A generation of English language learning has brought tremendous improvement in China, but as second-language students well understand, becoming native in a new language can take decades.

Chinese people who can speak English have come clean about embarrassing mistakes they’ve made while speaking the language in North America. These stories aren’t verified and some of them read like jokes, but they do seem honest enough mistakes to make.

Seeing as they’re willing to share, let’s read along. Here they are:

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I wanted ketchup at Burger King! I don’t know what, but there was some unknown substance that was impairing my brain to think! So I said ‘check-up’ instead! The clerk looked as though some alien had come to buy a hamburger! And so I repeated myself! I firmly stated that I wanted a ‘check-up’!!! But from then on, I never went to Burger King again!

When I first arrived in the US, I went with a female student to open a bank account. A bank worker warmly approached us. But when the female student who was accompanying me said to the bank worker “May I help you?” the bank worker froze. I was behind her holding onto her clothes, but all she did was turn her head and told me to quit causing trouble. And then she turned to the bank worker and said again, “MAY I HELP YOU?”

It’s not okay to be okay

The English of so-and-so’s husband wasn’t very good when he first arrived. When taking the elevator, he accidentally stepped on the foot of a white woman. When trying to get away he then stepped on her other foot… The woman glared at him, to which the man wanted to tell her “I’M SORRY”. However, in a moment of nervousness, what actually came out was a loud, “IT’S OK!” The woman answered back with a loud “IT’S NOT OK!!” of her own. Everyone on board that elevator was going crazy…

My friend’s boyfriend is very cute. When he first came, he went to a supermarket. The clerk asked him is he wanted ‘cash back’, and he had thought that you could get money just by asking for it. So when the clerk asked him how much he wanted, he told them, ‘as much as possible!” 

The true merit of having a good English name

I enjoy going to Starbucks. When the staff ask me for my name, each time I explain it to them in detail (I didn’t know that they would just half-heartedly write it down). So, each time I would tell them that my name is xxx (in Chinese), to which they’d just scribble down something like %￥#@. This would lead to my refusing to pick up my own order in my previous trips… sigh… now, I know…

I went to Shoppers Drug Mart looking for cotton ear swabs. As I gestured an ear-cleaning motion, I asked, ‘Do you have condom stick?’‘Do you have condom stick?’ The clerk held up both hands as he said, ‘WHAT?’ My friend kept miming the action for using the condom, the condomstick… on and on… After a while, the clerk finally had a realization and said, ‘Do you mean cotton Q Tips?’

I have a friend who recently went to have steak for the first time in Canada. The waiter asked, ‘How would you like your steak done?’ My friend didn’t understand, but had heard other people say ‘medium’ when other people ordered their steak. He thought, ‘I don’t want to be the same as the others,’ and so he told the waiter, ‘Large, please.’ After visibly shocked at his request, the waiter answered, ‘Sorry, we don’t have that.’ The friend then said, ‘Small, please,’ but the waiter again said, Sorry, we don’t have that.’ Agitated, a person at the table told the friend that the waiter was asking how cooked he would like his steak. And so the friend answered, ’80 percent,’ to which the waiter again answered, ‘Sorry, we don’t have that…’

The first time I used a phone to call for a taxi, the other party asked me, ‘Where you from?” I answered, ‘China’, thinking it strange, do cab companies need to distinguish their customers by their nationalities? The other party probably thought that I was joking around, and monotonously told me, ‘Sorry, we cannot do that’… Upon hearing that… I was enraged… how can they be so racist?… and so I asked, ‘Why?’ After a stunned silence, the other party hung up…

The father of my friend got into a fight with a foreigner. The foreigner cursed him with a ‘FUCK’, and so my friend’s father retailiated with: ‘DOUBLE FUCK’. Pretty cool, huh?

My friend didn’t know anyone when she first arrived. So she tried to make friends during class. One day, she felt this white guy was pretty cool so she asked him for his phone number in order to be friends. She asked him, ‘How many is your phone number?’ ‘How many is your phone number?’ to which this white guy answered, ‘Ten.’ 

Upon first arriving, I went to Burger King for dinner and ordered a hamburger. The clerk asked me if I wanted sauce with that, and I said yes, to which they asked what kind. I forgot how to say ketchup, and after wracking my brain, all I could think of was jam. The clerk didn’t understand at first, but then resignedly just sighed and said, ‘It’s up to you.’ 

When my friend just arrived, a friendly person spoke to him while riding the bus, asking him ‘How is it going?’ My friend said he ‘go to school’…. The other person didn’t know what to do with that…

I was taking an ESL class when I first arrived, for which I took time off to attend a job fair. When I returned to class, the teacher asked me how it went. I ended up saying, “Too many foreigners!” The teacher replied, “You are the foreigner in Canada.” (Haha, I agree, there are just so many f*cking laowai)

When I first arrived, I went to McDonald’s for dinner. There weren’t any napkins, so I asked someone for some ‘paper’. The staff member came back with a couple of sheets and further asked, ‘Do you need a pen?’ This drove me crazy, after which I went to the bathroom and washed my hands.

When I first arrived, I would often answer things with ‘You too’… On my birthday, my home stay mom bought a birthday cake for me, and wished me a ‘Happy birthday’… to which I hastily answered, ‘You too’…

I can think of one: it was the first time my classmate had gone to McDonald’s. They were quite nervous, and upon ordering said loudly: ‘I want to this han baobao.’ My classmate repeated themselves as they pointed. The clerk didn’t know what to do. And, my classmate wouldn’t stop, and kept going on and on…

During the winter, I wanted to buy some snow boots for my feet. So I asked a stranger on the bus where I could buy some, only instead of saying ‘snow boots’ I accidentally said, ‘snow boobs’.

At JFK Airport I had a airline worker change my boarding pass. Upon completion, the worker told me to ‘Enjoy your flight.’ And just as quick, I responded with “You too”… The airline worker and all the people in line stood in shock.

Sacks on the beach

I was working as a clerk, and I had just learned how to use the word ‘sack’. Then this hot-looking guy comes into the store. When checking out his purchases, I wanted to ask him if he needed any bags for his purchases, so I said, ‘Do you need sacks?’ He looked at me with an astonished expression. At that time, I had just come to the US, and my pronunciation was poor. Thinking about it later, I may have said ‘sex’ in place of ‘sacks’… I feel like such a loser about it now.

My mother told me one of these. She was having dinner in the USA one time when someone asked her if she wanted French fries. She was completely confused. What kind of food is this, some kind of French steak…?

When first arriving in the USA, whenever someone told me ‘sorry’, I would respond with ‘You’re welcome.’

At the museum, I wanted to ask a staff member where the washroom was located. Instead my words became, ‘Where is restaurant?’

At the beginning, I could never figure out the difference between six and sex, sheet and shit, bitch and beach.I could never figure out the difference between six and sex, sheet and shit, bitch and beach… and so I never dared to use these during conversation…

Upon first arriving in Canada, there was this one time I went to Subway looking to buy a foot-long meatball sandwich. Instead, I blurted out, “Can I get a football…”

Upon first arriving, I got lost in the city, so I asked a foreign lady how to get there. She told me how, and so I wanted to say ‘thank you’ to her. Instead, out came a ‘fuck you’. The face of this woman immediately turned pale… Afterwards, I just say ‘thanks’, and don’t dare to say ‘thank you’ anymore, not even now.

When going to a convenience store to buy a Coke, I inadvertently blurted out “Cock” by mistake. …I’ll never forget the face of the shop clerk who was trying so hard to refrain from laughing…