerseys are only tops, and it was totally wrong to call them that, and they were using the word wrong and blah blah blah wrong wrong blah blah blah.

By that point the entire office had gathered around us, and people were nodding their heads very solemnly, "ahh, so jersey means shirts only, I see. How interesting..."

Like, what, the sports wear marketer, this guy with his catalogs, and the entire country are going to change how they use this word because I said so? (Leaving aside the fact that jersey can refer to fabric, which was what those outfits were made of, and I had no clue about the whole fabric connection).

Anyway, after that, he thanked me for enlightening him and placed my order. And no blood was shed...

I had a few more exchanges like that (involving other loanwords) before I started to realize that loanwords need to be treated like any other Japanese word, IOW, you have to figure out what the Japanese definition is and use the word accordingly, regardless of whether it corresponds to the English original.

And there are tons of examples. It took me a long time to realize that the Japanese word for glass, as in the material in windows or eyeglasses, and the Japanese word for drinking glass are not the same. For windows, it's garasu, but for drinking, it's gurasu.

Another example are the words "second bag" and "body bag" (which are pronounced "sekondo baggu" and "bodii baggu" respectively).

A second bag is a man's hand-held pouch (often with a wrist strap); a "body bag" is a man's cross-body bag/backpack thingy.

When I teach intermediate Japanese, I have a unit on loanwords and these are some that really trip students up (esp. body bag!!)

Also, this isn't really what Amanda was asking for... but while in Japan, I often taught "cultural" lessons (either English or workshops about culture done in Japanese etc. to adults).

One time I was doing a presentation about holidays and celebrations, I gave a very long explanation about how we celebrate Valentine's Day because St. Valentine chased all the snakes out of Ireland. One person asked something like "then why is Valentines's Day for lovers" and I was like "I don't know, that's very interesting isn't it!" And everyone nodded very solemnly.

Hours later, back at my apartment, it hit me. I had mixed up St. Valentine with St. Patrick. OMG.

I was so mortified!

I’ve got a good one.

In Mexico ‘cajeta’ is caramel, or something like it. It’s also called ‘dulce de leche’ which is used throughout the Spanish speaking world. But in Mexico, ‘cajeta’ is the common word.


So I learned Spanish in Mexico.

In Argentina, they only use ‘dulce de leche’. There, the word ‘cajeta’ is slang for vagina. Except not really, it’s more like ‘c*nt’.


So guess who asked for ice cream ‘de cajeta’ in Buenos Aires?

So after I found out, after my next trip back to Mexico (from Argentina) I brought back a few candy bars to show to Argentine friends.

It’s a Mexican brand called ‘Cajetoso’. Underneath the name it says ‘el unico con cajeta de verdad!’ - The only one with real cajeta!

You guys are seriously cracking me up.

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
You guys are seriously cracking me up.

ditto