Thread: How badly have you mangled other languages?

Portuguese is my first language. English is my second language. French is the third - but not even close to the quality of my english (which is good enough... but with lots of space for improvements). German is barely enough not to starve to death, Spanish is non-existent (almost) but simply because of that old rivalry between Portugal and Spain. When they visit my country they don't make an effort - when I go there, I don't make any effort as well.
Being in Belgium now, I have lots of opportunities to improve on my French. One of them is... well... at work!
When I came here, a month ago, when I spoke people quinched their eyes, as if making an extra effort to understand my uninteligible mumblings. No embarassement, though...
However, last year, when I came here with a friend of mine (who speaks perfect french) we were at the rain station buying tickets to Amsterdam. He did the talking... However, not being able to keep my mouth shut and thinking that my french was good enough to ask a simple question, I decided to ask the ticket lady how many stops there were before we arrived in Amsterdam. The thing is: because the words "stop" and "fish spine", in french are vaguely the same, and my accent is not so good, I ended up asking "how many fish spines before getting to Amsterdam". Obviously, the lady didn't understand... My friend did, though... and decided to burst out laughing! But nevermind... I mock is English as well.
But let me tell you a story about this friend of mine...
In 2007 we decided to do a bit of traveling, just the 2 of us. We did this Interail thing - 25 days going about in Europe, backpacking and just enjoying ourselves. Of course, all play and no work makes Jack a stupid boy so we decided to take brakes from our fun and do some studying! He went to a Summer University in France and I went to Belgium to do a Composition Course. Anyhow, we met up in Brussels a couple 10 days later and went to Amsterdam and the to Berlin; in Berlin we stayed at a youth hostel in one of those dorms where people come in and go all the time. One night, very late at night (I was sleeping in a bunk bed over my friend - and had bough a watch in the afternoon), my friend was woken up by very intense snoring comming from a bed next to his. He woke up and thought that I had changed beds. So he decided to find out if it was really me... tapping gently on the man next to him, in the dark, he found a watch. Immediately he decided that it was me... So he decided to shake him and say "Francisco! wake up!" Nothing... He then started poking the stranger on the forehead until he woke up! When he started mumbling some stuff in german... my friend realized that it wasn't me. In the morning he told me this story. I was very amused! But then the stranger came into the room (a huge german drunk bloke...) and my friend, with his very poor english, decided to appologize for the previous night's unfortunate events. He said, and I quote: "I'm sorry but last night I touch you. But I think you were my friend!"
Well... I guess you had to be there...

english being my first language.. i mangle it the most.. here's a fun tale from freshmen year in high school..

i was trying to open the restroom door and it seemed to be locked.. so my math teacher strolls by and tells me it's ok if i use the teacher's restroom..
we're both in there standing at urinals when he asks.. "is this restroom much different than the student's?".. for some reason i thought urinals were called janitals.. so i jokingly said.. "we'll the genitals are a little higher up here"... the teacher looked puzzled and said.. "i dunno.. i seen some pretty tall seniors"

english is my first and only language i gave learning korean a shot but man oh man do i slaughter that. i did mange to learn a few phrases though

My German is awful... when we moved here there was a mixup with a delivery company. We asked for a delivery in the afternoon and they tried to deliver at 8am. I ended up angrily shouting "genau" (correct) instead of "genug" (enough) to the customer rep on the phone. The poor sod must have been very confused.

Maybe I should take some basic German classes someday... I've only been living here for 4 years now Then again, my German is still better than my wife's... and she took classes for two semesters.