This troper's father is Vietnamese. He used to work with a pretty Vietnamese girl who wore tight jeans to emphasize her...assets. A friend of his asked him to compliment her on her buttocks in Vietnamese. He told him how to say, "You have a round butt." The friend mixed the word for "round" with the word for "buffalo." They didn't hit it off.

"¿Puedo ir Diablo?" And the teacher did. not. notice.

For non-Spanish speaking tropers: That sentence means "Can I go devil?". What that troper was probably trying to say was "¿Puedo ir al baño?" which means "May I go to the bathroom?"

This troper managed to muddle up the past participles of "schiessen" and "scheissen" in a German class. She has never lived down the interesting weekend when she shat three goals in a football match.

During this troper's first year of Spanish (6th grade), he managed to mangle "conejo" (bunny) into a vulgarity that caused the few fluent students to collapse with laughter and made the teacher flush bright red.

That doesn't require any mangling. "Conejo" can be used as a euphemism for CountryMatters, much like "pussy" (as in "cat") is in English.

This troper's father once attended a dinner party with some French friends and when asked if he wanted more food, attempted to reply "No thanks, I'm full", in French. Unfortunately when directly translated into French, this phrase means something along the lines of: "No thanks, I'm pregnant."

This troper's French teacher went through exactly the same situation.

This troper's Spanish teacher did something similar, thinking embarazada met "embarrassed". It means pregnant.

...Do we have the same teacher?

In a French class paired assignment, one of this troper's friends misread his partner's handwriting and instead of saying "''J'ai perdu mon ami''" (I've lost my friend), he said "''J'ai pendu mon ami''" (I've ''hanged'' my friend). Several of the more advanced students in the class cracked up, and the teacher himself was fighting the urge as he explained that what had been said was likely to get the speaker arrested.

This troper's Latin ''teacher'' once meant to write on the dry erase board that there was going to be a test (''examinem''), while a sharp student noticed that in fact she had written ''exanimatus'', unconscious. Much humor was had.

For a moment there, I thought you said she had written "Exterminatus".

This troper has a brother who due to a speech impediment can't say "This food tastes delicious." in German, it comes out as "This food tastes like shit."

Kötzlich ?

Mistaken for Kacklich?

Köstlich = Delicious, "kötzlich" = "barfalicious"

English, Excellent = Deutsch, Ausgezeichnet. My German 101 instructor pointed out an obvious slipup: ausgescheissnet. In that case, means that it's not excellent, it's excrement.

This troper once wrote what he thought was "Emma plays with the dog." in Italian. Due to a misspelling, it came out as "Emma plays with meat." which has all sorts of delightful meanings if you think about it.

In this troper's high school Russian class he has to be careful when pronouncing the word for mother, мать, because without the ь on the end, it's pronunciation is adjusted ever so slightly. After that ''slight'' change, it now means cussing, more specifically of the varieties involving copulation with one's mother. He almost got slapped by a foreign exchange student from St. Petersburg for that mistake.

This troper's mother once chaperoned a school trip to France, and although she made a commendable effort to learn French before going, she still managed, at a restaurant, to turn "We need a knife" into "We are a bakery."

"Nous avons besoin d'un couteau" to "nous sommes un *bakery* "? How?

"Nous avons besoin d'un couteau" to "Nous sommes une pâtisserie"? This french canadian troper just has to know.

Possibly some relation between "besoin" and "boulangerie"?

This troper recalls a friend mentioning having eaten some Arroz Con Perro (instead of Arroz Con Pollo). The latter is rice with chicken, but the former would be a meal of an altogether different kind.

Inversion: This troper's latin teacher thought his entire class had a case of this. As part of the quiz, we were asked to translate different quote's from StarWars, one of which being "You are part of the Rebel alliance and a traitor. Take her away". However, everyone translated it "You are part of the rebel alliance and a trader. Take her away." He didn't realize until we pointed it out that we translated it correctly, but he had made a typo.

In this troper's French 2 class, there was one guy who always managed to do this. He once turned the conjugation of the verb "to make/do" into... a word referring to one's rear end. He also managed, while reciting a poem, to say "he has a hat in his head" instead of "on his head." Amazingly, while giving a presentation in the first person on a famous historical figure, he turned the name of the person's second wife into the phrase "Twelve Armenian women."

*blinks* What was the name of the wife in question?

This troper once perpetrated this in Xhosa - also an inflected language. Apparently "Ndi libele" ("I forgot"), when improperly inflected means "I am a breast".

Another example involving a South African language: this time, Afrikaans. A lot of the time when people write "Hoërskool", the forget that very important umlaut over the e, writing it as "Hoerskool" instead. That changes the meaning of the word from "High School" to "Whore School"...

This troper once accidentally put "baignoire" instead of "banlieu" on a French exam. The question was "Ou habitez-vous?" ...

ThisTroper's parents are both fencers, and when her mother would miss, she would hiss under her breath, "''missed''" to avoid swearing. Unfortunately, when they moved to Germany, she found out that it sounded suspiciously like "Mist", which is one of the German words for "shit."

When This Troper was in Japan I fell in with a fellow countryman he met there and went looking for a bar. I shouldn't have let him ask for directions because he kept saying "doku" (poison) instead of "doko" (where). I noticed a lot of the people we asked were giving him funny looks. On a more personal note, I was once half-way through a Japanese speaking practical before I realised I'd got "otouto" (younger brother) mixed up with "imouto" (younger sister) and had spent the last 2 minutes telling my tutor about a little sister I did not, in fact, have.

Similarly, This Troper was in a Japanese class with a French guy who had trouble pronouncing his H's. One time, he attempted to say "hashi de taberu" (I eat with chopsticks) and it came out "ashi de taberu" (I eat with my feet).

This troper's aunt once spent several minutes explaining to a French drugstore owner that she had been bitten by a handkerchief (in actual fact, she'd been nommed on by a horsefly - mouche: fly, mouchoir: handkerchief). This troper's father also once told a French farmer that the horse in the field over the road was being bothered by seagulls when he also meant flies. Doubly bizarre seeing as this troper's father is a teacher who's been teaching French for about twenty years. Ah well...I guess we all make mistakes

This troper once went to a french part of Switzerland, and wanted to know where the train station. He asked "Ou est la guerre?" which means "where is the war?" instead of "Ou est la gare?" which means "where is the train station?" Switzerland has remained neutral for centuries.

A friend of a friend of this troper once went to China. In a clothes shop, she wanted to say "I need a shirt for my husband" but mispronounced the word for "husband" in a way that turned it into the word "dwarf." Small shirts were brought out and she was left there saying "My dwarf is bigger" over and over.

This troper, in an Italian test in primary school, wrote what he intended to be 'Emma plays with the dog'. Unfortunately, the word for dog is very similiar to the word for meat. What he ended up writing was 'Emma plays with meat', the DoubleEntendre potential he has only just noticed.

*scratches head* This troper remembers reading practically this exact same story about 6 bullets down from the top.

A guy in this troper's German class once mixed up the words "Student" and "Stunde" and announced that he works fifteen (male) students per week.

This Troper mows the flowers rather than the lawn.

This Troper attempted to say "I Love You" in Korean going off of memory rather than a phrase book. He wound up saying "I am buying you."

Further adventures in Korean malapropisms: This Troper turned in some homework where he stated "My father is a stop sign."

This troper had a similar misadventure in Spanish. Instead of "His father is ill," she wrote, "His potato is ill."

This Troper was an foreign exchange student in a German-language class with at a German university once, reviewing modal verbs by filling in captions to pictures. One picture showed two men having a duel. One very sweet, shy student said, instead of "Er soll nicht schiessen" (He should not shoot), said "Er soll nicht scheissen" (He should not shit). The entire class erupted into laughter; the teacher giggled nervously and said "Well, he shouldn't do that, either..."

This Troper's stepmom once attempted to say "I am a vegetarian" in sign language and actually said "I am a vegetable."

Someone who studied Japanese with This Troper tried to describe his outfit as "pants and a t-shirt" (tishyatsu to surakusu). Unfortunately, the person used the word "pantsu", which means underwear. Hilarity Ensued. The same person also made the mistake of using the word "neru" (sleep) instead of nap ("hirune o suru) when he suggested that our class have naptime. He ended up propositioning the entire room.

It was intentional, but this troper's cousin once told a group of Spanish-speaking construction workers he was working with "No tengo los zapatos locos," while pointing at his watch and then at the sky. The phrase means "I do not have the crazy shoes." It was a very effective ice breaker.

In a trip to this editor's spanish-speaking country, his wife, wanting to compliment his aunt's collection of porcelain owls, stated that she liked those "tiny lettuces".

This troper remembers some years ago having a story told to him by his middle-school french teacher. He relayed a tale of a friend of his who was visiting his relatives, who spoke french. He was not fluent, so when attempting to say "My legs are Freezing," just put a french pronunciation on 'freezing.' As a result, he said 'frisé,' and thus 'The hair on my legs has been curled.'

A friend of This Troper, while reading a Latin passage aloud, translated "the farmer approached and grabbed the boy" as "the farmer approached and raped the boy." In his defense, the word for grab is "rapio."

A well-known story from this troper's high school Indonesian teacher: she was at a dinner with other Indonesian teachers where everyone was to speak entirely in Indonesian. When offered food, she went to say 'maaf, saya kenyang' (I am full) but instead produced 'saya kencing' (I am peeing)...Hilarity Ensued.

This Troper was able to get a friend with ¿Tú embarasadas? after he had tripped over a bed with everyone in the room. After he affirmed that he was "embarrassed", This Troper told the group that it meant pregnant. The group cracked up, even more when he agreed to that as well.

A similar incident happened to my Spanish teacher's sister once when she was late to a meeting. When she arrived, she meant to say she was embarrased. Instead, she told the group that she was "embarasada", or pregnant.

This editor's third-and-fourth grade Mandarin teacher, when travelling in China, meant to compliment the mayor's (or whatever passes for mayor there) wife's dress... and accidentally told her that she had a lovely ''eggplant''. Much hilarity ensued.

This spanish-speaking troper remembers a French class he had on High School, where one of his classmates once read a sentence written as "J'aime ma mére" (I love my mother) as if it was written as "J'aime ma merde" (I love my shit). The teacher, who had little patience on such kind of mispronounciations, raged. EDIT: Some other jewels were mentioned, like "I drive my vulture" instead of "I drive my car" (Je conduis ma vautour / Je conduis ma voiture) and "The assholes flew" instead of "The ducks flew". (Les connards a volé / Les canards a volé)

A friend of a friend went to China and thought he had been telling people that he wanted to see a panda bear. What he was actually saying was that he wanted to "see a breast hair".

Ah, the joy of idioms. This troper once knew a native French speaker who mixed up "I have a cold" and "I am feeling under the weather" and told this perplexed troper "I have the weather." He also went to the post office once and requested "a package of timbers, please". (The French for stamps is "timbres".)

This troper's French teacher translated "I kissed my friend" into French as "I fucked my friend" due to a semantic drift that had occurred since he learned French, much to the amusement of the teaching assistant and many of the class.

This troper's Spanish II class was infamous with these. Considering that the entire class was made up with kids who had never heard actual Spanish spoken by a native speaker before and had no idea what they were doing, mispronunciations were common. A few gems were substituting ''cago'' (I shit, roughly) for ''caigo'' (I fall), ''el peine'' (the comb) became ''el pene'' (the penis), and ''la mama'' (the breast) for ''la mamá'' (the mom).

This troper's teacher once asked the class for various ways to ask someones name. However, after the class had use all the ones we had learnt, I attempted to combine "Wer ist das?" (Who is that?) and "Wie heißt du?" (How are you called?) as "Wie heißt das?" (How do you call that?) which eveidently means something very bad.

Holy cow, what does it mean? If you're right, then my German teacher knows nothing about it and has been letting classmates of mine say it with no comment passed. Then again, she isn't the greatest teacher, so ...

This troper was visiting a garden in Tokyo, after which I was to meet a local friend at a train station. I kept asking locals, in passable Japanese, where Hamachô Station was, and people kept telling me it was clear across town. I tracked down a pay phone and called my friend to ask him why he picked a station so far away, and he kept insisting it was right next to me. It turns out he was right, but the station was called Hamamatsuchô, and apparently pronounced very fast, with no cadence between syllables. But then again, I had the same problem in London, looking in vain on the map for Tutnam until someone pointed out Tottenham.

An American FOAF was on a business trip in Japan, at the bar after work. They were talking about South Park, and the American did his Timmy impression, and the bar fell quiet. Turns out "Temê" is the kind of word that, in a bar, usually precedes a brawl.

Not too long ago, a friend of mine showed me a pencil pouch from Japan, which read "POP'n Friends". The placement of the apostrophe made the second "P" look like an "R," changing the phrase to "''PORN'' Friends." We still don't know what "POP'n Friends" actually means.

On a forum, spammers are a problem. However, as the following text shows, they can also be rather funny. #QUOTE#Hi! Boomerang klooper extract over in preference of my english jer, buti faithfully keen re articulate

This troper, when speaking Spanish, always seemed to confuse ''dólar'' with ''dolor'': the first is dollar, the second is pain. "I wish that I had 1,000,000 pains."

This troper had an amusing experience involving a three way language mix-up on a school sponsored trip to Italy. Only a few of us spoke Italian (this troper was not one of them) and we felt it behooved us to at least ''attempt'' to meet the Italians halfway rather than assuming they all spoke English. So the rest of us tried to get along with whatever rudimentary Spanish we knew. It actually worked pretty well for the most part, until we were in Venice and I tried to ask for a ferry ticket. To this day I can't recall exactly what it was I said to this poor woman operating the ticket counter, but I do remember she stopped me in mid-sentence and asked me "Do you speak English?"

This troper's grandmother, being from Vienna, didn't speak very good Hungarian. She once wanted to order "borsos marhatokány" (a common Hungarian meat dish) in a restaurant but ended up ordering "borsos marhatakony", which would be "peppered cattle snot". On another occasion, they were going to a shop, and she yelled across the street to her daughter: "be van szarva" (he/she/it has shat itself) instead of "be van zárva" (it's closed). She also had a habit of saying "kilincs" (doorhandle) instead of "kincs" (treasure).

This troper once heard a rather tragic story of a deaf couple who were shot dead because a local gangbanger mistook their sign language for the hand sign of a rival gang.

Another example of repetition trouble comes from this tropers ASL class- while saying details about ourselves, a classmate tried to say "I've been married for one year" and ended up saying "I am a one year-old hamburger". Hilarity promptly ensued.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

''HUH?'' I'm sorry, I don't know how to get rid of eels...

I didn't know retardese was a language.

You've got to be kidding me. I've been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It's just common sense.

Clarification for those out of the loop.

In French class, I was writing an assignment about a recent vacation. I was at the section where I had to describe my favourite meal I had there. I asked the teacher what "turkey" was in French. Unfortunately he thought I was asking how to describe my destination, and I ended up saying I had Turkey (the country) for dinner.

Well, so much for my plans to visit the Hagia Sophia one day. I hope it was tasty. Jerk.

Your next meal could just as easily be people from Denmark. Don't forget to tell us which tastes better when you're through!

One day I ended up chatting online with someone who was evidently using babelfish or some other automated translator to aid her in speaking English. At one point she was trying to apologize for not speaking English very well, but what she actually said was "Sorry my Englishman is small".

Hindi has four t-sounds and four d-sounds (to be technical: contrasting ''retroflex/dental'' and ''aspirated/unaspirated''). This European troper made his Indian sisters-in-law crack up with laughter when he referred to their pet parrot ''(tota)'' as a "misanthrope" by placing the tip of the tongue in the wrong place.

This Dutch-speaking Troper once tried to mention a cat being yellow in German, only I couldn't remember what the German word for yellow was. Since a lot of the time, Dutch words are very similar to German, I figure I'd just try and use the Dutch word for yellow ("geel") and change it around a bit to make it sound more German it in the hope I'd get it right. I ended up calling the cat horny ("geil"). Oops. Doubly bad because the Dutch word for horny is also "geil" (albeit with a tiny difference in pronunciation). On the bright side, I will never forget that the German word for "yellow" is "Gelbe".

A fairly mild version of this: When this troper was taking a Japanese oral exam, she said, "watashi wa shukudai ga imasu," which is, "I have homework." However, "imasu" is used for living things. So this troper implied that her homework was alive. (She should've said, "watashi wa shukudai ga arimasu.")

To help further your Japanese skills, "watashi wa" is unnecessary in that situation. "Shukudai ga arimasu" is what would normally be said.

Our French teacher's toy seal Monsieur Phoque was very popular with this troper's high school French class.

This troper once ended up insisting to her Spanish partner that she had attended her girlfriend's wedding when she was a child. It wasn't until after the lesson she realized that she had mixed up the word ''prima'' (cousin) with ''novia'' (lover).

A few years ago, one of this troper's college professors began taking Russian classes, as she planned to visit her daughter who worked as a member of the Peace Corps in Kazakhstan. In one of her classes, she said something, causing her teacher to break down in hysterics. When she asked what she said, he told her that she had called him a briefcase.

An in-law of mine was at a restaurant in México, and was trying to tell a waitress, "tengo hambre" (I'm hungry). Not knowing Spanish that well though, what he told her instead was, "quiero hombre" (I want a man).

In a particular Spanish class, this troper's class was asked by the instructor to name things our parents want us to do. This troper intended to say, "Mis padres insisten que yo no gaste tanto dinero," or "My parents insist that I not spend so much money." What she ''actually'' said was, "Mis padres insisten que yo no ''gane'' tanto dinero," or "My parents insist that I not ''make so much money.''" If ''only'' that were true...

On the first day of Japanese class, a friend accidentally said toomoimasu instead of tomoshimasu when introducing himself. That is, instead of politely saying "I am called [name]", he said "[name], I think."

As a result of this, the phrase "It is sinful to eat peaches while fishing" was a running joke in this troper's French class.

I'm a native English speaker living in Spain, so English as a foreign language classes uncover many gems. One I remember is someone trying to say that they had a cold... in Spanish, "estoy constipado". What he actually said is not hard to guess; it was difficult not to snigger.

This troper was in Italy with a youth theater group. For lunch we wanted to borrow a bread knife from a nearby restaurant, so a few people was send there with a travel parleur to try to communicate the request. They did come back with a knife, but told that the waiter they had talked to, seemed oddly amused at the request. We later found out that the (hot seventeen year old) girl had said "I'll give ass back" instead of "I'll give it back".

The US Government's Defense Language Institute was a virtual gold mine of these for Korean:

One student, while trying to describe his house (jip) told the instructor that he had a two story vagina (sship.)

A marine, after bring promoted to corporal (sang-byeong) was presented with a banner congratulating her on her venereal disease (seong-byeong.)

This troper is aware of two separate yet equally hilarious examples, involving two completely different people, one of whom (going to show that even ASL has dialects and that ''dialects matter'') was actually a ''professional translator'':

In the first example, my friend, a slight novice at ASL, was trying to inform a deaf customer she met at work that she was trying to learn how to sign the lyrics to the song "Fireflies", by Owl City. She was perplexed when the woman laughed and responded, "Sounds FUN!". Apparently the difference between "Firefly" and "colorful/fiery orgasm" is that for "orgasm" is that instead of bringing your fingers down ''slowly'' on the second sign, you briefly twitch them; something my friend has an unfortunate and inexplicably instinctive tendency to do when attempting to sign the word for "bug"...

And in the second (and by virtue of who it happened to, somewhat more hilarious) example, the translator was attempting to ask a little boy "What would you like for lunch?". Apparently in the Washington, DC area, however, the standard sign for "lunch" (which involves an "L" held up to the chin in a particular way) is not used for "lunch", but as slang for something completely... ahem, ''different''. Ironically, the little boy didn't pick up on this and knew exactly what she meant, but his ''mother'' got terribly indignant, and had to explain to the translator that "''You just asked him which lesbian he wanted!''".

This Troper's has a friend who travels alot and once while in a Tapa his other friend, who thought he was fluent in Spanish, ordered something, this troper was never told what, and the waiter gives him a strange look before huddling with some other waiters, saying some stuff in spanish, and snickering. My friend, figuring something was wrong, asked in his very poor spanish if something was wrong with that food item. The waiter turned back and replied in almost perfect English, "Oh, there's nothing wrong with the food here. Your friend just happend to order a shaver for his meal."

This troper, while trying desperately to get directions to a public convenience in Osaka asked a local, "Toilet-wa, suki desu ka?". I somehow managed to confuse doko (where is?) with suki (Like), making the sentense "Do you like the toilet?" I didn't think Japanese people could laugh like that, at least not in public, and I very nearly ended up suddenly not needing the toilet anymore.

Similarily, this troper confused the words for where (doko) and who (dare) and asked a group of Japanese people "Who is the toilet?"

This troper's middle school Chinese class had a lot of fun thinking up entertaining meanings for phonetic translations of current politicians' names. Among other things, we came up with Ao(4) ba(1) ma(3) for Obama, literally meaning "obscure dumb horse".

The Arabic word for "chair" is ''kursii''. The Arabic word for "my vagina" is ''kussii''. The difference between the two is harder to detect if someone does not roll their r's, as a soldier buddy of mine once discovered.

[In Japanese,] 'Shufu' means 'housewife' and 'shōfu' means 'prostitute'. Guess what a friend of mine said when asked if her mother had a job.

No, "water buffalo" is ''not'' slang for a thoughtless, rowdy person in English. That's why you don't translate slang literally. BTW, the thoughtless and rowdy sorority girls being addressed took it as a racial epithet.

In French, the past tense for "se taire" (to be quiet) is "s'est tue," which is dangerously close to "se tuer"(to kill oneself). My entire third year class unknowingly threatened suicide for a month.

This troper's father's still kinda famous for ordering Olivia's oil instead of olive oil in a restaurant in italy.

"Olio di oliva" -> "Oilio di olivia". He never tried to order in Italian again.

My Chinese teacher uses examples to show us why tone is important. For instance, "Qing wen(4)" (''please tell me...'') will let you ask something, while "Qing wen(3)" (''Please kiss me'') will "make Chinese woman slap you". Also, call your mother "mama(1)", not "mama(3)" (something vulgar).

Of course, accents also cause trouble the other way. He couldn't figure out why people were laughing when he translated the word "bing(1)" until he actually wrote it on the board and people started saying, "Oh, ''ice''..." We were ''wondering'' why he gave us the word for "ass".

In an attempt to say that my pencil was missing its eraser in Chinese, I managed to produce the sentence "This thing on the end of my nose is too small". ("Nose" and "pencil" are similar words in Mandarin, and I didn't know how to say "eraser".)

I have also seen these committed by other English speakers in an official context. I don't really speak Spanish, but I know enough vocabulary to recognize that the Spanish written below the English on a sign advertising vegetables indicated that ''vegetarians'' were for sale.

I've heard people mix up the german word "flasche" (bottle) with "fleisch" (meat). The result is usually hysterical.

This troper's French class had this as an exercise, combined with IHaveToGoIronMyDog: Someone asks you to do something ridiculous, and you have to answer something ridiculous you're too busy doing. For example, this troper said, "Je dois faire les achats sur Pluton." which translates to, "I have to go shopping on Pluto."

An old teacher of mine once told my class about when he and a friend of his had been on vacation to a country where they barely spoke the language. At one point my teacher tried to order two cups of coffee, but instead ended up requesting two hookers.

Apparently, my dad got something wrong when he was teaching me German, if what I read is to be trusted... apparently, every summer, I used to say "I am very, very, ''very'' sexy" instead of saying I was the other kind of hot.

Embarrassingly TruthInTelevision for this Troper. Have your teacher ask you what you watched on TV yesterday. Answer PawnStars. In a Japanese accent.

In my dialect (Australian English), 'pawn' and 'porn' are homonymous. If that is what you were talking about.

This troper was trying to say "I am tired" in Japanese (watashi wa nemui desu), but ended up saying "I am a mouse" (watashi wa nezumi desu).

Glauben Sie Meiner Enteklage.

In order to quickly translate a Swedish book into English, I scanned the pages and copied and pasted the scanned text into a translator. The translation program itself is surprisingly accurate, the only problem is that the scanner recognizes the text as letters and puts it into a Word document but doesn't recognize the circles and umlauts over the letters å, ä and ö and just transcribes them as a and o, respectively. The translator is even smart enough to (sometimes) figure out that a word was misspelled and translate it correctly anyway. The only major problem with this method arises when such misspellings produce actual words in Swedish. What was "där man kan odla enklare grödor som råg" (where one can easily cultivate crops like rye) became "dar man kan odla enklare grodor som rag" (where you can grow more easily frogs that rag).

In this troper's French class, we had a competition for designing an advertisement for perfume. One kid put that it would make people want to kiss the perfume user. Unfortunately, he used the verb 'baiser'. While it does literally mean 'to kiss', contemporary slang use meant that his advertisement was...rather more convincing than he intended.

This Troper once was taking a pop quiz in French on vocabulary related to illness, medicine, and the human body. The quiz was fill-in-the-blank sentences with a word bank, so she did okay up until the last 2 questions. She only had two words left, so she had to guess and hope for the best. She ended up saying that she drank crutches before she went to bed each night.

This troper has a friend who speaks near perfect Spanish, apart from a (somewhat endearing tendency) to mix up the words "hambre" (hunger) "hombre" (man) and hombro (shoulder). Hilarity ensues. She still hasn't lived down "I have shoulders. What can I have to eat?"

Many years ago, this troper's father (who speaks little French) was in French Polynesia. Asked when he did for a living, he replied, "Je suis un avocat." As he was under the impression that he'd said he was a lawyer, he didn't understand why his listeners started laughing. Eventually they told him that what he'd actually said was "I am an avocado." To say "I am a lawyer", one would leave off the article and say, "Je suis avocat."

This troper was on the "confused local" side of this when a German military pilot and his wife came in to get his dog vaccinations. Rather than say, "My dog needs parvo and rabies vaccinations", he said "My dog needed parvo and rabies vacations". His (far more fluent) wife clarified the situation after relating what he actually said back to the husband.

This troper will never forget the one French lesson where she mixed up "poison" (self-explanatory) for "poisson" (Fish); I'm pretty sure that if I were Romeo, I would've regretted drinking a fish in order to commit suicide.

This troper is now a better language speaker, having got his grades up from C's to B's and A's. However, he asked what "nice" was in Spanish when his memory briefly lapsed (in context, he had to describe a teacher for a speaking assessment). He was told "Guapa" meant "nice" and subsequently was laughed at for a good minute or two when he discovered it meant "beautiful". I did get it sorted, thankfully.

This Troper has been living in China for the summer and occasionally makes tonal mistakes. When asked the reason why she came to live in China, she replied "I regret liking China" (hen, when said as hen2, is a general intensifier; when said as hen4, it means "regret" or "hate"). When trying to explain why she couldn't reach something she managed to say "I am too love" (ai3 means "short-statured"; ai4 means "love").

This troper once wrote on a German quiz that a certain character was pretty, even though the story specifically stated that the man was hideously ugly. Subverted in that she actually ''did'' use the word she meant to use, just in the wrong context. She meant to say that the man was "nice," as in "he had a nice personality," but didn't realize that "schön," which literally translates to "nice," only refers to appearances, as in "he looks nice today."

My dad took German classes in high school and college. One of his teachers once told a story of a student who, in a report, said "Arbeitsanzug, habe ich Chocoladenkuchen am liebsten" instead of "überalles, habe ich Chocoladenkuchen am liebsten". The student meant to say "Overall, I like chocolate cake best" ... But the word "Arbeitsanzug" means "overalls" (Arbeit = work, Anzug = suit), not "overall". I suspect that, if the story is true, the student was cheating and using an online translater, but it's still funny.

Except for the occasional word I learn from someone actually fluent in the language, I get all my non-English words from online translators which - as we all know - cannot be trusted. This led to an awkward moment, when I was trying to tell someone who spoke Spanish "How did you do [on that test]?" in Spanish. Don't ask how, but I asked him if he could DivideByZero.

Sort of stuck halfway between MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels and EmbarrassingTattoo, a longtime friend of this troper is a hardcore metalhead, loves the "kick-ass" film genre, which mostly encompasses strange Asian movies... and commonly uses the gaming username "Zaibatsu." I have no idea why, but AsLongAsItSoundsForeign.