Making Mistakes with Foreign Languages

Making errors when speaking a foreign language comes with the territory, and smart language learners will do what they can to embrace their own screw-ups as a positive way of moving forward with their language studies. At the very least, it’s important to avoid being so scared of making an error that you never open your mouth, which is a problem a lot of Japanese learners of English have. Wanting to avoid linguistic slip-ups, they prefer to pre-load their “brain cache” before speaking rather than just opening their mouth and letting the words fall out naturally. I’ve made plenty of large and small errors over the years, for example there was the time I confused the word hinan (to evacuate) with hinin (to use a contraceptive) in mixed company, or all the times I confused “mango” with a similar word that refers to the female reproductive parts in front of a pretty waitress. Before I married my wife, we were planning what photographs we wanted taken at the wedding, and she kept telling me how she wanted a picture of her standing on “the glass.” I couldn’t understand what she was saying — did she want a picture of herself standing on a reflective surface while wearing her dress? — but it turned out she was talking about the grass lawn in front of the chapel in San Diego.

Linguistic mistakes are everywhere, you just have to embrace them and move forward.