When you speak a foreign language, it doesn’t matter how well you know it, the possibility of embarrassing yourself is always waiting for you round the corner, especially when you are faced with sounds that are not familiar to your own language. For Italian people the worst possible sound to pronounce in English is, probably, the “th”. We are incapable of putting our tongue behind our upper teeth and letting out a soft breath without sounding like a snake! Things get worse when we are faced with two words which are fairly similar. In my case I don’t seem to be able to differentiate between “thighs” (cosce) and “tights” (collant). Every time I have to stop and think: Qual è cosce e qual è collant? and more often than not I choose the wrong one, so Geoff’s favourite winter’s joke is: “Darling, have you got your woolly thighs on?”.
Another problem we have with spoken English is the difference between long and short vowels, therefore to our ears “this” and “these” sound the same. I remember a friend of mine, whom I attended a language class with when I first moved to England, telling me: Ho sempre paura di fare una figuraccia quando chiedo le lenzuola pulite alla mia padrona, per cui esagero da morire (I’m always scared of embarrassing myself when I ask my landlady for clean sheets, so I exaggerate it a lot): “Excuse me, can I have some clean sheeeeeets?”
However, my most embarrassing memory is of when I used to teach Italian to adults in England. It was my first year of teaching and one of my very first classes. In that lesson I had explained how to use the different types of Italian definite articles (il, lo, la, l’, i, gli, le = the). At the end of the class, as I was setting the homework, I wrote a list of Italian words so that the students would have to choose the correct article to put in front of each word. One of these was asola (buttonhole). While they were copying the list somebody asked the meaning of asola. Now, in Italian button is bottone, which sounds similar to bottom, so with my nice Italian English accent I promptly said “bottonhole” and saw a row of shocked faces staring at me. Realising that I had said something wrong, with trembling hands I picked up my coat from the chair and pointing to the asola I said in a shaky voice “this one”. A sigh of relief came from the students.
Do you have any embarrassing language mistake you’d like to share with us? Leave a comment.
P.S. When Geoff proofread this blog he noticed that I had written “We are incapable of putting our thong behind our upper teeth! 
“ Luckily for me he picked up on it, or that would have been another one for the embarrassing list!
Comments:
Alice:
In a shop I asked for a *shit of paper* instead of a *sheet of paper*. Try to picture the clerk’s reaction and my face after I realised my mistake… I must have turned bright red.
Jill Sullivan:
This was a fun post, thank you.
We just returned from a year in Italy. The most common mistake was confusing “fish” and “peach” in Italian. I know that “pescatore” means “fisherman” so it seems natural that “pesche” means “fish”! Throughout our stay we ordered fish tea, fish gelato and fresh fish with sugar.
Also, once I asked for il canto when we were done eating. I wanted the bill. The waiter said, “You want me to sing?”
Joan:
Yep! I’ve got one: meaning to ask our waiter in Italian if I could borrow his pen, I asked if I could borrow his penis.
William Auge:
Knowing that a linguist like you at times struggles with a foriegn language comforts me in my struggles. I had the same experience as Jill. While in Catania I ask the waiter for the bill and he thought I wanted him to sing.
Abigail C:
Sometimes my pronunciation of words beginning with b plus a vowel isn’t so good and gets mistaken by Italians for a p. So I have one friend who thinks I studied in Polonia and not Bologna and I hate to say the word bene in case it gets mistaken as ….
Great article by the way.
Timothy Parisi:
I had a recurring experience I when I visited Italy in July of 2005. On our trip I wanted to try to speak the language as much as I could. My only other experience with the language was having heard my grandparents, aunts and uncles speak it to each other, but that only gave me a clue as to what it sounded like. I had virtually no vocabulary and nothing else save a phrase book. After arriving in Rome, experiencing about two sunny hot days in July and being descended from four Sicilian grandparents my skin turned two or three shades darker. At that point, frequently people would come up to me and ask me questions like, “How do I get to such and such a place? or Where is the bus stop, laundromat or post office etc.?, in Italian. In every case I would try to answer them with the response, “I do not speak Italian”, which I assume is, “Non parlo Italiano” in Italian. However, also in every case I would panic, and say, “Non parlano Italiano”, which I assume means in English, “You do not speak Italian.” Even after a few moments of receiving a thoroughly perplexed stare directed at me, I could not find the words, “Non parlo Italiano.” These experiences soon became the source of constant amusement and are now are a cherished memory.
Sue:
A while ago my husband and I were in a beautiful little hotel in Bellagio. In the bathroom placed above the toilet was a sign which read…”To flush :please push the bottom twice” hehehe!
Linda:
I was eager to include a young boy in a conversation I was having with his mother in my halting Italian. I learned the valuable lesson of pronouncing every letter including double consonants when I asked him: “Quanti ani hai? His little 9 year old face looked shocked/entertained by my inadvertant slip.
Stuart:
I don’t think I’ve had anything as embarrassing as “bottom-hole”, but when I was in Venice, several times I confused “Che peccato!” with “Che pecora!”, which in some instances was funny, but in others just plain mortifying.
Also. I’m not sure if I should’ve been embarrassed about this or not, but when I was in class discussing animal names; I called a cow “la vacca” instead of “la mucca” but my teacher said that it was rude. It wasn’t until I was back in Scotland and my teacher here (who I’m on more friendly terms with), told me that “vacca” is sometimes used to insult women and therefore it’s not used as much.
Serafino:
Last year, I was in Rome on Christmas Day with several friends who who knew no Italian at all. They wanted to attend Christmas Mass in English. We found a church where one Mass was scheduled in English . The priest saying the Mass was an Italian with some knowlede of the language. During the sermon, he kept repeating the words of the angels found in the Christmas story thusly , “Glory to God in the highest and PISS (peace) to men of good will.” Each time he said it, I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from bending over in laughter! Looking around, others were in different stages of self torture doing the same. LOL
Robin:
I have been having fun with Siri on the iPad/iPhone, turning the language into italian to see if he/she understands me and my pronunciation.
My most embarrassing slip was in an Italian restaurant in Yorkshire, English where the young waitress didn’t speak any English and didn’t understand my brother’s thick Yorkshire accent when asking for a pint of lager. I spoke to her in Italian, much to her relief (as Italian is not exactly a common language in the Yorkshire countryside) but then proceeded to ask for “dell’acqua dal gabinetto”. She said “vero, dell’acqua dal toilet”. Mamma mia! I quickly realised I’d confused rubinetto with gabinetto and corrected myself!
Linda:
I once asked a 9 year old boy: “quanti ani hai?” With huge shocked eyes he said to his mother: “Mamma, ani,ani,ani.” She replied, ” You know perfectly well that the lady is asking how old you are!” But the damage was done and I learned a good lesson about pronouncing every letter!
Julia Kovankova:
Great article! And I loved to read comments as well, from “quanti ani hai” to “rubinetto” and “gabinetto” to “il canto…” – do you want me to sing? 🙂
I personally always think twice before pronouncing “sheet” in English correctly. Even living in US for a while, I still slow down for a second to make the correct sound.