Learning someone's language is one of the biggest compliments you can give them. It shows you value their culture enough to invest a lot of time and effort in order to connect with them on a deeper level. It's basically like saying, "Your world matters to me," but with actions, which makes the sentiment even more powerful. So if you make a few mistakes, nobody will mind. In fact, sometimes those oopsies can lead to hilarious moments, as seen in a recent Reddit thread where native English speakers shared some of the funniest and most inventive uses of the language by foreigners.
#1
I worked in a kitchen with a lady from abroad. She couldn’t remember what chicken was in English and pointed to the eggs and said ‘Which fridge do we keep their mum?’.
Image credits: CheeryBottom
#2
My partner is greek and couldn't remember the word "infinity" so just told me that she loves me until the "snoozy 8".
Image credits: KFlaps
#3
Not spouse but my Croatian dida (grandad) never quite got the concept of 'telling someone off'. He took the phrase completely literally and if he saw someone doing something bad, like if some kids were vandalising something, he would run up to them and yell "Off! Off! Off!"
He literally thought saying the word "off" to someone was the same thing as *telling someone off*.
RIP Dida, you were the best.
Image credits: _activated_
#4
Not my partner but a lovely Polish lady I worked with called a broom a "sweepy" and it makes me smile every time I think about it.
Image credits: animalwitch
#5
My French friend says “lonely child” instead of “only child”. Never corrected her.
Image credits: augustlove112
#6
Hungárian girlfriend.
English extremely good except for rarely used phrases.....such as bedroom talk.
"I'm your dirty little slug.".
Image credits: krypto-pscyho-chimp
#7
I love it when my Japanese wife tries to say "hippopotamus" but doesn't know when to stop.
So we get "hippoppo... popo...pop...pop.......pop??".
Image credits: apeliott
#8
My Japanese husband once couldn't remember what fabric softener was called, so he called it "flavoured soap".
Edit: I can't believe I forgot my favourite! He was trying to remember the word for 'walkie-talkie' and cycled through so many different variations like talkie-walkie, walkie-wiccy, walkie-walkie, wiccy-wiccy.
Image credits: purplefriiday
#9
A very good Spanish friend of mine was practicing her idioms in English. She wanted to say something about my flatmate who always does the same things over and over no matter the negative consequences. She wanted to say “a leopard can’t change its spots” but she goes “you know what they say, you cannot remove the dots from the large cat!” We were dying over that lol.
Image credits: fahhgedaboutit
#10
My wife is Vietnamese and personal pronouns are treated differently so he and she are unisex and interchangeable. It keeps me guessing.
On the flip side, she laughs every time I try to order beetroot juice in Vietnamese (we live there now). Because of the tonal language I manage to pronounce "beetroot juice" as "black penis".
Image credits: ninja-wharrier
#11
One of my best friends is born and bred Spanish and still lives out there but her English is fluent. When we first met she would use the word ‘genre’ instead of ‘gender’ asking things like “what genre are they?” “Idk, sci-fi thriller?”.
Image credits: secretchuWOWa1
#12
My wife is Indonesian. She picked up the word "bollocks", but she uses it as an insult in the singular form.
I.e. You b*****k
It's now become my favourite insult.
Image credits: NasalSexx
#13
A Spanish friend years ago forgot the word for garage and said “ the place where you take your car for a drink”. I still think it’s great like 20 years later.
Image credits: PamVanDam
#14
Hearing the French president of our company pronounce "focus" with a strong accent that made it sound like he was saying "f**k us", and hearing him give a dry run of a speech where he was emphatically insisting "I need you to f**k us, we need them to f**k us, we need EVERYONE TO F**K US!"
Some poor sod had to go and tell him he needs to stop asking everyone to f**k us, and instead to f-ohh-cus.
#15
My girlfriend is Romanian. On our third date, she invited me to her house. We were talking about shopping when she announced that she had "Chicken tights"
I looked confused. She repeated " I have chicken tights" whilst rubbing her legs. I was trying to imagine what this article of clothing looked like, and said "That doesn't help!". She then opened the fridge and showed me the chicken thighs. It became our first in-joke.
Many other things she says that I don't correct because they are cute, are just mispronounced or slightly wrong words.
I love the way she says "Daffodiles" (rhymes with crocodiles), "Bubbles" (bulbs), "Casserole" (any tupperware type container), "Jardiniere" (any flowerpot), "SAL-mon" (with the L), "Sheddle" (schedule), and many others.
She also does the he/she gender mixing, but only usually when she is talking excitedly about something, or is tired.
Conversely, I have been trying to learn Romanian for 3 years, and she laughs hysterically at me every time I try to start a conversation. I believe I sound like the Allo Allo policeman.
#16
My wife is Danish and once wrote an email to colleagues inviting them for "drinks and nipples".
Image credits: Verochio
#17
My grandma was from another country and used to ask if her outfit was alright as she didn’t want to look like “mutton dressed as chicken”.
Image credits: Ginevra_F
#18
>Alice on the Wonderwall
Today is gonna be the day that I'm fallin' down a rabbit hole...
Image credits: DorisWildthyme
#19
My Czech sister in-law calls Silence of The Lambs, 'Don't Speaking of Small Sheep'.
#20
Not got a foreign spouse, apologies for jumping in.
But used to work with an Israeli lady, she pronounced cucumber as cockumber.
Being young(ish) it used to make us laugh.
Image credits: ZookeepergameHead145
#21
They don’t do it anymore but they used to say ‘emotional backpack’ when referring to emotional baggage.
That was a treasure.
Image credits: softersong
#22
I have never let my French wife forget the time she called the cheese grater a cheese “raper” (pronounced rather unfortunately!)
The translation of ‘to grate’ being râper.
Image credits: RedEastW
#23
One of my closest friends is Bulgarian and she says "you are cracking me" when she means "you cracking me up" and I'll never correct her, it's ridiculously sweet.
Image credits: Woozlie
#24
My wife initially saw Greggs and pronounced it Grejjs and I never corrected her for awhile until she went to 'Grejjs' with her work colleagues who corrected her then. That evening was hilarious as she had a go at me.
Image credits: TheNotSpecialOne
#25
My Polish fiance says "taking A p**s" instead of "taking THE p**s".
Image credits: GeorgiePorgie2319
#26
I’m the foreign spouse. I’m from New Zealand and my wife is English. I went into a grocery store in Sheffield, England, and asked for eggs. They said what? I said “eggs”. They said what are they? I said, “you know they come from hens”. They laughed and said “oh you means eggs”. I was like WTF? It turns out that it sounded to them like I asked for “iggs”.
Image credits: balrob
#27
My Indonesian wife has great English and rarely makes a mistake. But when she does its hilarious. Such as substituting apostrophe with catastrophe. Personal favourite is when she told her office mates she was "fluffing" her husband this morning so she was later than usual, when she meant "faffing".
Image credits: Samathos
#28
My dad is Swedish and has lived in the U.K. for 20+ years now but still can’t say “totally” : he says “turtle-ly” which always makes me smile.
A few direct translations have also crept into our family vernacular: “adders” means something tastes disgusting (“smakar huggorm” literally “tastes like adders”) being one of my favourite examples.
#29
An Eastern European friend was telling me about how her dog got nervous about all the people when she took him to the supermarket. She started with the phrase "When I park him outside Tesco...." She's sort of accurate.
Image credits: inspectorgadget9999
#30
My Moroccan husband gets confused with ‘too many’ vs ‘a lot of’… mortifying if we see a large group of Asians or a large group of women!
Image credits: MuchMenu2417
#31
My wife is Polish and despite speaking near fluent English has a couple of blindspots that she just can't seem to fix.
Tarmac == Tamrac
Menu == Meni
Seat/Sit - this results in "take a sit" and "we were seating".
Image credits: BeardedBaldMan
#32
My wife is American, so you wouldn't think this would be a problem. Her insistence on calling a friend of mine "Gram" when his name is "Graham" gets a little wearing.
Image credits: ArmouredWankball
#33
Spanish friend always misses out 'bit' when describing how she's feeling so will say 'i'm a wee confuse' instead of I'm a wee bit confused or 'i'm a wee sick' when she's unwell. It's very endearing.
#34
My wife is spanish and really bad at remembering english celebrity names so she just makes them up, the other day she couldn't think of bruce willis so she called him "bolt bickerman".
Image credits: TastyEar3568
#35
Played golf with my dad and my foreign SO. There was a hillock on the course and my SO made the point to my dad to "watch out for the mountain". She still gets them hills and mountains mixed up.
Image credits: AlwaysGoForAusInRisk
#36
Many years ago I had a Spanish colleague who instead of saying “you’ve really opened a can of worms” used to say “you’ve really opened a tin of beans”. Love that!
#37
My wife’s Filipino. Always confuses he and she. I get confused who she is talking about half the time.
#38
My wife is from Taiwan. When she first heard ‘Jamming’ by Bob Marley she thought it was a song about chow mein. To this day we still sing “and I hope you like chow mein too!”.
#39
My partner uses the phrase “less more than” instead of “less than”. I always find it funny and never correct her.
#40
Had a Chinese friend/girl I was seeing who I was meeting in a city centre. Called her to ask where she was as I was on the right street but couldn't see her. She said she was outside "eeartess". I was thinking it was some restaurant or something I'd never heard of. Totally confused as I could see nothing like it.
Then I found her.
Outside Yate's.
#41
My dad had a Chinese girlfriend when I was younger. I was about 11 when she would quiz me on words and how to spell them.
For about a week she kept asking me to spell "ent ra preeny us" which I never got right, until my dad read the word to me and laughed as he said "I think she means entrepreneurs".
#42
My wife cannot for the life of her say "vegetable" or "vet" properly. She's Swiss and says "wegetable" and "wet", she's got better with time but when she's particularly excited it comes back again.
#43
My ex described a new shop that just opened. Apparently it was a “snake shop”. When questioned he elaborated “it sells drinks and snakes”. From then on, the local shop was referred to as “the snake shop”.
