With english not being ur 1st language, what's the weirdest mistake you've made learning it?

[Puck]

In Germany they show the movies dubbed and I think it´s pretty common that the dutch tv shows the movies with subtitles and original language, right?

[Crusoe]

Yeah, kids shows are still dubbed, but a lot of stuff is in English, including ads, so that helps a bunch

[djourner]

I learned a lot of different words over the years... some from different dialects and regions, and since I didn't have english speakers to train with me I never learned which words belong to which accents.

So an english speaker might look at some of the stuff i write and catch hints of like 3 different accents or regional markers in the same sentence... Like I understand aubergine and eggplant as the same thing and sometimes can use them interchangibly... I often use mate and hun not realizing they mark certain regions of the world.

And i only began to understand that when I started properly study differences between different ways of talking in english. xD

[Crusoe]

Haha that's a mood, one of my friends is from the south of the us, so he uses a lot of 'honey' and 'hun' and I'm afraid I'll take over some of his habits.

[BreakingChalk]

Al the words that end in "tion" (action, presentation, congratulations)

I pronounced the T as in "Tacos" with a subtle "sh" sound.

Some of my classmates mocked at me for that. Damn bastards!

[sarah-crows]

fr the accents are too co;licated some times

[sarah-crows]

assholes be assholing lol

[bakasama25]

I suppose it's better than trying to learn Japanese. The writing system is rather arcane and obscure.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

English is such a broken language

And we're busily smashing the broken pieces into even smaller pieces.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

It bugged me when I was studying French that it had genders for inanimate objects & there was no rule offered for how to tell which one was the right one.

[polochon]

There are actually rules (for most words), but since no one knows them, no one teaches them either haha. French is my first language and I only discovered said rules past my twenties.

When I first started actively speaking english, I used to mix up phrasal verbs. Once, as I was talking with an American, I said "and so, she drank it down in one go and passed away on the sofa HAHAHAHA" while laughing, instead of "pass out", and I still remember the poor man's frozen look.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

There are actually rules (for most words),

Awwee... fudge. I remember so little of French now. Wish I'd had those clues way back then.

[KUUPID]

I'm American, but my first language is Korean... I'm sure every bilingual/ multilingual person has gone through this. xD

Whenever I'm writing, I sometimes can't think of an equivalent word in English... Maybe it's my limited vocabulary, but for the life of me, there is literally is no word that can describe a certain emotion or word I want to use. It's so frustrating Dx

[dominioncomix]

One time i accidentally visited an adult site instead of an email site because i got the word ‘mail’ mixed up with the word ‘male’, ahaha... I was a kid, so it was kind of a shock!

[AnonymousHouseCat]

I am a native English speaker and in high school, I volunteered as a teaching assistant in the class for students learning English as a foreign language. There were times when the teacher was explaining some grammar rule, and I was like, "what?? really??" It was new to me too!

Also what even is English spelling? I took a course on the history of the Spanish language once, and this one guy wrote (in Spanish of course) something like: "It's very important that we make Spanish a logical language and make the alphabet/spelling match pronunciation, or we're going to end up like English or French." XD

Oh, and also as an American, I spelled "color" with the British spelling (colour) for a while when I was a kid, because I saw it spelled in a book that way.

[sarah-crows]

omg that's hilarious

[sarah-crows]

and you're like trying to use every word you know to explain it but end up failing

[sarah-crows]

damn that would be scarring

[vothnthorvaldson]

I did that mistake the hardcore way
Told another student that my best friend, also a student there, and who was terminally ill, had passed away, instead of passed out.
Both were plausible so the misunderstanding was not immediately cleared (fortunately it was before the student told other people).

That was horrible. I still feel terrible about it now, and that was 10 years ago. I really advise new English speakers to be careful about this one.

[polochon]

OH DEAR yours is indeed on a whole other level.
But yes, these two are the most dangerous to mix up because if you don't notice your mistake and the context is ambiguous enough to let it slide, it can lead to some amazing situations haha.