most embarrassing moment while learning Chinese

[roddy]

This should rank quite high, I think. 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/feedarticle/11548643

[Lu]

The mistake of that news anchor: hilarious. The Guardian misspelling Xi's given name: don't they have people reading that stuff before publishing??

[roddy]

Ha, didn't even notice. How... embarrassing! 

[Guest realmayo]

They probably do and they probably didn't catch the spelling mistake, which looks like was introduced by the AP.

[Demonic_Duck]

I guess they call it the "Grauniad" for a reason, hehe.

[imron]

Ah the good ole casual staffer excuse. Relevant departments will be notified.

[Pokarface]

I don't think it was embarrassing, but I said:

nǐ gēn duìxiàng duō shǎo qián ma? 

How much do you and your girlfriend cost?

 

When I was trying to ask, "how long have you been with your girlfriend?" to a friend of mine, lol.

[wushucrab20]

During my first year of studying Chinese I found a children's story online to practice with and I told a friend about it. The story was called

拯救世界的绵羊斯基皮 and I told them I was reading 死鸡皮的故事 （the story of dead chicken skin).

 

[Kalark528]

Well this is not my mistake

I heard someone say 我不知道怎麼屌打 (I dont know how to *#@$@&?/#* <--mature content) I think he want to say 表達 (to talk about..)

[Demonic_Duck]

Is “屌打” an actual expression? If so, what does it mean?

[Walkingtree]

Not terribly embarrassing, but points out the importance of tones. 

 

My students were to give an oral presentation. Just after the bell rings a student comes up to me and says, "Laoshi, jiang lai ma?" I told her in no uncertain terms that she was to do her presentation today or get a 0%. I thought she was asking if she could do it in the future. "老师,将来吗?"

 

Turns out she was saying "老师,讲来吗?"

 

Doh. After looking at her confused face, and about three minutes time, I finally pieced together what she said.

 

I was able to explain my error, and smooth it over, but for y'all beginners out there don't fall into the same trap I did - don't assume you have pieced together the meaning of an utterance without paying close attention to the tones.

[anonymoose]

So what was she saying?

[Demonic_Duck]

Overheard in the line at a coffee shop:

 

“想操。”

 

The guy wanted to order a 香草拿铁.

[Walkingtree]

Anonymoose, she was asking if she could come up and speak.

[Demonic_Duck]

I guess should be “我来讲吗？” then.

[Walkingtree]

I'd agree, that sentence is correct, but she said it the other way. Either way I heard it wrong, maybe I heard it wrong twice?

[jbradfor]

 

“想操。”

 

First or fourth tone on the 操?

[Demonic_Duck]

Fourth. Well, I think the tones were kinda ill-formed anyway, but it was definitely closer to “想操” than anything else.

[metlx]

...

[歐博思]

Was listening to students' pair work in class the other day....

 

...arrived at a certain pair nicknamed '青青' and '曉曉' (reduplicated characters in their full name), when 青青 says she is working with 然然 today, and 曉曉 is with yanyan (whose name characters I can never remember). 青青 and 曉曉 finish, and then I, never remembering yanyan's name, call him to perform using his 姓: 徐徐.....

 

.....

 

笑尿了我們