What Common Mistakes Have You Made In Spanish?

[French jurist]

I used to switch some letters around when writing "otro dia" and I would write "orto dia" which is a completely different kind of day...

So, if you are cooking with someone and you prepared already one of two pies, avoid saying Quieres que te hago el otro?

 

[wineguy999]

The use of the word "coger" - has a different meaning here as I learned the hard way

My wife was skyping with a friend in Spain yesterday. When he made the statement "coger a mano", I laughed for five minutes.

 

[DontMindMe]

After I studied abroad here, I wrote something on my Argentine roommate's Facebook wall about how I would be back "el ano que viene". I typed it without the ñ because I hadn't learned any keyboard commands yet and was too lazy to copy/paste, and I guess it goes without saying that I had no idea that "ano" was a word. Cue something like five of his Facebook friends making fun of me, comment after comment. I considered writing something juvenile asking these complete strangers about their English skills, but I opted to ignore them instead.

I kind of miss being able to use coger. I would hear it so much in Spain that I started saying it. It's so useful! You can coger a taxi, coger a table at a restaurant, coger flowers.

 

[Joe]

My wife was skyping with a friend in Spain yesterday. When he made the statement "coger a mano", I laughed for five minutes.

Coger does not mean f*ck in all South American countries.

 

[PhilipDT]

Yes but it does here.

I'm taking beginning portuguese lessons at the Casa do Brasil. We're all adults, but if you'd have heard us after the teacher corrected a student's pronunciation on Eu gosto di correr (I like to run) you'd have thought we were all middle schoolers.

 

[sleslie23]

I frequently pronounce the letter H when speaking. It took me years to say moho correctly and cohete still comes out sounding like "fuck you."

 

[ajoknoblauch]

I've made and continue to make loads of errors.
One I remember when living in Spain and we had our house robbed, the Guardia Civil came over and said they would need to send a perito, so I asked them why they would need to send me a small dog.
And estoy embarazado is a mistake I made only once....

A young British woman I met in Guatemala had gone to a boarding school taught by Catholic nuns in Colombia. When she told them something for which she wanted to apologize, she said "Estoy embarazada" and there was a total freakout.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Yes but it does here.

I'm taking beginning portuguese lessons at the Casa do Brasil. We're all adults, but if you'd have heard us after the teacher corrected a student's pronunciation on Eu gosto di correr (I like to run) you'd have thought we were all middle schoolers.

I found that Spanish got in the way of my Portuguese, which I can read pretty well but have difficulty speaking even after a ten-week intensive course when I was a grad student at Berkeley.

 

[French jurist]

One I remember when living in Spain and we had our house robbed, the Guardia Civil came over and said they would need to send a perito, so I asked them why they would need to send me a small dog.

Had a similar situation with that word (why do they need a puppy dog? huh?)

 

[Ceviche]

one of the first words taught to me by my Spanish teacher was embarazada

she said, it does not mean embarassed. It means pregnant. Please dont use this word wrongly.

So I never made the mistake of telling anyone, I am pregnant!