it would be fun to hear the episodes we have gone thru while learning and struggling with the foreign language, a mispronounced word can mean a whole lot of misunderstanding and embarassment but once learnt thru this hard way there is no way you will ever forget the word.
let me begin..
Once in summer I wanted to buy a play TENT so went to shop and asked the lady at the counter that I cannot find the "tunte"( thought this was the german word for tent) they had advertised.
She looked up wih large eyes mouth wide open...stared at me for a while and said they dont have any TUNTEN here. I pulled out the catalog and showed it to her then she exclaimed oh you mean "huesli" and so finally bought it.
Come home and to my embarassment I learnt a"tunte" in german means a TRANSVERSITE.
similarly I know of this gentleman who was lost between his language and decency when he wanted to buy a soft toothbrush for his sensitive teeth.
So he went up to the service lady and asked her in his broken german "haben Sie weiche Brueste"(do You have soft Breasts).. ..shocked!! Luckily for him he was gesturing her as brushing his teeth and the lady understund that he meant BUERSTE(brushes) not BRUESTE( breasts).
After the birth at hospital, my wife received the visit of a doctor checking our baby. He asked who gave a specific treatment to our daughter. My wife wanted to answer "Die krankenschwester" when she suddenly realised that it was a male nurse and that "schwester" does not apply...so she said "die krankenschwester die ein Man ist" so it sounded like a transexual nurse
Needless to say that the whole hospital personel heard about it and were using from that day this nickname for the poor "krankenpleger".
I am at a very basic level ..but i do blunders all the time..
For me to pronounce fahrt is very difficult atleast it was in the beginning.. and to the nightmare i had to conjugate it in the class almost sounded like ..
ich "fart"
du "fartst"
sie (they fart all the time )
gute fart (A culture to wish some one good fart )
Also to me ein "F#ck" almost sounded like a bad word..till i understood it was einfach
During my first year here I was waiting at the tram stop and this guy wandered up to me and said "Hasch mir ein Ziggie" (Have you a cigarrette) while pointing at my tobacco. Being new to this German malarky, and having even greater problems with Swiss German, the only word that I could make out was "Hash". I replied to him "Das ist kein Hash, es ist nur Tabak" (That's not hash, it's just tobacco)
He looked confused for a moment, and then slunk off obviously deciding he'd try his luck with someone more adept at the language.
I learned French pretty much by immersion. About a year into it I thought I had cleverly figured out the feminine of garcon (boy) , and started using garce anytime I made reference to a girl in conversation.
I just a leetle off the mark- garce means b!tch or slut. The worst (best?) part is nobody corrected me, for several months, until I figured it out on my own.
Years ago when I first started taking German in college I had a German and an Italian roommate. The Italian couldn't ever remember the difference between "horny" and "honest"...needless to say there were funny moments.
Then there was my funny moment. Standing with the refrigerator door open I asked my German roommate if he wanted peanut butter...well, instead of it coming out in all English or all German it came out as "Möchtest du peanüßbutter?" I honestly giggle every time I see peanut butter to this day.
I was an intern in an accounting department near Frankfurt quite a few years back. I was finally getting confident enough with my textbook German to throw a bit of it around the office. Perhaps a bit TOO confident.
One afternoon, I went up to the department secretary and asked "Hast du ein Gummi?" The entire office went dead silent and she just stared at me for 3 or 4 seconds... then said "Was willst du denn damit?" At which point, the entire office burst out laughing.
After a while, a male colleague took pity on the "Ami" intern and informed me that the word I was most likely looking for was "Radiergummi."
The day I arrived in Germany I remarked to the taxi driver that the town called "Ausfahrt" was quite big and I wondered why I had never heard of it before.
Try asking a German girl "are you Sleeping" (while watching a movie) and use the word "Schlampe" instead of "Schlafend"
I guarantee you, she will not be sleeping then, and only cowering in the foetal position while appologising for your poor grasp of the German language will save your sorry arse.