What is the biggest mistake you have made when speaking?

[picklefingers]

These are always fun. Personally, I don't really have a big mistake. Though one time I totally blanked out on all of the conjugations of ser. Pretty lame. So what about y'all?

[JessiFox]

I don't have any huge mistakes either...initially learning Spanish, I had trouble remembering sometimes to make certain words feminine or masculine, and sometimes I would forget times when the order of words in a sentence (like nouns and adjectives describing them) was different from English, and sound a bit silly.

[picklefingers]

I don't have any huge mistakes either...initially learning Spanish, I had trouble remembering sometimes to make certain words feminine or masculine, and sometimes I would forget times when the order of words in a sentence (like nouns and adjectives describing them) was different from English, and sound a bit silly.

]

I still have a lot of trouble with masculine and feminine. According to some of my native spanish friends, it never really goes away. You just start feeling weird when you say something wrong. Sort of like English when you use the wrong tense of a word, or use adjectives in the wrong order.

[Krrizal]

As a native Filipino speaker, I often mixed up gender-identifying words (she, he, her, his). I think this is quite common among my people, so I'm glad I'm not the only one.

[RedRose]

This isn't completely mortifying, but pretty embarrassing: during my AP Spanish class, I had to work on an assignment with a partner. We had to talk about the consequences of global warming on the environment. I wanted to write down about the extinction of polar bears, but I couldn't completely remember the word for bear (It's oso). My partner couldn't remember either. For some reason, I confused oso with orejas, which means 'ear' in English. So, on the paper, I wrote down this: La extinción de las orejas polares. In English, that says: The extinction of polar ears. POLAR EARS. When my teacher saw our paper, she looked at it for a moment, then at me and my partner, and asks us what the heck a polar ear is. I explained it to her and she thought it was hilarious, but other students overheard and then I became pretty embarrassed when some of them laughed at me for not remembering what bear meant in Spanish. Sigh.

[celebritea]

Making commands in Spanish is something ive never quite mastered. But, since graduating HS, I've gotten really rusty in general with my Spanish so it's really frustrating forgetting words I used to know like the back of my hand. Which is why I'm HERE! 

[Rosa]

I can't recalling making many big mistakes. Maybe the biggest ones i've made is using one word twice in the same sentence, which is somewhat natural for our natives. One example of this is to say 'reverse back' instead of just saying reverse.

[Baburra]

The errors that stick with me the most are the times when I realize that I've been mispronouncing a word all along. I find it embarrassing but not so much that I can't laugh about it. I understand we all can't be perfect at all words and at all times so I try not to take it too hard but it's still a bit shameful to me.

[elenamarie]

English is not my native language so there are certain times when I mispronounce words, usually with the letters b-v and f-p. There are times when I switched the letters specially if I’m talking really fast. Fortunately, I haven’t mispronounce speaking English in public though there are times I do with friends. I am thankful I haven’t do a public speaking with misprononunciation otherwise it would be really embarrassing.

[Verba]

I forgot my next line? Lol! I was so nervous and jittery because there were more people than I expected. But the good thing was I made the situation light by telling the audience that I forgot my next line then they all laughed. That calmed me down. So I remembered what to say next.  :grin:

I read somewhere that admitting to your audience that you are nervous actually makes you feel at ease. When I get positive response from my audience, I get more confident to speak. In fact, as I talk on, I start to relax.

[GamerPerson]

It was a mistake that prevented me from making a huge mistake down the line, if that counts. I always said the opposite of what I meant to say when it came to describing things. Case in point, the usage of kuwaii and kawaii. One letter difference off and you could end up calling someone scary or cute. Thankfully, my friend always pointed out to me when I said the wrong word, so I could avoid this in the future.

[nikolic993]

I mispronounced the Italian word anni (years) and said ani (anuses), back when I was still in the beginning stages of learning Italian. I was corrected right away and we laughed it off. I never made that mistake again.

[Muthoni]

I have a problem with R and L due to my origin. If two of the letters are found in the same sentence, then I make a wrong pronunciation. I am so conscious of it that if I make that mistake, I laugh at myself. I guess it breaks the ice. I lived in a hostel for a few months where a certain girl would correct any word that I said in English. I must admit that I stopped speaking English in her presence.

[aira]

As a native Filipino speaker, I often mixed up gender-identifying words (she, he, her, his). I think this is quite common among my people, so I'm glad I'm not the only one.

Oh, I greatly know where you're coming from. As a Filipino, we don't have the equivalent for "he" or "she" in Filipino, and definitely not in Cebuano. We only use "siya," which is not gender-specific.

[aira]

If I could remember, the biggest mistake I made when speaking a different language was when I was speaking to a Korean food snack owner in informal speech (banmal). We are friends, but not that close. I think it was because I was a bit confused with adding the "-yo" or still tripping over my head on the right sentence to say. But nevertheless, I was able to correct it immediately and spoke to him in formal tone. I always speak to him in formal tone even on Facebook.

[lushlala]

I don't remember ever making very embarrassing mistakes, probably because I spend too much time being too shy to speak a foreign language LOL But on a serious note, going from my language to English to French and Italian, I have always found the gender specific nouns and verbs very confusing to get my head around. I always find myself having to check and re-check just to be sure. But I bet I have made one or two mistakes of that nature without even noticing LOL

[Filipe]

When I as in Russia in Caucasus I used to say horse (ло́шадь [ƚoʂətJ])  instead of spoon (ло́жка [ƚoʐkə]).

People first thaught I was weird for my urgen need of a horse during meals, but it was explained quite soon. In my defence I just picked most of these words by hearing them from natives.