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Another friend once thought twat was a synonym of twit. First time she called someone a twat in my presence I was gobsmacked but thought I must have misheard; there was definitely nothing twattish going on.
The next time it happened I made a note to raise it privately with her later. "You do know what twat means don't you?" "Yeah, it's another word for twit." "Er, no."
I was on a voice call with a friend, and people who are familiar with me know that I'll end specific sentences with "eh" when others would use "yeah" or "you know?" instead. For example, "How times have changed, eh?" and "How'd your assignment go eh?"
They took it to mean "what?" or "pardon?" each time, and they asked me if I was confused, and I explained what it meant to them. It was funny in the sense that I assumed people knew what it meant but then I realized some people might actually find it confusing!
A work colleague on a few occasions has mixed up “ball handling” and “hand-balling”, easily done if English isn’t your first language!
How much hand-balling are y'all doing over there?
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 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.
I've made this mistake and apparently others have as well: the words for lips (kuchibiru) and nipple (chikubi) got mixed up in my head leading to some awkwardness in Japanese.
Our Austrian exchange student told us "My sister wants to be a wet".
The v sound is hard for German speakers
No it isn't, they use it all the time - "wenn, was, wo" all read as "v". The "double u" sound is the thing that trips them up - it's common in slavic languages, not so much in germanic ones. For slavic the polish ł or russian "lambda" symbol sound like the "w" in wet. Could also be the accent, but I would wager it was more wires being crossed and saying "wet", instead of a problem with pronounciation
Sounds like you don't know shit. (Standup comedy >4min)
Also your comment made me think of Jimmy Yang, who apparently knew English when he moved to the US, but not that well, not knowing any expressions. When someone asked him "what's up", he just looked at the ceiling.
As a kid we giggled at "Disney Home Video" because "Disney" is a proper noun, so doesn't translate, and "video" is "video" in Finnish as well, but "home" means "mould", (as in the fungus.)
I mentioned once giving a person of the female persuasion a wide berth (meaning to avoid that person. I can't remember why, maybe she was particularly annoying or something).
My friends face made me realise he didn't know that particular word and couldn't work out what a wide birth was.
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.
An opposite thing happened to me.
Wanted to trade something online. The other party listed trade as currency for object or other object + currency for object.
I had the other object and thought they would pay me the currency and their object for mine. It took a while for me to understand what they were waiting for.
They seemed to be a native English speaker. It's a second language for me, so some meanings get lost in translation.
I can't think of one off hand, but yours (E: and several of the replies) made me lol, thanks 😂
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.