Comments on: Everybody Makes (Embarrassing) Mistakes

By: Lauren

Lauren — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 03:10:00 +0000

正真正銘
所信表明

one time I mis heard 所信表明 as shoushinshoumei… lolz.

By: Canisse

Canisse — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 16:54:00 +0000

Reminds me of the time I commented on a picture of a kitten in japanese class… I meant to say it was cute, “kawaii”, but ended up calling it scary, “kowai”. Woops…

By: Saimu-san

Saimu-san — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 13:53:00 +0000

There’s an entire section of the BBC website dedicated to languages. One of the headings is about people writing up the mistakes they made and Japanese has a few.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/yoursay/lost_for_words.shtml
Some of the comments are great, too. Like one commenter making the mistake of saying there were bears in their basement. Lol.

By: Alan Dingwall

Alan Dingwall — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 18:28:00 +0000

I loved this post, I actually thought it was hysterical! :D

By: Mackenzie Ellsberry

Mackenzie Ellsberry — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 01:27:00 +0000

When I was in Japan for study abroad, I commonly made 2 mistakes:

1) Saying 夜言い（よばい）なぁ！(lit. creeping into a woman’s room at night to…) when I wanted to say ヤバイなぁ！(slang for “bad” ).

2) Saying 触って（さわって）もいいですか (lit. Is it alright if I touch you?) when I wanted to say 座って（すわって）もいいですか (lit. Is alright if sit here)

Both mistakes often invoked quite a reaction, but strangely when I asked “Is it alright if I touch you?” no one said no. I didn’t realize until I thought about what I said later that I switched the verbs.

By: shahiir mizune

shahiir mizune — Sun, 11 Aug 2013 09:48:00 +0000

ざるそば…Monkey soba/the side of the monkey/cold soba…..heh