Language Fails - Blog Posts

Yeah my Greek family always says ‘close the lights’ or ‘shut the lights’ instead of ‘turn off the lights’ and I’ve been hearing that since I was little so it honestly sounds perfectly normal to me lol.

In terms of my own blunders: 

for some reason my brain likes French articles (le, la, les) better than any others, so I have this weird thing where I keep trying to use French articles when speaking English or Greek. 

random everyday words that get used a lot, like hello and good morning and thank you, are very easy to mix up for some reason. Sometimes I say ‘merci!’ without even thinking about it in an English-speaking environment or I have to consciously stop myself from saying ‘γεια σασ!’ (hello) to some poor random friend who will have no idea what I’m saying...

English is my first and most fluent language, but there are random words that I learned in greek or french first, and it just sounds really weird to me to say them in English. The most egregious example of this is the word chamomile, like chamomile tea. Saying kam-oh-meel sounds so utterly weird to me that I actually have to pause before I say it out loud in english. The greek word for it is χαμομηλι, pronounced sort of like hah-moh-mee-lee (chamomili). It makes no sense if I try to use the greek pronunciation in the middle of an english sentence, but saying it in english sounds so odd that I sometimes just avoid the word. 

when I forget the french word for something so I switch to english to try and explain to someone who speaks french but knows a little english and we puzzle it out together

there was one time I was trying to ask someone how to say ‘please’ in italian except for some reason I forgot the word please and could only remember it in french and greek (s’il vous plait and παρακαλο, respectively) so I was standing there for a few moments like a nitwit while I tried to remember how to say please in English

On occasion, my Opa will be speaking Dutch to another of our Dutch-speaking family members, then turn to me and start jabbering to me in Dutch, conveniently forgetting that the extent of my Dutch knowledge is like, ten words. (It was particularly funny one time when he did this to my mother, who, being from the Greek side of the family, has absolutely no reason to know any Dutch.)

Also I am strongly reminded of this hilarious post which I originally encountered on @space-australians

im going to have a stroke