• this world is not my home

When you are learning a new language you will make mistakes. This is not a matter of "will it happen," but rather, "when will it happen." Let's share a few of those funny moments.

To be fair, I'll start.

I had an Arabic teacher, a female, who invited my wife and I to come to her family's house for a meal. Our oldest daughter, was less than a year old at the time. I had been studying Arabic for only slightly longer than that. Intending to complement our hostess on her meal preparation skills, I tried to say, "You are a good cook." What I actually said, to the great amusement of her entire family, was "You are cooked very well," which is a slang means of telling her "You are a real hottie."

When I was in France, I stayed with a family for one semester.  One day the daughter asked me if I wanted to make some dinner.  Instead of saying simply yes or no, I thought of this long answer; however, instead of that, out came Je t'aime.  (I love you.)   

This wasn't in the context of moving to another culture, but it was amusing all the same.

I was learning Spanish, and as a part of my interactions in the class, I was going to say "Will you go to bed soon?" The verb for this is acostar, which literally means to put to bed. So when you say "I'm/He's/She's going to bed", you put a reflexive pronouns in front of the verb, in essence changing the verb to "I am putting myself to bed"

The correct way to say what I was trying to accomplish would have been "Te acostarás?", meaning "Will you put yourself to bed", or "Are you going to bed." What I did was use the first person form of the verb ("Te acostaré"), which changed it to "Will I put you to bed?"

My teacher at least has a good sense of humor about it; probably wasn't the first time he'd had it happen.

edit: funny, by the way, how all of the mistakes so far have had some sort of a sexual connotation...as a modern psychology student, I hate to quote Freud, but...

Here is one for the other side. I have a lot of spiritually focused friends as well, but this is amusing for anyone who has struggled to learn a new language and communicate in it accurately.

One such person I know is a preacher, who was speaking at a church in South America. That night, he used a translator, but at the end of the thing, he wanted to pray for people. Thinking it would endear him to the hearts of the audience, he decided to offer to pray for any sinners in the audience, but in Spanish, without using the translator. For this person, on this night, that decision was a mistake.

"Yo quiero rezar por los pescadores. ¿Hay alguna pescadores aquí esta noche?"

Those of you who speak Spanish already know the punchline...what he said was "I want to pray for the fishermen. Are there any fishermen here tonight?" In Spanish, sinners = pecadores, without the 's'.

Funny thing. He was in a coastal city. Five people stood so he could pray for them. They were actual fishermen.

I was at a local Hanout ordering some gummies.  I was trying to order 15 of my favorite gummies plus more gummies for a total of 40 Dirhams.  I know a tiny tiny bit of Arabic (especially numbers) so as I was thinking of what to say, my mouth opened and words came out.  When I went to order my favorite gummies, instead of saying 15, I said 50.  I didn't know I said that until later that night when we were eating them and it seemed a lot more than 15.  That's when I realized I said "Hkemseen" instead of "Hkemstash".  At least I had my favorite gummies for a while...haha.

  My wife and I each have some funny mistakes.  Last year was our first year in Tunis.  We arrived in time for wedding season and had the good fortune to attend seven wedding in just a few months.  It became quite common for people to ask us if we had visited a Tunisian wedding upon first meeting them (this is a huge part of their culture and it is common to be invited to a stranger's sister's wedding if you say no). 
   One night while my wife and I were returning home in a taxi, the taxi asked me if I was married (there is an assumption that westerners spend their 20's in perpetual fornication).  However, I thought he was asking the usual have you been to a wedding. 
   I replied with my pre-school level Arabic, "Ay, msheet sebah ares fee Tunis"( yes, I went 7 wedding in Tunis.  Only he heard the 7 wedding in Tunis and thought that I was saying that I had been married seven times in Tunis.  He had a very confused and concerned look on his face(polygamy has not been legal in Tunisia for many years now).
   Fortunately my wife caught the miss-communication.  We all three had a good laugh.

If anyone is beginning to study Arabic, be careful how you say the word "zebda"(butter).  My wife’s language tutor once asked my wife what she was going to make for lunch. My wife replied, "Baysh ntieb macarona mah zebna". Notice that there is a "n" instead of the "d". This causes a dramatic change. The word is no longer "butter", it is a shorter word with "na" indicating the "we possessive" form.

   My wife meant to say " I will cook pasta with butter."  What she said to the tutor was, " I will cook pasta with our genitals (loosely translated for censorship).   The tutor almost fell out of her seat laughing!

The word "zipper" is also quite dangerous. Don't assume for a second it will be the same in Arabic as in English. Don't just say the word with a different accent. 

False cognates are very dangerous. I knew a girl who spent time as a foreign exchange student in a Spanish speaking country. She did something silly and got embarrassed about it and said to the very conservative family she was staying with, "Soy embarazada." For several days, the relationship between her and the host family was much more cool and tense than before. She couldn't figure out why. She mentioned it to a teacher at the school, who laughed and told her that she had told the family she was pregnant...

Well, at least they all laughed in the end, and maybe the family was a little embarrassed themselves for treating the girl in a less-than-nice manner during the misunderstanding.

I think that's called a pregnant pause. <ouch, that was a terrible pun, but I couldn't resist>