I am in a relationship with an Englishman and it shocks us everyday how many common words we use that are Utterly dissimiliar!

For example, pants are underwear and trousers are pants. A head rub is... well... its NOT a what one would consider a head rub to be in the United States!

We have run into a few communication snafu's over word meanings and terminology, but all it all, we both find it good fun and make constant jokes about the finer nuances and differences between two people from countries that speak the same language, but that are vastly at odds from one to another. haha!

In Crete, Greece... they can tell you yes or no with a movement of the head. head up is No... head down is Yes.... Do not blink or you will miss it. And in case you didn't know... Lone Ranger sidekick Tonto... in spanish means Fool or Dumb... so they had to change his name in the series to Toro that meant Bull when dubbed in spanish.

Some Filipinos were helping with a Thai summer camp near Songkhla, Thailand, teaching Thai elementary children hand movements for a song in English about the sun rising in the morning.
Except that, to illustrate the "sun rising," they struck the insides of their right elbows with their left fists, while jerking their right fists upwards.

The other foreign teacher, an American guy, looked over at me and remarked dryly, "So nice we're teaching Thai kids how to make obscene gestures."

The Filipino leader also introduced herself to the kids by her nickname as "Lice."

To be fair, I tried to take the Filippinos aside and explain that they might want to change those hand gestures and that nickname when dealing with foreigners, but they just looked annoyed.

When I was in germany I had very little German and would go into the local shop each day to buy something mainly struggling and pointing and the shop assistants would all gather giggling to hear what I was stupidly going to say .

• One day, it was a long time ago I decided to buy a pair of stockings and said in my awful German I want to buy a pair of tights but not altogether joined but one leg here and one leg here. We all collapsed in giggles.

I go climbing in Bulgaria quite often, it was only on my 2nd or 3rd visit there that I found out they shake their heads for yes, and nod for no. Fortunately Bulgarians are aware that visitors don't know this, so nothing too weird happened as a result of it but I was probably the butt of many secret jokes in the food service industry!

I once worked with an African woman whose full first name was Abimbola which meant "Princess" in her language.She felt People in the U.K. wouldn't be able to pronounce this properly so she shortened it to Bimbo.I did point out what that meant here, but she didn't give a shit and still proudly called herself Bimbo-good for her!

Learning French while living in Belgium as a kid. My French teacher complained of being cold so I tried to say she had cold blood: 'sang froid' . I mispronounced it and said she had: 'seins froides' instead. I had just accused my teacher of having cold tits. She was mortified and my friend sitting next to me lost it and laughed uproariously.

When my Spanish teacher was asking us to describe what we do and I said "Es lo que hago" and she heard me say "estoy cagado" and proceeded to describe it to the class.

Some of you might have to do a bit of Googling.

OK, "Es lo que hago" means "It's what I do" while "estoy cagado" means "I'm shitting myself"

My sister is french. She was trying to teach me to say buffalo in french. I don't know what I said in front of my16 y/o niece but i am sure It was sexual and very inappropriate. They were laughing too hard to ever tell me what I said. Or maybe they just couldn't bring themselves to. Don't try to say buffalo in french....

Another time when in the military I met a fellow with a heavy carribean accent. I asked him where he was from. He answered with a thick Jamaican accent Florida. I said where are you originally from he repeated with an extremely heavy Jamaican accent Florida. I said where were you born? Again he answered with this non American accent Flor I da. Finally I found out that his parents were Jamaican and he simply could not help it!

Only thing I've encountered: when I started working for a therapeutic group home, they told us not to insist the (mostly Native) youths look us in the eye because that can be construed as disrespectful in Native American culture.

Ummm... I won't get too far into the details, but I can tell you THIS:
"Happy Chinese New Year" does NOT translate the same way from English into both Mandarin AND Cantonese!!
And that's all ah gut ta say about THAT.

I was in class with a gal that spoke with what I thought was an Australian accent and when I ask her if she was from Australia, she turned to me, kinda mad and ask why I thought that. I explained that I have know some people from there and her dialect sounded similar! Well, no she said, her home place is South Africa! It did have a UK , influence so I was somewhat surprised! We became close friends since that class 6-7 years ago, so it worked out. Some people are sensitive about their home countries, I learned.

Son in law ordered wheat toast for breakfast in a French restaurant; got 32 slices of white toast. Ate every slice.

When I was in French Acadia in Northern Maine , I went to a Chinese place to eat . There , as usual , they had menus that said "Menu", which in French means "Cat", implying that they served it there . Bilingual culture has so many faux pas's , I could go on . . . Undux is the proper term for vagina , so if you say underwear , without accentuating the first "R", it implies that you are wearing women's undergarments . On & on & on . . .

When I was in Germany, my best friend needed to brush his teeth but he was out of tooth paste. So he used a local German brand. After several days off using it, we hadn't heard a complaint out of him but we made some Italian friends who had an interesting observation. They noticed that the tooth paste he was using was actually denture glue and they laughed as if the world was ending.
We did remember him saying that"this German tooth paste really doesn't lather like ours does.