If you've ever interacted with someone who speaks a different language, what is the funniest misunderstanding you've had?

My friend tried to call me a "night owl" because we tended to talk very late at night for my time zone. She accidentally called me a "lady of the night".

EDIT: "lady of the night" is a term for prostitute

Not my story, but one a friend told me.

Someone had the misconception that there was a huge, huge sector of labor dedicated to working in cemeteries in the USA. Like almost everyone knew at least one person who worked at a cemetery. This misconception arose due to the ubiquity of the term "graveyard shift" regardless of the actual job being performed.

One time when I was a kid, we went on a long car trip and a thunderstorm approached. My dad said, "Don't worry about the sound. It's the light that kills you!" My Japanese mom was not cool with this. "No, it's the sound. What are you talking about?" A fierce argument ensued.

So, the words for thunder and lightning in Japanese are kaminari and inazuma, respectively. But that's not a perfect translation. kaminari means something like "peal of the gods", and is the forceful, dangerous part. inazuma is basically just a light show.

English is the opposite. Thunder is just a sound, while lightning can kill you. To put it another way, in English, one word is light + electricity while the other is sound. In Japanese, one word is sound + electricity while the other is light.

Anyway, I was about to speak up when my big brother tugged my arm. "No. This is a popcorn moment. Don't ruin it!"

Years ago, when I first moved to America from the UK, I was working in a pretty quiet office that backed on to a field. One day mouse appeared, freaked out a couple of the gals in the office, and then it ran and hid under an office cube.

I investigated to see where it was hiding, but it was pretty dark down there. So I asked if either of the gals had a torch. They both got an expression of wide-eyed horror, which confused me for a few seconds.

Then I realized that torch had a different term in America. So I corrected myself and asked if either of them had a flashlight. And they looked very relieved. They thought I was going to get an old school torch and try to smoke the mouse out or set it on fire, and probably set the whole cube on fire in the process.

I made this comment about a year ago: https://midwest.social/comment/6247683

"A friend of mine is a non-native English speaker. He teaches at an elementary school and works with ‘English as a second language’ students. He casually mentioned that he always tells his students to take a ‘horse bath’ in the bathroom sink after recess if needed. He was traumatized when I told him that he’d misheard that phrase for his entire adult life."

I used to work with a Ukranian coworker, who had so little of an accent that I often forgot he was not a native English speaker.

One time during a meeting, I mentioned "there's more than one way to skin a cat" and I can still picture the horrified look on his face when he processed what I just said.

In all fairness, it's a pretty morbid expression!

My Dutch friend. We were on discord playing guild wars and the topic of alcohol came up. The majority of the group are british and we were talking about different drinks like whisky, gin etc and the question came up "so what famous dutch spirits are there?".

There was a bit of silence before he said, "I don't know, William of Orange?". Turns out he had never heard of the word 'spirit' to refer to high proof alcohol before so selected a famous historical dutch figure.

The Dutch word "poepen" (taking a shit), is a Belgian euphemism for sex. Which is always a great source of fun when making friends near the southern border.

I went to the doctor because I was worried about me grinding my teeth (bruxism).

Instead of saying "hagishiri" or 歯ぎしり I said "hagEshiri" or ハゲ尻

so I told to the doctor I was worried about my bald ass.

As I’m half Arab/half European, my Arabian family tried to talk my native language. One of them wanted to say “I love you” which is in Dutch “Ik hou van je”.

He ended up saying; “ik geil van je” which translates along the likes of “I get horny of you”.

Had a good laugh but was bit odd to explain lol.

I was once working with a team in India to resolve a database issue. During a particular call, we had to export data several times to create backups. Exporting the DB data is done with "dump" commands and my Indian counterpart would repeatedly tell me that he "took a dump just now".

I had sort of the reverse, working with German-speaking coworkers. I used the term "schpiel" to refer to a long talk I was going to give. This led to a moment of confusion because that's not what the word means in German. It means "game" or "play" and in the context they thought I meant to imply that I was not taking the speech seriously, or maybe wasn't going to be completely honest. Almost like a con. That's probably how the loanword first entered the English language, and its meaning has drifted over time.

I went to Mexico and told a lot of people that they don't speak Spanish. When someone said something that I couldn't hear well, I'd compliment their digestion.

Right phrase: No hablo Español (I don't speak Spanish)
What I said: No hablas Español (you don't speak Spanish)

Right phrase: Que dices (What you say)
What I said Que diges (what digestion!)

Well to preface this, 6 months ago I moved to Japan to study Japanese.

During a trip to Tokyo I randomly ended up talking to a group of salarymen on the way to the same restaurant at me in akihabara. After a while they asked me if I live in Japan and I answered yes and then proceeded to say 日本にしんでいる instead of 日本に住んでいる, for those who don’t speak Japanese, I accidentally said I am dying in Japan instead of I am living in Japan which is surprisingly close pronounciation wise lol. This was met with loads of laughs

I was in a sign language class (ASL) around Halloween and the instructor asked if we had ever encountered a ghost. We thought he signed tornado so we signed about times we were near tornadoes while he’s looking on with disbelief and shock and awe about all of our supernatural encounters. We had a good laugh when we figured out the confusion.

it's worse when you do speak the language, but your laziness in one language affects the other: in spanish, if you leave out the punctuation like it's english, you could accidentally end up texting people that your potato is into anal gangbangs instead of into how much your dad likes new years parties. lol

mi papa disfruta fiestas por ano neuvo (my potato likes new anal gangbangs)

vs

mi papá disfruta fiestas por año nuevo (my father likes new years parties)

My argentenian friend called stuffed crust pizza "the pizza with cheese borders".

Still call it that almost 20 years later.

I heard a story about how in world war 2 British and American generals got into an argument about the importance of a certain matter.

The British thought the matter needed to be tabled and the Americans were shocked and thought it must not be tabled.

Took some time for them to realize "tabling" an issue meant the exact opposite in America and UK

Since hearing that story the exact expression came up for me online once and on a work call once with British and American speakers.

No foreign language, but still.

When I was living in Japan (about 20 years ago now), I was dating a Filipino woman who spoke very good English. But I quickly learned that she didn't understand colloquialisms.

There was one day when she kept calling me multiple times throughout the day. After the 5th or 6th call, I picked up the phone and said, "Jeez, you're killing me!"

She immediately started crying and asked, "Why would you ever say that?! I would never kill you!" Which got a laugh out of me and just made her cry even harder.

I quickly realized she didn't understand English expressions. I explained it to her, but she said she didn't want me to ever say it again, because just hearing the accusation hurt her, even if I didn't literally mean it.

While dating her, I became hyper vigilant to the amount of expressions we use in English. I had to continually rephrase everything I said because I caught myself using so many colloquialisms that she just didn't understand. She took everything so literally!

Its less a misunderstanding I had as I grew up with Chinese speakers, but it is always fun to take a new grad student/postdoc out to lunch or something similar.

Because every language has "filler words". In English that is usually "uhm" or "like".

In Mandarin? It is "that one". 那个, Nèi ge.

And "nèi ge" sounds a LOT like the n-word. Fortunately I have found that most college towns and places that are used to an international community pick up on it pretty quick, but it is still REAL awkward when you get a side eye from a black person because this visiting scholar is trying to remember an English word.

Was in Spain on a Spanish club field trip. I forget what I did as it was years ago but I wanted to express how embarrassed I was about something.

Used the word 'embarrasada'.

Hilarity ensued.

Edit: Oh look! Other people in this thread did the same thing lol. I feel so much better.

Slightly morbid academic one.

My computer science professor (who is from Eastern Europe) was explaining an algorithm that he and another professor (from South America) developed. The algorithm processes a graph by first creating a "frame" around it. Since English was not the first language for either of them, the first word they thought of was karkas (каркас, frame in Russian). English word "carcass" sounds pretty much the same, right? but only later, after the work was submitted, they realized they were creating a dead body around the graph.

We visited an office, and the person guiding us around told us about one of the employees that "it is his first day" - we all misheard this as "it is his birthday". And started to sing...

Chatting on Skype with a Chinese developer, he said "I need to take Friday off for family matters" and I said "no worries"

He apologized profusely, and eventually I realised that to him, "no worries" meant something like "No! I am very concerned!"

I've since taught them some more Australianisms.

When my wife was in university, she went on an exchange with a dozen other students to a Chinese university. The program assigned her group a pair of local guides.

The first night, the guides offered to take them out for snake. Everyone refused.

The second night, the guides repeatedly offered everyone snake, saying that there were plenty of local places to get snake. Everyone refused.

The third night, her group had a discussion. They didn't want to offend their gracious hosts. Snake had to be a popular local delicacy, because the guides repeated their offer daily.

They decided to be adventurous. One of them spoke up: "yes, we would like to try snake..."

The guide said, "what kind of snake do you want? chips? hot dog?"

my grandfather (polish) was talking to my cousin's boyfriend at the time (german) in english. the poor guy was trying to make a good impression so he was really going the extra mile. it took about 10 minutes for them to realize one was talking about chess, and the other about jazz.

If there's one important thing to learn from this thread, it is that idioms do not translate. At all.

Mrs. Ersatz86, native Spanish speaker with (normally) great English skills, to our daughter and I:

Wait, you guys went to the pub without me?

Me: Well, you were at yoga.

Mrs. Ersatz86: Did you at least stop at the liquor store?

Me: Sure did!

Mrs. Ersatz86: Well where's the booze? What am I, shoplifter?

Me: ... blinks...

Me: do you mean "chopped liver"?

Pandemonium.

I was resolving a conflict once and, instead of saying "make up or breakup", I said "make out or breakout". The fact I screwed that up probably helped the conflict cease though.

I am an English monoglot. Years ago, was working overseas in Kuwait when I experienced a sudden onset of testicular pain and swelling. Went to the hospital and got taken to an elderly Arabic ultrasound technician to examine my junk. After a few minutes of smearing cold jelly on me, he says something...in Arabic.

I do not understand.

He repeats it, this time poking me in the fupa.

I look confused and try to adjust my position on the table to give him better access, hoping this is what he wants.

He sighs, searching for the little English he knows. Finally he says, "Like pooping...but not pooping!" and wags his finger in my face. That's how I understood he wanted me to tense my lower abdominal wall so he could check for a hernia.

Talking to someone from Korea in VRChat and they only knew some English.

Someone said Cancer and they got all excited saying they knew that word, it means leage of legends.

I've lived in a couple of European countries and speak 7 different European languages (though my German is kinda crap and my Italian not much better) and regularly take the piss by playing the "ignorant foreigner" with the expressions in other people's languages and acting as if, by translating them literally, I totally misunderstood them.

This works great because there are so many expressions in pretty much all languages which are have entirelly different meanings when interpreted literally but the natives don't really think about it like that because they just learned that stuff as a whole block of meaning rather than having reached it by climb the language-learning ladder from "understanding the words first" as foreigners do.

For example the English expression "I want to pick your brains" which has quite a different and more gruesome meaning if read literally or one the dutch expressions for "you're wasting time in small details" which translates quite literally to "you're fucking ants" and is my all time favorite in all languages I speak well enough to know lots of expressions in.

I don't have an anecdote, but I do have a good joke.

Late at night, a German coast guard radio operator gets a distress call. A British ship has capsized and is quickly taking on water.

"We're sinking, we're sinking!!" The panicked sailor yells over the radio.

Confused, the German operator takes a minute then responds "What are you... sinking about?"

I have only ever heard the story, but my grandma came over here from Germany after WW2 to marry my grandpa (American Army) after they met in Germany.

Anyway, they are driving and she is learning English and she gets horrified and says, “THEY SELL THAT HERE?!”

My grandpa turns the car around and drive back to read the sign which had “pups for sale”. Because she was German and the U is usually pronounced with an OOH sound, well…she quickly learned how to say “pups” in English.