We were translating some sentences during our Practical Grammar lesson.

I liked this subject, and hardly ever struggled with the language.

When it was my turn to answer, I easily translated the sentence without a second thought.

And everyone burst into laughter 🤣

It took me a second to realize that, having just returned from my German lesson, I confused the English "eale" with German "Igel".

As a result, instead of "дорога орла" (eagle's path), I said "ёжиковая тропинка" (hedgehog's path).

I was horrified and embarrassed.

But now I can't help smiling when I remember that moment.

There are several lessons here which I didn't understand at that moment:

1) Even when you know a lot, you will still make mistakes. It's OK. Everyone does. What seems easy isn't always correct.

2) There are a lot of words that sound similar - not only across languages but even inside the same one. Among the most frequent ones in English are:

lose/loose, 

wonder/wander, 

later/latter/letter, 

accept/except/expect, etc. 

It's like невежда and невежа in Russian (Do we have anything like this in Ukrainian?) Anyway, I usually use mental tricks to focus on the difference.

3) You won't know what you're doing right and wrong if you don't get feedback. Sometimes you learn best from your mistakes. If I hadn't felt embarrassed, I would have forgotten "ёжик" and "орёл" a long time ago

Have you ever been embarrassed about the language you used? Tell me about it 😉

Make mistakes, keep learning,

Tania.

PS: Here's a video about 7 words learners often pronounce incorrectly (it's in Russian)

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Reading time: about 3 minutes

Difficulty: quite easy (4 out of 10)