Tell me your latest blunder

That is exactly the explanation my Japanese friend gave to me when we left the place. I said I know that wasn’t the correct phrase, but why was it so funny? She said the way you spoke to them, it sounded like you were their boss. I would have said it with a lot of confidence too, after a few high balls!

She gave them a ‘she means to say ご馳走’ explanation on my behalf and they just laughed and said she’s cute, come back again soon.

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It could have been worse you know, I remember watching on youtube a guy explaining he mistakenly said once ごちそうさま instead of ご愁傷さま… :scream:

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Kinda cheating here since it not the latest, but my best/worst blunder was during my very first week in Japan. An extremely friendly Japanese local invited a bunch of people to her house for a cross cultural dinner type thing. I tried to ask this one girl there if she was a college student, but I said, 大好きですか? instead of 大学生ですか?

We’ve been dating now for over a year, so yeah don’t be afraid to make mistakes, I guess.

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Data be GOAT

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Well, first the successful part:

Understood the meaning 明確 successfully in the wild :white_check_mark:
Found a Japanese whiskey at a great price :white_check_mark:
Product of Japan from a reputable market place (Trader Joe’s) :white_check_mark: :tumbler_glass:

The name did come across a bit odd using na adjective title :thinking:, but native stuff takes liberties all the time to be stylish…who am I to judge as a language learner?

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Well, every native I showed it to laughed at me immediately. :rofl:

First was 明確な? なに?ええ? No, this is not a creative stylish title :x:
There is something definitely wrong in the strokes, I mean, they forgot a whole stroke in 確 and the 日 in 明 is taking some serious liberties…even in the sloppiest handwriting strokes are not absent, again I thought this was just styling since I trusted this was real. :x: :man_facepalming:
My wife immediately saw it and said I got ripped off and said it offended her culture just having in the house but I said ‘No, no way’. A quick internet search yielded other natives echoing the same sentiment. And because MIJ quality if of high demand, fakery is always around :x:
In US, we have TJ across the country and this was an ‘exclusive’ offering from a Hyogo distiller of unknown name/location…guess that is a ‘secret’. I emailed the company like a crazy person and I just got a generic advertisement of the product in a response. :x:

So that’s my blunder…but wait, how did it taste? Really, who cares if not MIJ since it wasn’t a ridiculous import price…as long as I like the flavor then all good, right? Plus a drink was welcomed at this point.

I can say this is one of the most foul drinks I ever had…the whole complexity literally tasted like someone dropped a burnt rubber tire into a whiskey barrel…definitely the final confirmation :x:

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I saw this thread and just remembered one of my old blunders (doesn’t seem like many people are sharing latest blunders anyway).

In my first year of living in Japan, my wife was pregnant. All our friends and acquaintances knew she was eager to have the baby and was past her due date. One day while I was out, people kept asking me if my wife had had the baby yet, and all day long I kept replying 産まない. Each time people acted very sorry and upset (I assumed because they just knew my wife was eager to have the baby and it hadn’t happened yet). I just waved it off each time and told them not to worry about it, “just a minor trial”. They all looked at me like I was crazy.
At the end of the day, I was speaking with another friend, had the same conversation, and after I was like “It’s really no big deal, it’ll be okay.” He paused, shocked like everyone else had been (apparently not shocked at my ability to overcome minor inconveniences). Then suddenly the light bulb went on in his head and he said, “do you mean 産んでいない”? And I was like, yeah what’s the dif… oh no.
Apparently, 産まない (which literally means something like “won’t give birth”) is a somewhat common way to refer to the death of the child :grimacing:

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At least you didn’t say モル. Or 内通者.

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oh, oh no… that’s giving me second-hand trauma…

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Oh no… hahahaha

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At least it’s a funny story now…

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