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?”

The other day there was a girl on the train responding to the conductor saying “Nächster Halt, Itzehoe” (next stop, Itzehoe), which sounds exactly like “It’s a hoe”. She went “It’s a what!?” with her companion cracking up immediately.

In Spain, my first real long-term girlfriend. American. We are visiting some of my relatives. She speaks passable Spanish. My aunt ask her something. She replies that she’s embarrassed, but she uses a “false -friend”, Embarazada, which means pregnant in Spanish. Me knowing what was going on, let the thing run for a bit. When explanations came there was a hilarious bit of manga size eyes and laughs.

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.

It was actually nonverbal - I didn’t understand the so-called “Indian head wag.” Working with a lot of programmers from India, I was often faced with that sort of gyrating head gesture while explaining something. To me as an American it kind of means well yeah sort of, or okay but not really - but in India it indicates understanding, like a simple head nod in America. I couldn’t figure out why so many people seemed to think I was being unclear. I would repeat things or say them in a different way, and sometimes they would do the head gyration even more - turned out they were just saying okay.

Me. A white boy teenager.

My best friend. Child of first gen Chinese immigrants. Fluent in Cantonese and English. Compared to his parents, he is very westernized. Can I call him a Twinkie? I mean, we aren’t friends anymore, but that seems like an “our word” kind of word, and that’s not mine.

Anyway…His parents own a Chinese restaurant. He gets me a job there in high school.

One day, my friend calls to me by my full name. One of the chefs hears it and repeats it to confirm what he heard.

It’s at that point, dear reader, that my friend realizes that, if said with a Cantonese inflection, my last name sounds exactly like a common vulgarity of that tongue.

I won’t say what it is, because it’s a pretty uncommon name. But I will say that for several weeks after that, every single time I walked into the kitchen, I’d be greeted by all the cooks like Norm walking into Cheers.

Have a coworker who regularly says “Choca my life,” to brush off little annoyances. He’ll also say “Choca your life” in a sing-song gallows humor way to express sympathy for annoyances other are going through.

Anyway, I had just started at the job and we were having a Thanksgiving lunch where everyone was going to bring a dish. I was going to bring a Sopapilla Cheesecake and he was excited about it, but the night before the meal when I went to turn the oven on it wouldn’t heat up (turned out to be a bad breaker).

The next morning I’m telling the story and appologizing for not bringing the desert, and he comes up and says “Choca your life!”, which I hadn’t heard him say before.

What I heard was “Choke on your lies!”

I was thinking this guy was serious about his cheesecake.

Loose fit, but my family lived in Australia for a few years. We’re German. One night, my dad feels like a shake after a long drive to a vacation spot, so he drives up to a McDonald’s and orders, the rest of the family dozing in the car.

“One erdber shake, please.”

“Excuse me?”

“One erdber shake, please?”

“… I don’t understand.”

At this point my mum realized.

“Oh, a strawberry shake!”

We all have a bit of a laugh. He said the German word for strawberry, but pronounced it English. None of us in the car realized and we all understood. The lady in the drive through said she thought they invented a new flavor she didn’t know about.

He also swaps the th and s in Thous Australia. :)

One of my 2 am cringe memories involves loudly asking my 3rd grade classmates if anyone would like a kiss.

I meant the chocolate.

I also had a fun experience in Belgium where a guy at a bar approached me and we each just tried different languages until we landed on one that we both knew. (I know this is common in Europe but you don’t run into this in North America as often)

my now wife is american. i learned uk english. one day we and some friends sat in a team speak voice chat. my now wife asks where XY is. i tell them, that they left to smoke a fag (which is uk söang for smokeing a cigerette). She was very concerned to say the least.

Some years ago I was learning Chinese, I was excited and eager to practice after learning only a couple phrases, so one day I see this young lady handing out flyers downtown, I confidently approach her and say “ni hao!” and she replies “I’m Korean”. To make things worse the flyers were actually from a Korean learning institute.

My work once sent me to Madrid. I only have some high school Spanish.

I had a cold at the time and soon ran out of cough drops. My coworker told me where I could buy some more, and what to ask for.

When I got to the store, apparently I misremembered what he told me to say. I said to the woman, “quiero caramelos de mentales.”

She looked at me confused. I tried again, slower: “caramellos…de…mentales?”

She seemed a bit alarmed. She said something in Spanish. I said “lo siento, no comprendo.”

She called over her coworker, who asked me “what are you looking for?”

I said, “cough drops.” She looked confused. “Cough…drops? What is it?” I tried “caramelos de mentales” again, no success, just confusion.

Then I remembered I had some wrappers in my pocket so I pulled one out and showed her. Suddenly they both beamed with understanding. “Ohhh! Caramelos mentolados! You were asking for ‘brain candies.’ She thought you wanted something illegal.”

day 2 at a new job

Boss’s boss and I are the only two there.

Boss^2: Vhat is za status of our new office in Catalina

Me: O.o (They have offices all over the place but I am not aware it’s someplace named Catalina exists, I’ve heard of the dressing before so maybe it’s a thing?)

I…um I’m not sure

Boss^2: Well, you need to find out.

Me: I don’t even have anybody’s phone number yet this is just my second day if you have some people you’d like me to call I can do that.

Boss^2: yez, look up the office and call them and ask them what their status is.

Me: (starts googling Catalina, an island in California? That wouldn’t make any sense. A region in Spain Catalonia? That would make a little more sense but still not a lot and I don’t speak Spanish)

Boss^2: well?

Me: I can’t find an office in Catalina or Catalonia. You wouldn’t happen to have their phone number would you

Boss^2: Catalina, Catalina, CAT-O-LINA, sea ate aya oh lee n ya

Me: Wait, Carolina, I’m so sorry let me find them.

(Rings, voicemail) It’s 8:00 a.m., there’s no one there yet.

Boss^2: rrr o k

My favorite anecdote revolves around the many meanings of shit, which is hardly surprising, since the way this word is used in English is in no way forthcoming to a non native speaker.

So I was sitting in this call between my company (a medium size German tech company) and a big US corporation, discussing the development of a tool that we were doing for them. The people on both sides all knew each others at least in passing, and one of the people asked if one of my collegues was in the call, too.

Them: “So, is mr. X here, too?” Us: “No, mr. X had another appointment.” Them: “Ah okay. Mr. X really is the shit.” My collegues: wait…what? did they just…? Me, to my collegues: it’s good, it’s good, it wasn’t an insult! My collegues, getting more and more aggrevated: “Did you just call mr. X ‘shit’?” Them, not understanding: “What? NO!”

The Americans did not understand what the problem was, because they did not really think about what they said and that it might not be understood the way it was meant by a non native speaker.

It took a lot of explaining from my side after the call to cool my people down. They were completely bewildered, and they could not believe that calling someone “the shit” could possibly be a compliment. Me, I had a big big laugh the entire time.

I was selling a TV to a guy who barely spoke English. The TV was $50. He said “I only have fifteen monies”. Idk why, but that was so hilarious to me that I let him have the TV for fifteen monies.