I was in a sign language class (ASL) around Halloween and the instructor asked if we had ever encountered a ghost. We thought he signed tornado so we signed about times we were near tornadoes while he’s looking on with disbelief and shock and awe about all of our supernatural encounters. We had a good laugh when we figured out the confusion.

My argentenian friend called stuffed crust pizza “the pizza with cheese borders”.

Still call it that almost 20 years later.

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.

my grandfather (polish) was talking to my cousin’s boyfriend at the time (german) in english. the poor guy was trying to make a good impression so he was really going the extra mile. it took about 10 minutes for them to realize one was talking about chess, and the other about jazz.

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.

The Dutch word “poepen” (taking a shit), is a Belgian euphemism for sex. Which is always a great source of fun when making friends near the southern border.

We visited an office, and the person guiding us around told us about one of the employees that “it is his first day” - we all misheard this as “it is his birthday”. And started to sing…

Asking for a specific dish at a restaurant in Japan whose name was also the name of that very dish. They thought we were asking if we were at the right place, but we were actually just trying to order some. Or vice versa, I can’t quite remember.

I think it was anagomwshi, on Miyajima island

I’ve had a few weird exchanges with my wife, although we both are native french speakers.

Turns out the word we use in Switzerland for prune (the fruit) is only used for the dried version of the same fruit in France. Perfect set up for a strange conversation about baking until we found out.

Apparently roasted corn is funny in Spanish. 🤪

I’ve never had that sort of thing while personally interacting with people who speak other languages. However, when deployed I used to hear people speaking other languages regularly. So it wasn’t that they were communicating directly with me, but I used to love overhearing what they were saying and “bad translating” it to english. And that was hilarious.

He looked appalled and after I asked why he had that look, he asked what I was going to do with someone’s shit.

This is the shit.

Was in Spain on a Spanish club field trip. I forget what I did as it was years ago but I wanted to express how embarrassed I was about something.

Used the word ‘embarrasada’.

Hilarity ensued.

Edit: Oh look! Other people in this thread did the same thing lol. I feel so much better.

after hours gaming at work with awesome ukrainian colleague.

we all get regular beers from the fridge. ukrainian co-worker is sitting there and suddenly spits his drink all over the floor and looks utterly grossed out. He reads the label with scrutiny and says loudly ‘guys, vat thee fak is ROOT BEER?!’

oh how we laughed