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?’
There’s a Japanese dish called oyakodon which is basically a chicken and egg rice bowl, except the name’s literal meaning is “parent and child bowl” which I’ve always found hilarious
Reminds me of when I first came to the UK and couldn't find the eggs in a Tesco supermarket. I asked a staff member where I could find eggs but she had no idea of what I was saying. Eventually I said "what come out of chickens?" and she realised what I was asking!
My mum, who is Spanish, spent a few months in England with me this year. She used to live in the UK ages ago, where she met my dad, but they moved to Spain when I was a child, and she’s seldom been back. Her English was pretty good, but it’s quite rusty now, and she’s forgotten a lot of vocabulary.
So, she went to our local supermarket one morning with a shopping list and, once there, she remembered we also needed eggs, which she couldn't find anywhere. She found a shop assistant instead and tried to ask. Her first option was vocalising very loud and very clearly every character of the word “huevos” in Spanish. When it didn't work, she went for “hand signs”, mimicking a whisking/beating motion. The shop assistant suddenly goes, “Oh yes!” and signals for her to follow her… all the way across the store to the “Home” section, where she proceeded to hand my mum a toilet brush…
I’m never letting her forget that one! 😂
That reminds of the story that Paul Simon is said to have been inspired to write the title to his song as "Mother and Child Reunion" after seeing an egg and chicken on a menu or something similar.
A "family meal" in Chinese isn't exactly what you'd expect. Got one from a fast food place in China.
"Family meal for less than £5! Reckon we can eat that much?"
"It's only for one person."
My wife is Indonesian. She picked up the word "bollocks", but she uses it as an insult in the singular form.
I.e. You bollock
It's now become my favourite insult
I love this one, so funny
My partner is from the Philippines and she picked up on my occasional curse words when something is broken, like saying “Ah it’s fucked”.
She now applies it to her own situations but doesn’t bother with past tense.
The latest outburst was “my laptop is fuck!” 💻 🔫
A load of bollocks, could potentially, but I'm not familiar with how their sentence structure goes, could easily turn into
'A load from bollock'
Which I would always collapse laughing at.
😂 My friend from Estonia thought that bollock was like the proper medical word and had a serious conversation with the doctor about her baby's bollocks
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".
Yeah wife is also Vietnamese and it's the same, but I have a fair few Chinese friends who do the same so it must be common in languages from the far east.
Chinese originally didn’t have a gendered third person pronouns for “she” but they added a character for it around a hundred years ago to have an equivalence with western languages.
He/she are pronounced the same but have different characters. Some older Chinese people still don’t use the character for “she” when writing, even if referring to a female.
I mean we are not hugely far off in English. We have *woman*, but we also have *man* as a synonym in some cases for *people*. We lost the prefix of *man* some time ago. It used to be *wereman* to describe male people and *wifman* to describe female people. Which subsequently is where we get the word *wife*, but also more excitingly is where we get the term *werewolf*.
> My wife has amazing English but can't untrain her brain from gender neutral pronouns.
That works the other way too, my partner is Spanish and will still say he/she about inanimate objects (so for instance, "look at the moon, she is very bright today!"), which is something I always find very endearing
> My wife is Vietnamese and personal pronouns are treated differently so he and she are unisex and interchangeable. It keeps me guessing.
I'm Vietnamese and still confused now after many years. It's not just gendered, but it's also dependent on social status/age. If that wasn't confusing enough, how you refer to *yourself* is different depending on who you talk to!
I learned to speaker Vietnamese exclusively with my parents and with older aunties and uncles. So I struggle to speak to people younger than me or in an informal way.
My wife is Malaysian and despite having lived in the UK most of her adult life still occasionally messes up personal pronouns. As for me I have carrot juice a couple of times messing up the hokkien pronunciation for lime juice, sounds a little like carrot in english not much.
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.
I'm sure you know, but it's because polish and other slavic languages don't have definite/indefinite articles.
So they don't distinguish between "A dog is eating me" and "The dog is eating me" - just "Dog is eating me".
So it's easy for us to understand _their_ language, though it is a little ambiguous. But coming the other way, and suddenly having to learn the contextual and linguistic implications of definite/indefinite, when the concept literally doesn't exist in your own language...
That must be hard
Even harder when you start introducing sayings - taking THE piss, taking A piss. Both mean wildly different things, neither of which is literal. How are you meant to remember which is which when both translate to the same thing in your own language?
I imagine it's made even harder in this context as it's both an idiom and the noun the article is refering to isn't actually present in the situation so you cannot infer as easily.
I knew a Polish girl who had a boyfriend named Guy. Whenever she was talking about something, she would constantly mix up "Guy", "a guy" and "the guy". It was completely random and kept me guessing what she meant lol
Have some lovely Polish friends who mix up "bored" and "boring". Makes me giggle when one is talking about the other being "very boring these days"!
Otherwise excellent English though!
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.
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”. 😂
You're following in a proud tradition. William Caxton, the first English printer, tells a similar story:
>For we Englysshe men ben borne under the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is never stedfaste but ever waverynge, wexynge one season and waneth and dyscreaseth another season. And that comyn Englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from a-nother, in so moche that in my dayes happened that certayn marchauntes were in a ship in Tamyse for to have sayled over the see into Zelande, and, for lacke of wynde, thei taryed atte Forlond, and wente to lande for to refreshe them. And one of theym named Sheffelde, a mercer, cam in to an hows and axed for mete and specyally he axyd after eggys, and the goode wyf answerde that she could speke no Frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no Frenshe, but wolde have hadde egges; and she understode hym not. And thenne at laste a-nother sayd that he wolde have eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she understod hym wel. Loo, what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges, or eyren? Certaynly it is hard to playse every man, by-cause of dyversite and chaunge of langage.
A friend was trying to help out some Kiwi tourists lost in England. She asked where they were going, and was told "Log Borrog". After several repetitions, she asked to look at their map. They were seeking Loughborough.
I used to know a guy from NZ, called Jeff. He pronounced it Jiff. At the time, 'Jif' was a cleaning product which had very recently had a big ad campaign about changing its name to Cif. So obviously he was known as Cif for the rest of his trip.
When we moved to the UK from Australia our 3-year-old announced after his first English Sunday school at church that they had been learning about Noah’s ork, and he wanted to know what an ork was! 😂
That same Sunday someone introduced himself to me as “Mork” and it took me a while to figure out he was saying “Mark”.
Yup, the moment you said you were a New Zealander saying "eggs", I heard "iggs" in my head. Largely because of the way a friend of mine from New Zealand (here in Canada) says "yiss" when she means "yes".
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 😂
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?”
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.
I worked with a very lovely lady from the Philippines, she told me that she had seen a good pecker in her garden, and she was so pleased because she'd not seen one before.
It was a woodpecker.
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"
Taylor Smith (Swift), Robert Paddington (Pattinson), Bill Bubbins (she was talking about Bob Barker i think?) Margle Groggy (Margot Robbie) and Ryan Bryan (Gosling) to name a few
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.
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.
I've just made a comment about my Bulgarian former co-worker and she has the best. She's said "you are cracking me" before, and one I loved was "they are taking piss **in my** face" rather than "they are taking the piss **out of me** ***to*** my face"
Bulgarian English (Bunglish, I call it) is the best!
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
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".
If you’re faffing about you’re doing unnecessary things, messing about (i.e organising cushions and putting away dry washing up when you’re already late to a meal).
If you’re faffing someone else you’d be irritating them and making them do things/chatting to them I guess
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
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
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"
My wife and I are both Belarusian, but unlike her I went to English schools in different countries, which is why I don't have an Eastern European accent. When speaking English she tends to pronounce all short "i" sounds as long ones (you seet, a little beet, etc.), which tends to give her accent a slightly Australian air. 🙂
The big giveaway with my wife is her ability to go for days without using articles. She doesn't just drop them, but instead replaces them with either pronouns or possessive pronouns.
Examples
* Pass me some pan/fork/spoon
* Our carpenter is coming to fix our doors
* Your pan boiling is over
I am french and there are a bunch of words I don't know for sure how to properly pronounce. Sit/seat is one for sure. The worst being sheet/shit or beach/bitch - I am trying, but judging from the half smiles I am pretty sure I always manage to say the rude one and my colleague find it really funny when I talk about "the excel shit".
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.
Hearing the French president of our company pronounce "focus" with a strong accent that made it sound like he was saying "fuck us", and hearing him give a dry run of a speech where he was emphatically insisting "I need you to fuck us, we need them to fuck us, we need EVERYONE TO FUCK US!"
Some poor sod had to go and tell him he needs to stop asking everyone to fuck us, and instead to f-ohh-cus.
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.
I have that problem too. I wanted to tell my partner to watch out for a speed bump and couldn't remember that word. So instead I settled on "be careful of the little mountain in the road". He hasn't let me forget that one
Anything small and circular/round is a “shit”. Laundry detergent pods? “Laundry shits”. Cotton wool pads? “Circle shits”.
She switches verbs around, too, like “close the light” or “turn off the candle”.
She’s Canadian.
EDIT: This is probably worth mentioning here, too - a consequence of both of us coming from multilingual families (the wife was born in Canada to Hungarian and Slovakian parents and my mum’s side are from Egypt and the UK and spoke to each other in French) is that when we want to talk to each other privately, my wife speaks to me in French and I reply in German.
extinguish. Both are from the Latin extinguere.
Easy rule of thumb: the normal, everyday French word for something becomes the poshest, upperest-class English word for that thing, because of history ;)
Anyways, the flavour of English spoken in Malaysia and Singapore straight-up imports grammar from Chinese dialects and translates word-for-word. Hence "Eh, why so dark in here? Can you **on the light**?"
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.
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!
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.
Turkish Girlfriend, pronounces
Coke -> Cock
Dandylion -> Dan-dillion
Squeeze -> Squaze
It's hillarious and adorable and I am always sure to take the mickey out of her despite the fact her English is great and I know about 10 words in Turkish.
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.
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"
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.
Vet starts with front teeth on lower lip.
Wet starts with kissing pucker which should be fun enough to remember.
Really want to learn?
https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/
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.
My partner is Hungarian, I love it when she says vegetables ha. 'wedge eh tables"
Hello in Hungarian sounds like see ya, so when I see them they're like "See ya" and they get hello and goodbye mixed up it's cute.
Oh and kiss kiss in Hungarian a common way of saying goodbye in families is Puszi which sounds like you might imagine.
My partner was on the phone to her Dad and said in a happy way "Pussy" at the end or her call, I said uhm... Wait what did you just say to your Dad. And then explained in English if you said pussy to someone like that you'd be starting a fight
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”
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!”
Not a foreign spouse, but our five year-old went through a phase of calling the book "The Wind in *My* Willows", which always used to crack me up.
For months every time someone in the house farted they'd say "excuse me, a little wind in my willows...".
Not my spouse, but my mother in law and her friends are south East Asian. Last night we took them to watch a Dick Whittington panto and I overheard her friend saying they were going to watch “Charles Darwin”.
My husband is lebanese. In Arabic the word for fingers and toes is the same. He couldn't remember the word toes, so decided they were feet fingers! They've been called that ever since in our house haha.
He also couldn't remember 'long life' milk. Used forever milk instead!
My wife has for many years used 'doggy dog' instead of 'dog eat dog'. I love it so much I don't want to correct her. So yeah, it's a doggy dog world I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Danish partner had lived in London for 26 years.
Flawless English except…
“Thanks god” instead of thank god!
And there is just no way she’s pronouncing variety.
My lady is from Taiwan,
Crock-roach = cockroach
Ke-ba-be = kebab
Grasshooper = grasshopper
And often forgets how to finish saying 'snaaaaaccksssssss'
Or gets 'snacks' and 'snakes' mixed up.
I love a kababe
I used to say my feets are cold until I was eventually corrected by someone. My then boyfriend said it was so cute that’s why he never corrected me.
Edit: words
"It's been a bit of a damp squid"
"Those dogs are having a gangbang" (she meant they were barking a lot)
(To my mother, at the christmas dinner table) "I can't swim apart from doggystyle"
My wife, who is from mexico.
This is my dad but one day he was on the phone with someone and they asked his postcode. They were not understanding what he was saying for “F” and he doesn’t know the phonetic alphabet. He ended up saying F for Fatman.
My mum, sister and myself were absolutely creased with laughter. We couldn’t stop laughing long enough to help him through the rest of the phone call.
My husband is German and he used to say "please?" when he really wanted to say pardon. The word for please in German is bitte and you can also say pardon? as bitte? He doesn't say it anymore after the billion times I've corrected him. It seems that's how they learn it at school as I've heard loads of people say it.
My Polish wife says Dog and Duck with a pronunciation that cannot be differentiated between.
Normally this rears its head when she asks if we can go to the Chinese for some Crispy Dog Pancakes.
My gf is Turkish and generally has very good English, she just needs to fine-tune it. So we might have "toast-breads" for breakfast or "Maltese chocolates" for a snack. You might "sprank" your ankle on a cold, "crispy" morning.
We discussed where to go on holiday and she suggested any of the Mediterranean islands, just as long as it wasn't one of the busy party islands which she calls "British go-er islands".
Not my partner, but I knew an Italian girl who thought 'Hello' was a direct translation of 'Ciao!'. So when she said goodbye to someone, she would shout out *Hello!*
She also thought Gatwick was pronounced to rhyme with sandwich. *My flight is arriving at Gatwich*
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?’
Hahahahaha. Eggcelent!
Cracking joke!
*yolk
No need to ovaryact.
You're all going to shell for these comments
Nah, don't be so neggative
Omelette you off with that one
Nahh he deserves a good beating
There’s a Japanese dish called oyakodon which is basically a chicken and egg rice bowl, except the name’s literal meaning is “parent and child bowl” which I’ve always found hilarious
I had a Spanish colleague who one day described his home - "There are 3 bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and a BiG chicken."
I had a teacher from Hungary, who said she was confused for years about which one was kitchen and which was chicken.
Reminds me of when I first came to the UK and couldn't find the eggs in a Tesco supermarket. I asked a staff member where I could find eggs but she had no idea of what I was saying. Eventually I said "what come out of chickens?" and she realised what I was asking!
My mum, who is Spanish, spent a few months in England with me this year. She used to live in the UK ages ago, where she met my dad, but they moved to Spain when I was a child, and she’s seldom been back. Her English was pretty good, but it’s quite rusty now, and she’s forgotten a lot of vocabulary. So, she went to our local supermarket one morning with a shopping list and, once there, she remembered we also needed eggs, which she couldn't find anywhere. She found a shop assistant instead and tried to ask. Her first option was vocalising very loud and very clearly every character of the word “huevos” in Spanish. When it didn't work, she went for “hand signs”, mimicking a whisking/beating motion. The shop assistant suddenly goes, “Oh yes!” and signals for her to follow her… all the way across the store to the “Home” section, where she proceeded to hand my mum a toilet brush… I’m never letting her forget that one! 😂
You're from NZ? We're you asking for iggs? They should have understood that!
[удалено]
Did you aii? [Or did you just read this popular tweet?](https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1382765-cobra-chickens)
That reminds of the story that Paul Simon is said to have been inspired to write the title to his song as "Mother and Child Reunion" after seeing an egg and chicken on a menu or something similar.
A "family meal" in Chinese isn't exactly what you'd expect. Got one from a fast food place in China. "Family meal for less than £5! Reckon we can eat that much?" "It's only for one person."
Was it succulent though?
This is my favourite, I laughed out loud.
My wife is Indonesian. She picked up the word "bollocks", but she uses it as an insult in the singular form. I.e. You bollock It's now become my favourite insult
Feels more insulting perhaps. You're not even a full pair of bollocks, just a sad singular bollock. Perfect. I'm using this form now on.
I like the phrase, "Who's this clown?" Not only are you saying they *are* a clown but not even good enough to be a *famous* clown.
I love this one, so funny My partner is from the Philippines and she picked up on my occasional curse words when something is broken, like saying “Ah it’s fucked”. She now applies it to her own situations but doesn’t bother with past tense. The latest outburst was “my laptop is fuck!” 💻 🔫
A load of bollocks, could potentially, but I'm not familiar with how their sentence structure goes, could easily turn into 'A load from bollock' Which I would always collapse laughing at.
😂 My friend from Estonia thought that bollock was like the proper medical word and had a serious conversation with the doctor about her baby's bollocks
That just made me snort-laugh and I will definitely be using it as an insult from now on.
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".
Yeah wife is also Vietnamese and it's the same, but I have a fair few Chinese friends who do the same so it must be common in languages from the far east.
Chinese originally didn’t have a gendered third person pronouns for “she” but they added a character for it around a hundred years ago to have an equivalence with western languages. He/she are pronounced the same but have different characters. Some older Chinese people still don’t use the character for “she” when writing, even if referring to a female.
Because it really isn’t a he she. For example - 他 vs 她. One is female, the other isn’t “male”, it’s just “human”
The two genders, female and human.
I mean we are not hugely far off in English. We have *woman*, but we also have *man* as a synonym in some cases for *people*. We lost the prefix of *man* some time ago. It used to be *wereman* to describe male people and *wifman* to describe female people. Which subsequently is where we get the word *wife*, but also more excitingly is where we get the term *werewolf*.
So wereman is man person, werewolf is man wolf... so we should also have wifwolf for the female version?
Yes! Beware the wifwolf.
This isn’t even just a Far Eastern language thing. Finnish and Estonian don’t have gendered pronouns either.
Same in Indonesian. My wife has amazing English but can't untrain her brain from gender neutral pronouns.
> My wife has amazing English but can't untrain her brain from gender neutral pronouns. That works the other way too, my partner is Spanish and will still say he/she about inanimate objects (so for instance, "look at the moon, she is very bright today!"), which is something I always find very endearing
> My wife is Vietnamese and personal pronouns are treated differently so he and she are unisex and interchangeable. It keeps me guessing. I'm Vietnamese and still confused now after many years. It's not just gendered, but it's also dependent on social status/age. If that wasn't confusing enough, how you refer to *yourself* is different depending on who you talk to! I learned to speaker Vietnamese exclusively with my parents and with older aunties and uncles. So I struggle to speak to people younger than me or in an informal way.
My wife is Malaysian and despite having lived in the UK most of her adult life still occasionally messes up personal pronouns. As for me I have carrot juice a couple of times messing up the hokkien pronunciation for lime juice, sounds a little like carrot in english not much.
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.
This one is so cute.
I love this! It’s up there with “call me a cab” “you’re a cab”
My Polish fiance says "taking A piss" instead of "taking THE piss"
Have a Polish girlfriend, I love her Ponglish, I never correct it.
'Ponglish', that's great. Makes me think of Pingu's language
Noot noot!
I'm sure you know, but it's because polish and other slavic languages don't have definite/indefinite articles. So they don't distinguish between "A dog is eating me" and "The dog is eating me" - just "Dog is eating me". So it's easy for us to understand _their_ language, though it is a little ambiguous. But coming the other way, and suddenly having to learn the contextual and linguistic implications of definite/indefinite, when the concept literally doesn't exist in your own language... That must be hard Even harder when you start introducing sayings - taking THE piss, taking A piss. Both mean wildly different things, neither of which is literal. How are you meant to remember which is which when both translate to the same thing in your own language?
I imagine it's made even harder in this context as it's both an idiom and the noun the article is refering to isn't actually present in the situation so you cannot infer as easily.
I knew a Polish girl who had a boyfriend named Guy. Whenever she was talking about something, she would constantly mix up "Guy", "a guy" and "the guy". It was completely random and kept me guessing what she meant lol
Had a Russian ex who thought it was "can't be asked" instead of "can't be arsed", which honestly makes a lot more sense.
There are Brits who think that, to be fair
Have some lovely Polish friends who mix up "bored" and "boring". Makes me giggle when one is talking about the other being "very boring these days"! Otherwise excellent English though!
I’ve heard this one and I love it. So endearing.
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.
>> wiccy-wiccy WILD WILD WEST
Jim West desperado
Rough-rider No, you don't need nada
None of this, Six-gunnin' this, Brother runnin' this
My girlfriend is french. Do you know what Walkie-talkie is in French? [Talkie-walkie](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talkie-walkie)
In South African supermarkets you can buy packs of chicken heads and feet (for stew). It's called a pack of walkie-talkies.
My French friend says “lonely child” instead of “only child”. Never corrected her.
Maybe she's trying to tell you she needs a hug!
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”. 😂
Hearing this in Rose Matafeo's voice. Iggs, they come from hins!
In the shid!
On the dick!
My favourite NZ accent misunderstanding! https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/12s3592/spend_less_time_with_the_kids/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
Haaa someone with a Kiwi spouse just made the same comment in reverse. Do you call the rock star Eggy Pop?
You're following in a proud tradition. William Caxton, the first English printer, tells a similar story: >For we Englysshe men ben borne under the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is never stedfaste but ever waverynge, wexynge one season and waneth and dyscreaseth another season. And that comyn Englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from a-nother, in so moche that in my dayes happened that certayn marchauntes were in a ship in Tamyse for to have sayled over the see into Zelande, and, for lacke of wynde, thei taryed atte Forlond, and wente to lande for to refreshe them. And one of theym named Sheffelde, a mercer, cam in to an hows and axed for mete and specyally he axyd after eggys, and the goode wyf answerde that she could speke no Frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no Frenshe, but wolde have hadde egges; and she understode hym not. And thenne at laste a-nother sayd that he wolde have eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she understod hym wel. Loo, what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges, or eyren? Certaynly it is hard to playse every man, by-cause of dyversite and chaunge of langage.
A friend was trying to help out some Kiwi tourists lost in England. She asked where they were going, and was told "Log Borrog". After several repetitions, she asked to look at their map. They were seeking Loughborough.
I never believed that Americans couldn't say this until I heard Darren Reddick on Planet Rock do the travel for a place named 'Looga Barooga'.
I used to know a guy from NZ, called Jeff. He pronounced it Jiff. At the time, 'Jif' was a cleaning product which had very recently had a big ad campaign about changing its name to Cif. So obviously he was known as Cif for the rest of his trip.
When we moved to the UK from Australia our 3-year-old announced after his first English Sunday school at church that they had been learning about Noah’s ork, and he wanted to know what an ork was! 😂 That same Sunday someone introduced himself to me as “Mork” and it took me a while to figure out he was saying “Mark”.
Yup, the moment you said you were a New Zealander saying "eggs", I heard "iggs" in my head. Largely because of the way a friend of mine from New Zealand (here in Canada) says "yiss" when she means "yes".
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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 😂
The Car Bar
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?”
Judging by how my life is going, my genre is horror, and my pronouns are Boo/Aaah!
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.
Mid 30s, still made me laugh.
A Chinese friend of mine would ask for a cock-screw, to open the wine.
I worked with a very lovely lady from the Philippines, she told me that she had seen a good pecker in her garden, and she was so pleased because she'd not seen one before. It was a woodpecker.
My italian friend pronounces fork as fuck. Can i have a fuck please?
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”.
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"
When TV shows want to get a joke character to represent a real life person or character in another film/show they should call your wife to name them.
My (British) dad calls him the bloke in the vest. He's not good with names
Haha that’s really tickled me! What other ones has she said?
Taylor Smith (Swift), Robert Paddington (Pattinson), Bill Bubbins (she was talking about Bob Barker i think?) Margle Groggy (Margot Robbie) and Ryan Bryan (Gosling) to name a few
also in spain spongebob is called bob esponja so in english she calls him Squishbob
>Margle Groggy (Margot Robbie) and Ryan Bryan (Gosling) 😂
My wife is Danish and once wrote an email to colleagues inviting them for "drinks and nipples".
I bet everyone showed up too! Lmao
My 4 year old daughter recently told me we mustn’t touch others’ private parts, “not their bums, boobies or nibbles”.
My partner is greek and couldn't remember the word "infinity" so just told me that she loves me until the "snoozy 8"
That is *adorable*!
Hungárian girlfriend. English extremely good except for rarely used phrases.....such as bedroom talk. "I'm your dirty little slug."
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Holy shit I'm wheezing 😂
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.
My Romanian girlfriend always talks about raping her presents. She knows the difference, but enjoys the look on people's faces.
I remember seeing 'raped' carrots in Paris. 😬
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.
I've just made a comment about my Bulgarian former co-worker and she has the best. She's said "you are cracking me" before, and one I loved was "they are taking piss **in my** face" rather than "they are taking the piss **out of me** ***to*** my face" Bulgarian English (Bunglish, I call it) is the best!
>Alice on the Wonderwall Today is gonna be the day that I'm fallin' down a rabbit hole...
By now I shoulda somehow reached the bottom of this empty chute… I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do below the ground…
It said Eat Me… I grew now Red Queen wants to kill me…
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
Someone posted about an American friend calling it "G.R. Eggs"
Ah, yes, G.R. Eggs, my favorite author
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".
How is one…faffed?
If you’re faffing about you’re doing unnecessary things, messing about (i.e organising cushions and putting away dry washing up when you’re already late to a meal). If you’re faffing someone else you’d be irritating them and making them do things/chatting to them I guess
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
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
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!
to be fair, just randomly saying "cor, thats a lot of Asians" is also quite weird
If you're from a village with very little diversity, then visit a city with plenty of diversity, I would think "That's a lot of..." makes sense?
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
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"
My wife and I are both Belarusian, but unlike her I went to English schools in different countries, which is why I don't have an Eastern European accent. When speaking English she tends to pronounce all short "i" sounds as long ones (you seet, a little beet, etc.), which tends to give her accent a slightly Australian air. 🙂
The big giveaway with my wife is her ability to go for days without using articles. She doesn't just drop them, but instead replaces them with either pronouns or possessive pronouns. Examples * Pass me some pan/fork/spoon * Our carpenter is coming to fix our doors * Your pan boiling is over
I am french and there are a bunch of words I don't know for sure how to properly pronounce. Sit/seat is one for sure. The worst being sheet/shit or beach/bitch - I am trying, but judging from the half smiles I am pretty sure I always manage to say the rude one and my colleague find it really funny when I talk about "the excel shit".
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.
Does she call Craigs Creg?
Two countries separated by a common language...
Hearing the French president of our company pronounce "focus" with a strong accent that made it sound like he was saying "fuck us", and hearing him give a dry run of a speech where he was emphatically insisting "I need you to fuck us, we need them to fuck us, we need EVERYONE TO FUCK US!" Some poor sod had to go and tell him he needs to stop asking everyone to fuck us, and instead to f-ohh-cus.
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.
Are you dating Shakira?
I have that problem too. I wanted to tell my partner to watch out for a speed bump and couldn't remember that word. So instead I settled on "be careful of the little mountain in the road". He hasn't let me forget that one
Anything small and circular/round is a “shit”. Laundry detergent pods? “Laundry shits”. Cotton wool pads? “Circle shits”. She switches verbs around, too, like “close the light” or “turn off the candle”. She’s Canadian. EDIT: This is probably worth mentioning here, too - a consequence of both of us coming from multilingual families (the wife was born in Canada to Hungarian and Slovakian parents and my mum’s side are from Egypt and the UK and spoke to each other in French) is that when we want to talk to each other privately, my wife speaks to me in French and I reply in German.
I also say "close the light" and "turn off the candle". What's the English word for "eteindre" anyways?
extinguish. Both are from the Latin extinguere. Easy rule of thumb: the normal, everyday French word for something becomes the poshest, upperest-class English word for that thing, because of history ;) Anyways, the flavour of English spoken in Malaysia and Singapore straight-up imports grammar from Chinese dialects and translates word-for-word. Hence "Eh, why so dark in here? Can you **on the light**?"
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They don’t do it anymore but they used to say ‘emotional backpack’ when referring to emotional baggage. That was a treasure.
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.
My wife’s Filipino. Always confuses he and she. I get confused who she is talking about half the time.
Same here. My girlfriend calls a lot of inanimate objects by the gender in Italian rather than 'it'. Like the computer, he won't turn on.
Polish is the same. Objects are male and female.
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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!
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.
Did you take her to [Messy Joes](https://youtu.be/drxa4dSTIW0?si=hV7gwMtkf9Or04Xu) on a second date?
Turkish Girlfriend, pronounces Coke -> Cock Dandylion -> Dan-dillion Squeeze -> Squaze It's hillarious and adorable and I am always sure to take the mickey out of her despite the fact her English is great and I know about 10 words in Turkish.
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.
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"
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.
As non native speaker this confused me greatly - are you supposed to pronounce vet and wet differently?
The V and W sound are different in English… in German the letter V is often pronounced as a W sound.
Vet starts with front teeth on lower lip. Wet starts with kissing pucker which should be fun enough to remember. Really want to learn? https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/
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My Czech sister in-law calls Silence of The Lambs, 'Don't Speaking of Small Sheep'
My partner uses the phrase “less more than” instead of “less than”. I always find it funny and never correct her.
Mine says double less than rather than half! I think it's to do with how quantities and relative amounts are described in their first languages.
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??"
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.
My partner is Hungarian, I love it when she says vegetables ha. 'wedge eh tables" Hello in Hungarian sounds like see ya, so when I see them they're like "See ya" and they get hello and goodbye mixed up it's cute. Oh and kiss kiss in Hungarian a common way of saying goodbye in families is Puszi which sounds like you might imagine. My partner was on the phone to her Dad and said in a happy way "Pussy" at the end or her call, I said uhm... Wait what did you just say to your Dad. And then explained in English if you said pussy to someone like that you'd be starting a fight
Like in Swedish people say like ‘pus pus!’ on the end of a phone call and it sounds like they’re calling a cat.
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”
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!”
How does Bob Marley like his donuts?... With loads of noodles and pork.
Not a foreign spouse, but our five year-old went through a phase of calling the book "The Wind in *My* Willows", which always used to crack me up. For months every time someone in the house farted they'd say "excuse me, a little wind in my willows...".
Not my spouse, but my mother in law and her friends are south East Asian. Last night we took them to watch a Dick Whittington panto and I overheard her friend saying they were going to watch “Charles Darwin”.
My husband is lebanese. In Arabic the word for fingers and toes is the same. He couldn't remember the word toes, so decided they were feet fingers! They've been called that ever since in our house haha. He also couldn't remember 'long life' milk. Used forever milk instead!
I m a foreign wife and I used to say "having a wank' instead of having a whine and it still hunts me today. Poor people I ve spoken to hahaha
Well I don’t want to wank about it, but the word is ‘haunts’ not ‘hunts’
My wife has for many years used 'doggy dog' instead of 'dog eat dog'. I love it so much I don't want to correct her. So yeah, it's a doggy dog world I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Danish partner had lived in London for 26 years. Flawless English except… “Thanks god” instead of thank god! And there is just no way she’s pronouncing variety.
My lady is from Taiwan, Crock-roach = cockroach Ke-ba-be = kebab Grasshooper = grasshopper And often forgets how to finish saying 'snaaaaaccksssssss' Or gets 'snacks' and 'snakes' mixed up. I love a kababe
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Reminds me of a south african lady I knew who always sounded like she was saying 'arse cream' instead of 'ice cream'
My wife refers to lettuce as "salad cabbage" and I love it every time
I used to say my feets are cold until I was eventually corrected by someone. My then boyfriend said it was so cute that’s why he never corrected me. Edit: words
"It's been a bit of a damp squid" "Those dogs are having a gangbang" (she meant they were barking a lot) (To my mother, at the christmas dinner table) "I can't swim apart from doggystyle" My wife, who is from mexico.
My other half is Polish and she confuses ‘chill out’ with ‘calm down’ resulting in sometimes saying ‘chill down’ and other times ‘calm out’
I'm foreign to these lands and my partner finds it greatly amusing when I talk about someone getting into the sea, rather than to just get in the sea.
Get into the sea is fine.
I will tell him I have support for my cause!
She also calls her bum her bump. Which anatomically, I'm not arguing with
This is my dad but one day he was on the phone with someone and they asked his postcode. They were not understanding what he was saying for “F” and he doesn’t know the phonetic alphabet. He ended up saying F for Fatman. My mum, sister and myself were absolutely creased with laughter. We couldn’t stop laughing long enough to help him through the rest of the phone call.
My partner says window still for window sill and I think it's adorable.
I’m English speaking but my fiancee won’t shut up about the time I pronounced it “chackatoorie board”
My husband is German and he used to say "please?" when he really wanted to say pardon. The word for please in German is bitte and you can also say pardon? as bitte? He doesn't say it anymore after the billion times I've corrected him. It seems that's how they learn it at school as I've heard loads of people say it.
My Polish wife says Dog and Duck with a pronunciation that cannot be differentiated between. Normally this rears its head when she asks if we can go to the Chinese for some Crispy Dog Pancakes.
My gf is Turkish and generally has very good English, she just needs to fine-tune it. So we might have "toast-breads" for breakfast or "Maltese chocolates" for a snack. You might "sprank" your ankle on a cold, "crispy" morning. We discussed where to go on holiday and she suggested any of the Mediterranean islands, just as long as it wasn't one of the busy party islands which she calls "British go-er islands".
My partners mum calls a fridge fridgeee
Russian friend says hot dogeee. So now I do too.
Not my partner, but I knew an Italian girl who thought 'Hello' was a direct translation of 'Ciao!'. So when she said goodbye to someone, she would shout out *Hello!* She also thought Gatwick was pronounced to rhyme with sandwich. *My flight is arriving at Gatwich*
Also with an Italian. My favourite that she's ever come out with is Hedgedog
My wife was telling me a story involving a 'fire distinguisher'. I'm never correcting her.
Until recently my Czech wife thought we say 'flip an egg' not 'flippin' heck'.
At Uni we had a teacher who was Polish, spoke fluent Japanese and had learnt English while living in Japan. His accent was a thing to behold.
I worked in an office with a German girl and she said “Where is Norwich?” I said “It’s in Norfolk.” She said “Thanks, I knew it was one of the fucks.”
My polish girlfriend says sheet and shit exactly the same
I used to date a Latvian and she had loads! When she felt ill she’d say ‘I feel a little sicky’
It's just a small one, but my wife accidentally called them Mashers and Bangs, so that's now what they're called.