Some of my Australian co-workers can speak a little Japanese language, but one guy can speak it quite well. One day he rang me (he was speaking in Japanese) to say he would not be coming in to work because he had to go to the hairdresser. What?! I thought this was very strange, until I realised he meant to say 'hospital'. The words for hospital and hairdresser are very similar in Japanese - byouin and biyouin. I could easily understand his mistake.
I also sometimes make mistakes with English language. I remember I was having a conversation in English with a couple of colleagues. We were talking about the constitution, when suddenly they both burst out laughing. I had no idea why until they told me I had mispronounced the word 'constitution' and had been saying 'constipation' instead. Embarrassing!
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