All of the phrases you’ll mess up when impressing international students

Welcome to Warwick, a place were you’re classed as a disadvantaged English-speaker in your group of trilingual friends, suddenly not being at least bilingual is almost embarrassing so perhaps you decided to take up a language alongside your degree.

If all you want to do is chat up those chic French girls loitering at the Learning Grid, or strike up a conversation with that Brad Pitt look-a-like who you always see having a smoke outside Costa you need to be wary. You must be brave, because the slightest slip of the tongue may result in saying something you really didn’t mean at all.

So to avoid being laughed at by 80+ Europeans at the Learning Grid, here are the most common and most embarrassing language mistakes you need to stop making.

French

You just moved into Rootes and you find out that you’re next door to a French hottie. You see her in the kitchen and you want to make a damn good first impression with your GCSE French. You muster enough courage and you say Je suis très excité de te rencontrer, but you’ve just ruined your chance with her because she now thinks that you were really horny to meet her.

Come on now, don’t be a douche.

Then in hopes of making the moment less awkward, you ask to give a kiss like all the French do, so you say est-ce-que je peux te baiser but this makes everything slightly worse because you just asked to sleep with her. Now she’s all flustered, but you still try again with tu étais bonne, but that means she was good in bed and you haven’t even come close to pulling her yet.

Spanish

So you’ve finally convinced the Herculean Spanish guy from Salsa night to go out to dinner with you. You both arrive at the restaurant and the waiter ushers you to your seats. You decide to go for a chicken salad so you tell your date you’d like una ensalada de polla instead of pollo. Trust me, you don’t want to be seen tucking into a cock salad.

Then the night proceeds and you get a bit tipsy. Things are going well, and both of you are flirting, but your glass of wine tips over and it spills all over the table. You find yourself to be a little embarrassed so you say soy un poco embarazada, but you just scared him by saying you’re a little pregnant.

Try tinder next time

You convince yourself it’s fine because you’re of age so you tell him. But by missing out the distinctive ñ letter, you say tengo 21 anos instead of años, which means you have 21 anuses. 

German

German soc is going to the best Schnitzel restaurant in Leam and you decide to tag along. When the waiter comes, you tell him you want vorspeil – just don’t be surprised if your cheese platter hasn’t arrived yet because you just ordered foreplay instead of a starter (vorspeise).

Then you go to the waiter about the missing cheese platter because you wanted to ‘get to the bottom of this’ by saying das sag ich jetz auf den strich instead of unterm strich, and now he looks all confused because you’ve just declared you’re starting a career in prostitution.

You won’t be coming back.

Italian

After a long trek back to Westwood, you realise that your pillow is missing from the bed. You hear your Italian flat mate come in next door so you pop over and ask for your pisello to sleep in instead of a pisolino, and they burst out laughing because you just told them you need a penis to help you sleep.

As you can see, the most subtle mistakes can completely change the meaning of the phrase, whether you wanted to or not. Ultimately, learning a language is lot of fun, and you just have to keep up with it until you can carry on a normal conversation without making a complete fool out of yourself.