Whether you think language learning is easy or hard, there is one common standard: it is great for comedy!

In honor of our first week back at school, here are a few of our most favorite language blunders!

• Lauren going to the bread store and asking for bread and a set of grandparents, instead of the type of bread called “grandmother’s bread.”
• Lauren going to the bread store and asking for bread and a house, instead of the type of bread. (Needless to say, she gets tongue tied when buying bread, and they know us when we come in.)
• Instead of telling his friend he needed to charge his phone, Jeff told his friend on the phone that he needed to go poop to the bathroom.
• Lauren saying her phone was pickled instead of dead.
• Lauren practicing her sunday school lesson with a teacher and saying she would teach the kids how to love on top of one another instead of how to love each other. (That could have been disastrous!)
• Jeff bought the wrong kind of milk, and found out what the word for buttermilk is here by tasting it in our cereal.
• Instead of reading a conjunction word properly, frequently used in the bible passage Lauren was reading in class, she found out the importance of pronunciation- one type of “a” sound makes a conjunction word, another “a” sound makes a not-so-nice word.
• Jeff was asked by our administrator if he liked chicken or rooster eggs, but he didn’t know the word for rooster. He said both and now it is a running joke for our administrator every time we see him.
• Instead of saying our friend missed Romania, Jeff told our landlord she was in pain.
• Lauren was trying to tell a story and instead of saying her dad was going to meet her mom, she said her dad was going to meet our Romanian friend’s mom. It became a very confusing story.
• Instead of telling a woman at the store Lauren didn’t speak Romanian, she told the woman that she didn’t speak Romanian.
• Jeff did well speaking and understanding Romanian until it came down to tell the woman how we would pay and his face froze.

If that didn’t make you laugh enough, we often enjoy this clip from the show “Friends.”

On the plus side, we have both told one successful joke in Romanian! <– now that is an accomplishment!

Haha! Here is to more blunders and fun times learning this fall! Now we are just praying for bravery to continue to put our foot in our mouth and keep trying. Learning a new language can become discouraging when you find yourself not being able to do such basic things; but that is where our pride is cut to the core and we are humbled. I still cannot figure out how I know what people are saying in Romanian but I do not know how to respond, or  how to say what they just said to me.

Here is to more mind stretching, pulling, and growth!

“I can do all things through him [Christ] who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13