Here is a selection of embarrassing but funny linguistic anecdotes.
Thanks to all the readers who sent in their comments about the funny mistakes they made in French, it was an enjoyable read.
From confusing banks with banks to bewildering vets, here’s a selection of embarrassing but funny anecdotes.
‘I’m full’
When his neighbors asked him if he would like more food, RD made the mistake of answering je suis pleine. A literal translation of ‘I am full’, which says je suis pleine has different connotations throughout France and her hosts understood for the first time that she was saying she was pregnant, something they still laugh about 30 years later.
Je suis plein(e) It can also mean that you are drunk, depending on the region. To say pregnant, pleine It is mainly used for animals rather than humans.
Nowadays, it has come to mean that you are full in the English sense (although it is informal).
It would be best to avoid using that expression in any case and say je n’ai plus faim, merci (I’m not hungry anymore, thank you) or j’ai assez mangé, merci (I’ve already eaten enough, thank you).
moving tooth
When WJ’s husband went to the dentist with a loose tooth, he made the effort to look up what to say in French and came up with “ma dent se branle‘, much to the amusement of his dentist.
While branler Technically it means to shake or wobble, it also has a more informal meaning: to masturbate. Almost all French people would understand this meaning in any context. We suggest that you stay away from branler and instead of saying J’ai une dent qui bouge (one of my teeth moves).
Read more: It’s funny that you say that: the language of French laughter
Offering a pipe
When CS’s friend asked her boyfriend’s father if he wanted a pipe, since he regularly smoked a pipe, she thought she was being kind and generous.
Unfortunately for her, she used the formulation ‘Do you want a pipe?‘ which is actually an offer of oral sex and explained the confused look he received from his potential father-in-law.
To avoid the colloquial meaning of pipe, add the word smoker to show clearly that you mean a pipe that you smoke: ‘Do you want to smoke a pipe?‘ (would you like to smoke a pipe?) would have avoided embarrassment.
bank robbery
When TG woke up one morning and discovered that a beloved bench had been robbed outside his apartment, he was inspired to report it to the police. There, he attempted to explain what happened to a police officer, but was met with confusion.
bank is written bank in French but the ‘c’ doesn’t say anything. By pronouncing the ‘c’, she was actually telling the police that his bank (bank) had been stolen from outside his front door, hence the officer’s confusion and eventual amusement.
Read more: Five language ‘faux-amis’ that confused me as French in the US
Puppy or bath?
Two readers wrote in with a similar error related to the word puppy in French: chiot.
JA says he had to tell an English friend to stop pronouncing the ‘t’ in chiots (should be pronounced something like ‘shee-o’).
BH remembers telling his vet that he would soon be adopting a chiotte (i.e. a puppy) 23 years ago, a mistake that is still mentioned today.
Chiottes It is an informal term to refer to bathrooms, so this error is curious. BH was very unlucky with this mistake, because many French words become female doubling the last letter and adding an ‘e’ (chien → chienne For example). However, chiot does not have female version and can refer to a male or female puppy.
Read more: Why it’s rarely a good thing to be told to cook an egg in French
Leaving your skirt behind
When MH forgot his sweater at a bar, he came back and asked for it, but he asked for it by mistake. jupe back, that is, skirt. The bar staff must have imagined he had an eventful night.
Getting rid of mistakes
JH is an EFL teacher and uses a mistake he made in French as an example of why not to be afraid when learning a foreign language.
Explaining to a friend why he didn’t put his jam in the refrigerator, he said it was because he put a preservative in it, an error explained in the previous article.
Read more: Mistakes English speakers make in French that make natives laugh
Since then, he always makes sure to offer a preservative to her friend or her husband, relying on the joke.
Pronunciation problems
GC tells the story of an American who came to France and moved to a small town. After spending Saturday and Sunday helping his neighbor build a wall, he was asked what he did on the weekend.
With a southern accent, he responded:J’ai fait l’amour avec ma voisine tout le Weekend‘ (I made love to my neighbor all weekend). Of course, she had meant the wall but a combination of confusing the gender of murmur and a pronunciation of the complicated ‘u’ sound in the American South led to a very different claim.
Can you expand on the examples or has a French friend of yours made a similar mistake in English? Let us know at [email protected]
