most embarrassing moment while learning Chinese

[skylee]

You should have said 我愛死你了.

[HashiriKata]

Thanks, skylee!

(but does the wrong version "我爱你死了" mean anything? would it mean something like "I want you to die" ?)

[onebir]

I wanted to ask my friends for some tap water - zilaishui. But it came out zixingshui, which means bicycle water (if it means anything at all).

More surreal than embarrassing...

[amo]

Just the other day we sat in my brother in law's house along with my wife's family. Me being a TALL European we talked about height. Then I said (my Chinese is VERY limited, and my wife's family hardly speak any English) to my wife: Shao Lao Po (not even sure about the pinyin) but I ment to say my wife was little (or short) compared to me. I had to ask my wife WHY her family looked at me. Then she explained that using Shao (little) in front of wife ment the same as second wife (lover outside the family). We had to explain her family that I did NOT have a Lover, only bad Chinese language

[ruxuan]

"我爱死你了"is the meaning of i love you very much in china.we rarely say it as "我爱你死了"。"shaolaopo" can be expressed as my younger wife of my wives.

[Laska]

I once asked my conservative Chinese father-in-law when he was sick whether or not he had eaten "yaopian," but it came out as "yapian." He thought that was pretty funny.

[Hero Doug]

Excellent thread, I know it's a bit old but I'm throwing mine in the ring.

Back in the day I was talking on Skype with someone and I had to answer the phone. I told the girl I was talking to that I had to answer the phone. When I got back she asked who I was talking to. I told her I was talking to my girlfriend.

She asked if she was Chinese and if she could speak English. I somehow replied (I know this because I thought I was so awesome and showed my girlfriend my kick ass Chinese) that yes, my telephone speaks excellent English.

P.S.

And one more unforgettable joke: Wo mingtian JIAN ni! (I see you tomorrow!)

Jian should be Jian4' date=' but at that time I said "JIAN1", so it meant RAPE!

I rape you tomorrow![/quote'] This is the deadliest mistake I've heard yet.

I was on a short trip with a delegation of Chinese and foreigners' date=' and they had taken us to see the High Tide someplace near Shanghai, when the sea level rises more than the river level, causing the sea water to actually rush against the natural flow of the river. It's really impressive.

Anyhow, after watching it, one of the Chinese delegates asked me how I had liked it. I was rather confident in Mandarin, I knew the word for "tide" (chao2) and I figured that, since in English it was called HIGH tide, and also in SPanish (marea ALTA), then it'd be correct to say something like: "It was very nice, I have never experienced such a gao1chao2 before! Really Impressive." All I got was a funny smile and silence as a reply. I thought that was weird.

When I finally got back home, I checked on my dictionary: High Tide = da4chao2 (that is, BIG tide). ??? so what the hell IS gao1chao2. I looked it up. ORGASM! I can just imagine what these people thought, me saying that the tide had given me the orgasm of my life! LOL[/quote']

The best one I've read, just excellent. You can be sure I'll use this as an example when people ask me about directly translating English to Chinese.

[wrbt]

I once babbled to hotel staff about my grand plans to ride a turkey from Shanghai to Xian.

ji, che, whatever close enough

[venture160]

there was a sand storm 沙尘暴 when I was in Harbin, describing it in Chinese to my friends I mispronounced it as 刷钱暴！ money scrubbing storm!

Another one is 楼梯 and 裸体, I got that wrong for a while, made for some fun conversations.

Or a friend who asked me 你看过她的凶吗？ I thought she said 胸！ that threw me for a loop!

there are so many more!

[Guest realmayo]

hmm, I used to like fencing (ie sword fighting) and had got it into my head -- probably wrong, I'm not sure -- that jījiàn was the way to translate this but when asked by a group of students about my hobbies, I mentioned jījiān which suggests 鸡奸 ... and the energetic mime I attempted in order to clear up the puzzled looks did not help much either I must admit.

[Xiao Kui]

When I was a beginner I learned that 同屋 was the word for roommate, but I wanted to say housemate so I assumed it was 同房 which means sleeping together and having sex.

thankfully my friend knew what i was talking abt and corrected me right way.

[xiaojiang216]

One day I walked into a Chinese restaurant that I was a frequent coustomer of (I now work there). I chatted with the woman behind the desk (who later was to become my 阿姨 once we got to know each other). I sure hope she forgot about this embarassing moment. Just as we were saying our goodbyes, I wanted to say "好好休息" ("rest well"). However, what came out was "好好学习" ("study well").

There was another time when I was teaching Chinese to a group of middle schoolers. My co-worker is from Taiwan. One kid asked me how to say "penguin". I proudly answered, "企鹅/qi3 e2". Nothing wrong with that, right? Well my co-worker said, "No, it's qi4 e2". I was positive that it wasn't, but I didn't know what to do. So, as usual, I just told the class how much of a stupid student I still am.

I'm sure there are hundreds of other awkward moments, but I try to quickly learn for them and put them as far back in the memory banks as possible.

[Lu]

Talking with a friend about married life, duties of husbands and wives etc, and I wanted to say something about women who like to cook (zuo4 cai4). I do not know how it happened, but what I said was not zuo4 cai4 but zuo4 ai4. I immediately corrected myself, but it was pretty embarrassing (but funny, too).

[renegadedog]

I actually had one of these in reverse the other day. A Chinese friend's two daughters were round. They were displaying the two typical Chinese opposite attitudes in a nutshell. One was refusing to understand a word I said (in English or Chinese), the other was telling me how great my Chinese was and actually talking to me.

Anyway, a bit later, I was sitting there holding RD Junior. She said "Do you like babies?" (in English, I said "Of course) then she asked "Do you want Wa Mo?" I thought she was asking if I wanted some particular item that I hadn't heard of, I asked her to repeat many times, then I asked my wife "Wa Mo: Shen Me Yi Se?".

Eventually I realised she was saying "Do you want one more?"

[atitarev]

In Chinese class I once said 有了, meaning “I got it" or "finished the task". The teacher laughed and said that this is said by women when they get pregnant

It was a good laugh and we talked about this several times in follwoing days.

I wasn't too embarassed but that's the most embarassing moment.

[roddy]

Managed to get laughed at quite loudly yesterday. Cooking up some nice bits of seafood (Yum, Mmm) and I'm asked if there's any salt. Well of course there is. What would a culinary genius such as myself be doing without salt in the kitchen? Can't you see it in the cupboard you were just rifling through?

So I reach into the cupboard and pull out the 'salt' only to be met with gales of laughter and some concerned questions about how much of this stuff I'd been putting on my food. Turns out I'd managed to overlook that salt would be labeled 盐, not 咸 (this seems obvious now, but I hate shopping (sh)) and also the 石 radical, and thus come home with a bag of 食用碱 - sodium carbonate. Not particularly harmful, but definitely not salt either.

All is not lost though, as apparently you can use the stuff to make sherbet . .

[heifeng]

hmm, I thought I posted my embarassing moment before, but I guess not...anyway almost everytime I want to say LCD something or rather I have to pause to make sure I am saying 液晶 because I have a habit of transposing the characters, screwing up the jing tone, and making it sound like something very....interesting. Yes, it is quite an embarrassing mistake...

also, for the life of me, no matter what the tone is for a character with 'zhu' is I almost seem to pronounce it too much like first tone, ie pig.....

[zozzen]

long time ago when i visited china for my first time, i wanted a spoon (勺子) in a restaurant, then i was so confident to ask the waitress "可以給我一個 Xiao zhe (小姐) 嗎?"

all these funny experiences remind me of a real life case in chinese students that learn English. Ask your chinese friends how to say "發蛋" in English ....

[muyongshi]

Well probably not as embarrassing as it was just plain out funny (especially since I realized my mistake right away and we all had a good laugh)

One day about 6 months ago I wanted to say 刮胡子 but instead said 刮脸 (basically meaning to shave your face off- quite a gross thought...)

Oh that reminds me of another time I wanted to say 湖 but for some reason the 子 just came out too (胡子) and since we were standing next to the lake talking about it, it was quite an obvious one. They still tease me to this day about it....

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edit: 刮脸 apparently still means shave but not where my teacher (and one other friend) come from apparently....

[studentyoung]

One day about 6 months ago I wanted to say 挂胡子 but instead said 挂脸 (basically meaning to shave your face off- quite a gross thought...)

Are you sure that you wanted to say“挂胡子” and “挂脸”, not “刮胡子” and “刮脸”?

Thanks!