So let's have fun to spice up our life as we share our embarrassing moments here.
I will go first :)
One time I was talking with a friend. We both like taking exercise. I was to tell him that I had run past a celebrity in a marathon race so I went on, "I ran him over."
"You ran him over?" He seemed startled.
"Yes, I ran him over." Me, unquestionably.
I can't stop laughing every time I recall this anecdote.
Many years ago, I had an Italian girlfriend who once asked me why I put bread in the fridge. I wanted to explain that it's a habit from Australia - because of the hot weather, bread does not keep (non si conserva).
I couldn't think of the right word for "keep", then I had a brainwave: it must be a word like preservative! :D
So I proudly told her (in broken Italian) that in Australia, we put our bread in the fridge because the weather is hot, and bread is not a condom.
o_o
Well, it's not.
few days ago I noticed that I put in my resume "Drinking licence" instead of "Driving licence" Unfortunately I had already sent them to 3 potential employers :(
So funny ! :D
Last time I had a conversation with an American man and we were talking about movies. I was looking for the title "Planet of the Apes" and I didn't know the word "Apes". I just translated : "Planet of Monkeys". And when my American partner corrected my mistake , he was so serious I couldn't help but laugh out loud ! :)
This isn't about being mistaken in a foreign language, but in my native tongue. A few days ago, my deskmate came to school upset and I asked her what was wrong. She seemed very down and she also didn't speak very clearly (I think I have a problem with understanding words sometimes). She answered me 'Papagalul meu a murit', which is 'My parrot died', but I got 'papagal' wrong and I understood something like 'baban'. This is not really a word in Romanian, but it can mean something like a big person, so I assumed that this was some sort of a nickname for her grandmother (she also had told me that her grandma wasn't very well a few days earlier). So I hugged my friend and kept a little moment of silence and then another mate said something about parrots and things clicked for me all of sudden. My reaction to this was 'Ohh, it was just your parrot! I thought it was your grandma! But that's nothing. Come on!'
I seemed so cold, but it was just a relief for me. And only because I got that word wrong.
When I was in Turkey, friends of my American colleagues (also in Turkey) confused the words bread (ekmek) and man (erkek).
So when they went into a baker's, asking for hot bread... :D
