QUOTE (teleburst @ June 20, 2008 - 06:59 PM)

This definitely reminds me of a time when the German language was a new toy for me (nowadays, it's sort of a recalled toy from China, but that's a different story).
I was like an infant with a shiny object. I was soaking up the language like a sponge - but let's remember that a sponge has little native intelligence.
O, was I was proud of my baby steps and the fact that I was standing upright most of the time. I was conversing with my fiancee and her family in a semi-literate fashion after about 6 months. I could talk about the weather, comment on breakfast, deman...I mean ask for another beer, perform simple tasks when asked solely in German, etc.
I was trying to pick up little terms of endearment for my loved one, since she knew lots of them in English and I was starting to feel inadequate. Well, one day, while hanging around in mixed company, I picked up a neat sounding phrase that someone said about someone else and I didn't bother to translate it first in my head. It just stuck there, hanging around like a Turkish blade hovering over my neck.
When I got home on the weekend, I just had to try it out on my GF. I was shocked at her shocked reaction. "What did you just call me??!!??" "Na ja, mein Schatz, I hab' 'Du, bloede kuh, Du' gesagt". Then, a look of incredible pity came over her face.
"Baby", she said in English, shaking her head softly, "do you know what you just called me"? I meekly shook my head. "Na, mein Schatz,", she said, lapsing into Gerglish, "what does the word "bloede" mean"? "Uh oh", I thought - "this isn't going to be pretty". "Uhhhh", I stammered as the word came into focus, "stupid"? "Ja, baby. And now, was ist eine Kuh"?
"Oh, I"m in the sh!t now" I thought.
"It's a cow"?
"That's right my baby, you just called me a stupid cow".
haha... perfectly understandable though.