Most embarrassing moments learning chinese Part 3

Here are yet more of peoples most embarrassing moments learning chinese from Chinese-forums.com.

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oh, and one more was another friend (lucky this stuff never happens to me) who had this one Chinese guy convince him to use weige as his Chinese name. He thought it sounded cool, but whenever he introduced himself to girls they'd start laughing. A couple weeks later he found out he had been calling himself "Viagra".

By ChouDoufu

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I've had plenty of embarrassing moments myself but one of the funniest happened to a friend of mine. We were newly arrived in Taiwan. He wanted to say to this Chinese man, "Wo3 xiang3 wen4 ni3. (I want to ask you...)", but it came out "Wo3 xiang3 wen2 ni3" which because of tone changes could be understood as "I want to kiss you." or "I want to smell you." However the Chinese fellow understood it, he sure had a funny look on his face.

By jwarriner
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I really messed up one afternoon not long after I'd arrived in Bei Jing. I was walking in Beihai park one afternoon with relatives of a Chinese lady I knew back in the UK. They didn't speak English and my Chinese was rudimentary to say the least so our conversation was a bit stilted. In one last attempt, my friend's brother asked me ' zai zhongguo ni you nan peng you ma ?'

I was very happy as I thought that I had understood their question (for the first time that afternoon). Unfortunately I had understood ' ni you peng you' instead of 'ni you nan peng you', and launched into a long tirade to prove how great my Chinese was - approximately along the following lines :

" you, kending you hen duo, you yingguo de, zhongguo de, ye you meiguo he riben de (etc.)"

there was no reaction, so I carried on:

" you nu de, ye you nan de"

by this time I realised something was amiss judging by the exxpression on their faces. It was embarassing for me but at least it broke the ice.

By tigronne
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What tigronne was actually asked was “Do you have a boyfriend in China?” She thought he had asked “Do you have a friend in China?” and replied, “I do, in Kending I have lots, also in Britain, and in China, and in America, and in Japan…etc”