Unless you’re a linguist (or any other incarnation of a language expert), learning a language will likely be just a skill to get by in life.
Now, if you do focus on the journey and not the destination, however, you will learn just how fun it is to learn a language. Especially if you’re somewhere between the ages of 2 and 6 when you learn complex words and mispronounce them with equal yet entertaining complexity.
And then your parents laugh about it with the rest of the world because social media requires a sacrifice.
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I think waiters are used to it. Traveling in Germany for the first time my friend had no fear and spoke German even though he did not know any German two days ago. The waiter was quite smooth when my friend said (in surprisingly understandable German) "Waiter, you are a train track" (gleis). He wanted ice cream (glace). The waiter got it but without batting an eye still asked my friend what he wanted to eat.
When I studied German, my uncle married a German woman. Her non-English speaking mother came across the pond to meet his family. I proudly walked up to her in all of my twelve year old glory, and asked her in German, "Where is your name?"
Load More Replies...I once had a student's parent say that her son’s behavior had been “erotic” recently. I could barely contain myself.
As a high school teacher, I found that to be a reasonable presumption.
Load More Replies...This one never gets old 😂 I still wanna know how the waiter kept his composure
I used to know a guy who was a waiter, and the story I'll remember until I die is that he once walked up to a table just in time to hear somebody say "and I said, 'hey dad, can you help me put my condom on?' " Years later something brought that story up on a dive trip and an old guy on the boat said that back in the day scuba divers would put a condom on their hand or foot to keep salt water out if they had a cut, and it was really hard to put a condom on your own hand. That seems like a plausible explanation, and based on any other scenario I can come up with I'm hoping that's what it was about.
Meanwhile at the next table I'm scrambling to find that option on the lunch menu.
"Next table'? Sounds like you're looking at the menu in the wrong type of establishment.
Load More Replies...Watching my daughter order a "pasta fangool" in an Italian restaraunt instead of a pasta fazool (Pasta e Fagioli). I've never seen a waitress' face turn so red before trying not to crack up.
My three-year-old granddaughter admonished me that it is not nice to call someone an indianit (idiot). It is still indianit in our family twenty years on.
One of the superpowers that humans have is to soak in knowledge and information in the early stages of life. Language is one of the major things that we acquire as kids and continue to refine as we grow older. This happens automatically and requires no formal teaching. As long as they are surrounded by language, it will come to them eventually.
Did Peter Pan pee her pants? That not like his pants? Anybody peed any pants at all? What's it all meant for, if nobody even peed her pants? And, whose pants to begin with? Why? Accidentally, purposefully? Why? How? Where? When? How much? Is the villain exchanged from Captain Hook to some asparagesque dude, then?
I babysat my niece recently and she spent a good 10 minutes telling me all about "Pencil" going to find her mum and dad. Took me ages to realise that she meant Rapunzel.
My 3-year-old kept asking me to sing "Blowing Trousers" and when I said I didn't know it, she started crying, saying that I did but just didn't want to sing it To try and soothe her I started singing "Little Boy Blue come blow up your horn" and then she sighed and said, you see? You DO know Blowing Trousers .
Friends child called the farm truck a fxck. It was always funny and hard not to laugh.
It is important to note that surrounded by language means interaction. Parents and other people (not just adults, but kids too) do still have to interact with the kid in order for them to pick up the language and to be able to use it for communication. In fact, it’s just as easy for them to acquire multiple languages this way, as long as it’s done in the early stages in life for maximum effect.
A friend's 5 yo daughter burst into the house from the backyard announcing she'd found a "bird leaf". It was a seagull feather.
Future TV meteorologist. Dress him in a cute little blazer.
My son used to have the cutest terms. My favorite was "packpack" until he started kindergarten and another child told him he was wrong, which broke my heart. We had made it through preschool and pre-k with no corrections (since, why would we....they'll learn eventually and it's cute lol)
TBT when I flew Qantas to Japan and found that their OFFICIAL pronunciation in Japanese - as in, the one they use on all their Japanese documentation and in their Japanese inflight announcements - sounds like “cünt åss”. They are Australian, I guess.
My son did this with the F***troller from Thomas Tank......Fat Controller
My sisters best friend, when we were all small, all trucks started with an F. All the adults would rush to say TEE-ruck, Tee-ruck. We never understood why that excited them so much.
I once babysat a little guy who struggled with all kinds of words. I was "Warven" instead of Karen, his sister, who was named Melissa was "Didder". He couldn't say Melissa, so he just called her "Sister" -- only he couldn't say "sister" either, LOL. The best of all was one day when we were driving to pick up Melissa from school, and he said "Warven, look! Fire f**k!" It took me a minute to realize what he was talking about.
My wife's oldest daughter, when she was really young, said fire f***s instead of firetrucks.
It’s easier to get a pear tree on the black market. And isn’t bird trafficking supposed to be really profitable?
Warehousing them is a drag though, feeding them them, then...what goes in must come out.
Load More Replies...Same here. They gift 184 birds in that song. Who needs all those birds?
Load More Replies...I knew a little boy who used to sing "Winter Wonderland" as "Walking in the winter like a man". I can't hear that song any other way now.
And as is with every journey, learning a language comes gradually. Kids will start off from babbling and move on to monosyllabic and polysyllabic words, then will venture into building simple two-word sentences, then add words to build longer sentences ad infinitum.
In the same manner, they will also experiment with and practice languages, leading them to make mistakes in all facets of language use, including mispronunciation.
There is this hilarious video where a little girl is eating puto, which is a Filipino rice cake as her mom is Filipino, but her dad who is Colombian is not comfortable hearing her happily declare “It’s puto!”This gets even funnier when she says it around her grandma. “It’s big puto!”🤣
rice cake in Pilipino (Tagalog) is puto with an "O" at the end. We also use the term "puta" to mean whore. We have many Spanish origin words in the Philippines due to more than 300 years of Spanish colonization.
Puerta is Spanish for door. Puta means whore or b***h in Spanish.
Load More Replies...My younger sister, who is a total dinosaur geek, corrects me and my family on dinosaur facts all the time (and is usually right) yet still manages to mispronounce this one.
I have to resist the urge to do that still. I wanted to correct my four-year-old nephew about one dinosaur name, but then I decided it was better not to and just let him talk.
Load More Replies...Oh little kids! Too cutes! "Pitopotopus" instead of Hippopotamus! Awwws, super hugs for you, you funny gorgeous lil sweetheart! 😄
My 7 has forgotten most of the dinosaurs and sharks he used to know as a toddler and preschooler as his interests spread out. It's sad, but also a relief to not be quizzed by a little tyrant
To paint a picture of both making mistakes and the gradual learning of a language, consider this: a kid first learns by mimicking the language. So, if they learn the word feet, they will for a time say it perfectly. But then, they might revert to foots.
Now, saying revert is not really accurate—they have actually moved forward, just that they started applying grammatical conventions instead of just mimicking.
Parents used it a couple of times, kid listens, kid learns, kid says it.
Load More Replies...When referring to our doggo, everything that CAN have "pup" in it, does. She gets pupset, she will pup you up, and likes to be a pupperito. I don't make the rules, I just go with them.
Reminded me of when my then 3 yr old niece was riding her rocking horse and tried to say Yee haw Cowboy! But it came out as Wee Haw Cow whore!
I like it when he tells the story later on and "mommy had porn face". [edit: OMG. Don't miss the username.]
When Hardcore Paẅn ( pªwn is censored?!) was on TruTv my son proudly announced to his 1st grade teacher that his grandmother enjoyed watching Hardcore Porn every week on TV. That was a proud moment... 🤦🏻♀️
At this point, the kid understood what the singular form of feet was, and they understood that plural words take an s at the end. Hence feets. But it was wrong because English is a hot mess of a language that follows rule sets from ten if not more languages, and folks who learn it as a foreign language have to deal with the constant facepalming when they realize that buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo is a grammatically correct sentence.
There are multiple people in my life who repeated even ruder expressions that they learned from their respective parents in the car. 🤣
I've heard a lot of stories about kids learning the words they weren't supposed to from being in the car, but my favorite is probably one that's totally innocent. "Come on, you can do it." It's so easy to picture a parent behind somebody who needs an invitation to make a turn and saying that 10 times a day.
Load More Replies...Apparently the neighbours toddler picked up on me frustratedly telling me dog to be quiet. While my dog was barking like an idiot at nothing I heard this little voice from the other side of the fence say "yeh shut up your stupid barking". Oops!
When our daughter was 4, we went for a drive and she said, “I hope there aren’t any out there “. My husband ask, “Any what?” “A$$holes.”
Another story about someone I once babysat. Her southern Mama had a habit of saying "Oh, s**t!" often. Then, when Mama went to pick her daughter up one day, the daycare staff told Mama that the little one was using that phrase, a lot. Mama told her daughter that it wasn't nice to use those words, and they were going to say "Oh, dear" instead. And that worked out until the day Mom forgot something and had to circle back to get it. Little one's reaction: "Oh, s**t." Mama said, "What did we talk about? What are we supposed to say instead?" Little one's reply: "Oh, dear s**t." Mama gave up after that!
My mom says that's how I used to pronounce it too! I gotta show her this one lol
I used to watch a boy who said yesterday as "lasterday". That was 20 yrs ago and I still use it.
We used to call cumin cheese "pitjeskaas" (little seed cheese). My mom sent me to the cheese shop one day, I was around 9 years old, and told me to get some "komijnekaas" (which translates as cumin cheese). However, I did not know the word "komijn" and ordered konijnenkaas (rabbit cheese). People in the shop were very respectful, and I got my much adored old "pitjeskaas" :).
Thanks to Daniel Tiger it's forever referred to as "sprinkle cheese" in our home. My kids are teenagers now.
It was a class trip to our local art museum. The docent asked the kids what all the pictures in that room had in common. My son says "Cheeses". I start looking at the paintings trying to see what he saw. The docent asks again and he says "Cheeses, cheeses." I'm blank, his teacher is lost, the other kids know...Jesus.
As a child, my husband never understood the Christmas carol that went, "Round John Virgin" - he thought, Who is John Virgin, and why are they calling him "round"?? :P
The way Americans pronounce it does often sound like “farmer John”. In Britain it’s par-mezz-anne
In NZ we are in the town of Palmerston North while travelling Restaurant waiter called it Palmerston cheese..
Same, I was so upset anytime someone ruined a cute pronunciation that my son said. I intentionally did not correct him.
My daughter used to say put some baby location on instead of baby lotion. For years. Till somebody told her. I'll never forgive them either.
My daughter's fourth grade teacher is the one who told her they were penguins, not pink ones, dam her.
Our daughter calls Ala-carte as Olive cart, she's now 26 and expecting and I feel like my greatest accomplishment as a parent is that she never stopped. I’m sure she knows, but I don’t want her to know that I know she knows I know.
But wait, there's more kinds of babies! Rasp babies,cran babies,blue babies...
And so, learning a language happens pretty much in the same gradual way, no matter if it’s language production or reception. And this is where mishearing and mispronunciation come into play.
When children learn languages, they will sometimes learn to pronounce them just like they would other words they already know. Hence, cheese crisis and whack-a-mole like guacamole.
Can confirm. Source: Am a Masshole. (The best description I ever heard of a Masshole came from a comedian from Massachusetts. He said, "If you're on the side of the road with a flat tire, we will absolutely stop and help you. We'll tell you what an idiot you are the whole time, but we'll help you.)
Load More Replies...I tripped over that word until I was in Jr. High I think. It always came out Massa-two-s#*%s
I was much older than 12 when I first heard of fettucine, never mind pronounced it.
It’s this similarity that empowers kids to learn further, applying the rules and paradigms they know to words that the English language ends up ruining for them.
So, yes, it’s quite logical to pronounce fettuccine as if it rhymed with medicine, mishear French hens as henchmens and, instead of saying heebie jeebies, you say Hebrew Bee Gees.
We service ours over noddles that have been soaked in Italian dressing and our kids call it spaghetti chicken
Well, there is mole sauce which is also pronounced that way, so it makes sense.
No, there is not "mole sauce". Mole just eans sauce, so that would be sauce sauce.
Load More Replies...And that, ladies and gentlemen, is fun in more ways than one. Not only are these tiny linguistic mishaps cute and adorable, it also shows the beauty of watching kids grow up and grasp concepts that are mundane to us. Yet, how they experience it might just defamiliarize us, broadening our own perspectives, thus continuing the cycle of learning and better understanding the world.
I can't imagine a situation where I or anyone I know would ever have used the word "force field", so I can't see this being a very long-term joke.
Perhaps your household isn’t into sci-fi? As someone who has watched lots of sci-fi with my husband, force fields come up in conversation infrequently perhaps but certain more often than never.
Load More Replies...My oldest son, at about age 3, called them "earmops" instead of "headphones."
For anyone that is thinking of extended breastfeeding, be careful what you call it as they will ask for it in public after they learn to talk a bit. We called it boo boo. No idea why.
The really simple thing is to use the word 'milk'. It's accurate, totally accurate, and will not confuse anyone.
Load More Replies...When my brother was having hearing tests at the hospital, age toddler range, he was drawing photos of the family. The doctor was asking who's this, etc. He pointed to one and said "That's my mummy!", it had an odd bit one what would be the chest, he pointed to that and said "And that's her tigs!"
At around 2 years old, I screamed "BUNNY MILK!" for a few days until my parents figured out it was Nestlé Strawberry Milk powder I was after. Their mascot is a rabbit.
Prior to figuring it out, they were trying to figure out how to milk a bunny😂😂😂😂
Load More Replies...In fact, kids are an amazing source of understanding the world. Because of their unrestricted way of thinking outside the box, they often find very smart, and sometimes funny ways of expressing their problem solving skills. And that’s just what we see on the surface—inside their heads, tons upon tons of processes are going on, and creativity is just one of many results that follow.
The Japanese word for “cook” (as in a person who cooks professionally, not the act of cooking) sounds like “cøck” too.
Well, not exactly, since it sounds much like the transcription, "kokku". And it can also mean “cøck”.
Load More Replies...My Spanish family (Valenciano) eat a type of food that they call cóc. I love listening to how much they all enjoy eating my mother in-law's cóc.
In Swedish a cook is 'en kock'. And it is pronounced with short 'o'.
Coke (the drink) regularly gets mispronounced in Thailand (and probably other countries too). I know I did a double take the first time I ordered a meal and drink and was asked if I wanted a large c**k. Even in that context it took a second or too to parse and understand.
We were learning about mammals. In the context of them not being dinosaurs. Turns out I’m not a mammal as I didn’t breastfeed her. I guess I’m a reptile then.
Load More Replies...You also don't pee out of your vagina either, that's what the urethra is for
One would assume the kid is doing to basic male/female comparison of "dad pees standing up but poops sitting down" not actually comparing excretory orifices.
Load More Replies...So, with all that said, have you ever heard kids mispronounce the heck out of something to a degree that made you crack up? Why not share those instances in the comment section below!
Be sure to upvote the listicle, and if you want more, then check out another of our listicles about the times kids delivered stories in their own words that could only ever result in awkward and hilarious misunderstandings.
I thought bubble juice was the stuff in the bottles that come with bubble wands, for blowing bubbles... It's like juuuuust barely soapy water.
I still call it a merote, and eat "melly melon" because that's what my 46 yr old daughter called it when she was three. And because she now owns and directs a daycare, we still go potty and frequently point upwards, exclaiming "Airplane!"
My sister used to pronounce watermelon "waterlemon" and marshmallows were "yellows", pancakes were and still are "pamcakes"
wait whats wrong water lemon, i don't understand it sounds normal to me?
My grandmother told me my dad wanted to go see the "arti-gazip!" (Art Exhibit)
my niece used to call it a merote (she's now in her 20s). i still call it that.
My neighbor's kids thought the background singers in Circle of Life were chanting "Pink pajamas, penguins on the bottom".
Years ago my young daughter saw me put a dollop of peanut butter on a mouse trap and started calling peanut butter "mouse butter". I haven't eaten "mouse butter " in years.
Better than the "penis butter" it was (and still is) in my house
The girl I talked about in an above comment pronounced peanut butter as “be boy”.
Massive upvote for the B99 reference and a reminder of the wonderful Andre Braugher. 😢
Load More Replies...Or, "thank you" instead of "Akka Mama", which was the habit of one of my nephews when he was about two. All the grownups in his life were a little bit sad when that phrase went away.
May be an auto correct. Maybe they meant the word "corrects".
Load More Replies...We've called them that for years. Lol My son also called the back of his knee his "knee pit." He's 21 now and it's still a knee pit.
As a child I had no idea what the back of your knees were called, so I called them leg pits. Made sense.
My stepdaughter always called them her leg armpits. I never corrected her.
Load More Replies...My daughter calls it her thumb toe also! So that's what it is forevermore.
My middle boy used to all them fumb and thinger and somehow it works.
I really do have two thumbs. My thumbs are more rounded then pointed like normal peoples thumbs. They look sort of look like big toes.
I really don't like people who let kids do this long after they've started school.
I don't think you can edit whatever they're called on X now. I suppose they aren't tweets anymore. lol
Load More Replies...Took me a minute to get it, I was like “he pronounces parrot like pawwot or something? Why is that offensive?” 😂
Along those lines- one of my kids favourite shows is Super Kitties... but he says a K sound as a T
I had a child at the preschool where I worked say yehyo instead of yellow and it was the most adorable thing I've ever experienced.
Homeschooled for years .. board games were our secret weapon .. so many skills learned, so many differering strategies to explore
My daughter would say 'lillow' instead of 'pillow' and correcting her on it would have been cruel
My 2 yo said "ninja chuckits" a couple of weeks ago and I think that one will stick
Well, a burrito is a kind of a sleeping bag for spiced ground beef.
she may bave a point..they can release a juice for protection that make the skin itch
Swing and a miss for the auto-censor. From now on, I declare that the F-bomb can now be spelled "KFC" on this forum. What the KFC is going on here?
In a german comedy of the nineties - "RTL Samstag Nacht", = RTL Saturday Night - there was a section called "Kentucky Schreit Ficken", which exchanges some of the phonetics of the words in german, and translates to "Kentucky Screams Fukcing". Consisted of a dialogue with exchanged phonetery about having won something. Kinda funny, but in that concentration, it tends to become boring within a few episodes, as it's very predictable, ... but still, making us laugh a few times isn't too bad.
When my (now 33 yo) little sister was a toddler, she wanted ducky chide chicken. Ducky with an f, not a d.
If he pronounces "cat" as "tat" maybe a lot of people are curious about mom's artwork.
"Hello Titty" - How one letter can chage a franchise in dramatic ways....
My sister was born when I was 3, so my Mom would say to her, Big Sister came first, Big Sister knows best. We called her Wee One. When she started talking, she couldn't say Sister, it came out as Titty, as in Big Titty. One day, when she was 13, she said to me, "My titties are bigger than yours, now!"
use the horse! erect a horse field! Luke, I am your siiiirree
Luke, by Anakin out of Padme. Blood line of champions.
Load More Replies...My daughter used to pronounce it "Star Whores" and we still call it that. Taco Bell was always "talk about it" too
That sounds like a good title for a parody for Star Wars movie. Star Horse: A New Horse or A Neigh Horse. Or if other people can come up with other names let me know.
Yea it was Star Whores when son was 2-3. Hahahaha I'm dying laughing all over again just remembering that!
As a 5 y/o my eldest would say "Mommy works on elephants" I was a Paramedic. 4.5 decades later we still call them "elephants"
These make a lot of sense and it's easy to understand how new dialects spring up in different communities!
My brother pronounced hors d'oeuvres as horse de oovers, so he'd remember how to spell it. Audi, whose real name is Hors D'oeuvre, does not know this.
I had the "chicken pops" (pox) when I was a kid, and also, after an severe ear infection, had a "mastoidectomy" (removal of the mastoid bone in the ear) but proudly announced my "mastectomy!"
Maybe your toddler helped to program the "speech to text" function on my band friend's phone, because he's always talking about the sex parts.
My daughter when little would remark "the problem is dissolved." Many years later that's become standard.
I love that phrase,since we make too much fictional sorrows and problems in our minds that never happens..
Load More Replies...We also still use my nephew's "where da go?" these almost 50 years since he was 3.
The way children naturally absorb and experiment with language can sometimes lead to adorable and unexpected pronunciations. This process is well illustrated by collections that highlight the funniest moments in early speech development, offering insight into how kids internalize sounds and meanings.
Exploring such compilations can enrich your understanding of this fascinating aspect of language acquisition, as seen in common toddler mispronunciations.
When I was a kid I thought there was an L in the word and pronounced it as social-ty.
My niece couldn't pronounce Great Grandmama; she became Greatmama. And you know, the name fit.
My mom has been Gan-Gan going on 25 years now and she will fight you to the death over it.
My grandma was always grandma apple juice because she always had apple juice for us lol
When Prince William was a toddler and beginning to talk, he couldn’t say grandma properly, so to him and later Harry, the late Queen was known as Gary.
My little brother couldn’t say. Meridith when he was younger so he called our cousin Merafin. We still call her that sometimes. They are in college now.
To be honest, it's kinda weird that she asks for that sandwich :)
A band-aids sandwich is for when you're so hungry that your tummy hurts.
Calls to mind Lenny and Squiggy and their ginger meat men
I hope you asked them to try to ask again but kinder before you got the juice. My kiddo does this sometimes, demands food or drink now. I think he’s trying to convey how hungry or thirsty he is. But he always has to say something along the lines of, could you please get me juice? Before I’ll get it.
My son came home from playing with the little girls next door and announced that he knew what a BUHGINA was.
I looked after a small child with this exact same speech issue. We were reading Hickory Dickory Dock together one time, when the lad pointed to the picture and announced "my daddy's got a big clock!" We told daddy when he arrived to collect his son. He wasn't sure whether to be embarrassed or proud.
Based on websites about misheard song lyrics I've got to conclude that the kid was better at coming close than a lot of adults.
My neice called them "Pop Pop's Ami Dolphins. Dad was a fan of the Miami Dolphins so they were definitely "HIS ami Dolphins!"
My nephew use call skunks "stunks". I always thought he was on to something.
That's what my little sisters called them and I still do too.
Load More Replies...My son was good for mispronouncing or redefining words. Chameleons had "cameraflage" (meaning you couldn't take pictures of them, I guess). A cookout was a "steakout" because you cooked steaks on the grill. His uncle, who he disliked he said had OCAD which he explained was Obsessive, compulsive a*****e disorder. My niece used to call omelettes "omelopes" and macaroni "mickeyronis". My grandson pointed to a church and told his mother that "cheezitz" lived there. But the top prize belongs to his mother, my stepdaughter, who called getting a splinter under her skin as "having a "woody".
My son came home from playing with the little girls next door and announced, "I know what a BAGINA is."
My son called the back of his knees his "knee pits" and I think this should be in all the anatomy books.
I always wondered why my dad announced ' The bathroom's bacon!' every morning. My mum eventually told me he was saying 'the bathroom's vacant'.
My brother used to call "the fat controller" from Thomas the tank engine "the f*****g troller"
My daughter called our microwave a Michael Wave when she was little, we've been calling it that for many years now.
My now 18 year old son couldn't pronounce popcorn when he was a wee guy. Instead he would loudly ask for some "cockporn" at the kiosk in the cinema - was a sad day when he learned how to say it properly
My nephew use call skunks "stunks". I always thought he was on to something.
That's what my little sisters called them and I still do too.
Load More Replies...My son was good for mispronouncing or redefining words. Chameleons had "cameraflage" (meaning you couldn't take pictures of them, I guess). A cookout was a "steakout" because you cooked steaks on the grill. His uncle, who he disliked he said had OCAD which he explained was Obsessive, compulsive a*****e disorder. My niece used to call omelettes "omelopes" and macaroni "mickeyronis". My grandson pointed to a church and told his mother that "cheezitz" lived there. But the top prize belongs to his mother, my stepdaughter, who called getting a splinter under her skin as "having a "woody".
My son came home from playing with the little girls next door and announced, "I know what a BAGINA is."
My son called the back of his knees his "knee pits" and I think this should be in all the anatomy books.
I always wondered why my dad announced ' The bathroom's bacon!' every morning. My mum eventually told me he was saying 'the bathroom's vacant'.
My brother used to call "the fat controller" from Thomas the tank engine "the f*****g troller"
My daughter called our microwave a Michael Wave when she was little, we've been calling it that for many years now.
My now 18 year old son couldn't pronounce popcorn when he was a wee guy. Instead he would loudly ask for some "cockporn" at the kiosk in the cinema - was a sad day when he learned how to say it properly
