I was a new JET Programme participant located in rural Japan. The CIR variety, so I knew a good bit of Japanese and was there to teach and write about US culture, history, food, etc.

The local dialect was pretty difficult to understand however, and I was constantly asking what words meant. One day my coworker used an expression beginning with “o”, which is a common honorific prefix, and wanting to basically say “o - what?” I clearly proclaimed “onani?” in the middle of the board of education office. More than one person stifled a laugh and my coworker almost did a spit take.

It wasn’t until much later that I learned “onani” is masturbation in Japanese, based on the English term onanism, which I also didn’t know at the time. So I basically failed hard in both languages that day.

I speak spanish natively and at during uni I would hang out with a group of Brazillian friends. I would speak a mixture of portuguese and spanish with them.

The mom of one of these friends made a Brazilian dish for us (Feijoada) and asked me how it was as it was the first time I tried it. I answered that the dish as ‘exquisito’, which in Spanish means delicious (similar ‘exquisite’). She seemed somewhat disappointed and upset by my response so I probed a little and found out that ‘esquisito’ in Portuguese actually means ‘weird’. She thought I was calling her dish weird tasting. I found quickly enough to clarify, but I did feel bad about making her fell that way… She was very excited about sharing her cooking and she thought I called it weird.

I was living in Germany and was learning Germman on the fly and was with my sister and her girl friends at Octoberfest, and I wanted to ask one what she did with her whole time, so I asked what the word for “whole” was. I ended up asking her what she “did with her hole time.”

I said “Vorrei un gelato alla fica”, which is Italian for “I want pussy flavored ice cream”. If you say al fico instead it means fig flavored. The girl in the shop raised her eyebrow and answered “Sei sicuro?”

Embarazada in Spanish does not mean embarrassed.

Bought a coke at a little corner store in Beijing. Asked for a straw. They brought a watermelon.

I also had just come from Gym class one day, so I once said “Estoy caliente” instead of “Tengo calor”. The Spanish speakers taking it for extra credit laughed at me…

In argetinean Spanish “groso/grosa” is someone really good. So I was talking about some college with a new guy on or team and I said, in Portuguese “Ela é muito grosa” and I saw his face going 😳 and I was like wait a second what did you understood?? And he explained to me thay in Portuguese groso/grosa means rude. I don’t know how many people I trashtalked before that.

I was living in Germany and was learning Germman on the fly and was with my sister and her girl friends at Octoberfest, and I wanted to ask one what she did with her whole time, so I asked what the word for “whole” was. I ended up asking her what she “did with her hole time.”

The Japanese dont seem to employ wordplay in the same way native English speaking cultures do. One time at a bar I was trying to jokingly express my struggle with some of their words that sound the same but mean drastically different things, and the people I was talking to just didn’t understand the humor in it.

In Spanish class in highschool I spoke about a trip to the beach and said “me madre y tu padre” lol

So apparently my mom and your dad went to the beach together…