The other day, Mrs Dodger was travelling through Germany on the ICE. At one station their departure was delayed because a kite was caught in the overhead lines. The conductor announced this, first in German, then in English.

The German word for "kite" is der Drachen. A similar-sounding word is der Drache, which means "dragon". So when the conductor made the announcement in English, guess what he said was caught in the lines.

Just for laughs, we were literally driven mad by an Australian friend of ours who kept wanting to go to Linkenstein (instead of that liltle principality east of Switzerland). His other mate wanted to travel in a Winnabagel!

Oi! (I'm a latecomer to this discussion).

I live in canada ,my name is WERNER, not verner,vernon etc

We saw a bus from the same company this summer by the Rhein Falls!!!!! I had taken my friend who came to visit from California ( and her 3 children) and oh my!! She was quietly laughing and hoping her children would not see it!! Too funny! It had really big letter written on the side...I wanted to take a picture but I wasn't fast enough!!!

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I always hear slightly embarassing pronounciation of "Coke" in shops and restaurants and when travelled, obliviously asking for something totaly different
Oh when I first came to UK, my buttoned was loosened and I needed to fix so I went to my host to ask her if I could borrow her "nipple" while miming the sewing action, she was very cool when she corrected me and upon checking my dictionay i was , hilarious and this is also quite funny following week Japanese friend wanted to borrow her husbans "willy" to go for a walk. She meant the Wellies))))).

Willage instead of Village.. just made me laugh at the time

And oh how about the foot mushrooms as in foot fungus

Call me childish but i get the giggles everytime travelling from Basel to Interlaken, I see a massive exit sign to WANKDORF, so i wonder what are the people who come from that willage is called

haha thats ace!

OK. I've got a good one. My parents were taken to a fancy French restaurants by their neighbors in Canada. (The type where you have no prices on the menu)

My dad looked at the waitress and in all seriousness asked her for a "rabi steak". Some were cracking up while others tried to keep a straight face at the table as to not offend him. He calls the other type of steak "tender lion". (For those of you who don't see anything wrong with this, it should have been "rib eye" and "tenderloin".

Here's another one:

We moved to Ticino (the Italian part of Switzerland) in May and my son quickly joined the football (soccer) team. He didn't speak a word of Italian yet. He came home after practise and said, "Mom, you won't believe this but almost every kid on my team is called Lui". It wasn't until weeks later that he learned that "lui" just means "he" in Italian and when the coach was pointing at all the boys going "lui, lui and lui" he was just saying "he, he and he".

When I was six, I called them Winnabagels, too. Made more sense at the time than Winnebago.

My poor son will have a hard time in school because of the "w"s in his name. We named him before we knew we were moving here. When getting his immunizations, the nurse asked for "Edvard Vestfield." :P

One that drives me crazy is when English speaking people say Jagwire instead of Jaguar.

We are just as childish laughing at this all the time as well particular when combined with "Gotthard"... on the same sign.

On the flip side...

So one evening after a family get together with my future inlaws and family... Time to call it a night my boyfriend and I decided to leave. Saying goodbyes and such I though it would be nice to put my little knowledge of Swiss German to use, and so I went. "Gute nacht. Schlaff gut mitenand."
You can only imagine the laughter that followed me and the puzzled look on my face

and what's in english?

If you mean the previous post "Gute Nacht etc" it means Good Night, Sleep well together"

The Swiss often use the word "mitenand" when greeting or leaving, literally it means "with one another" or simply "together". I think it sounds a bit daft saying "Hello all together" but that's just the Swiss way of using German

haha fair enough!

Read the subject... I had unwittingly committed a faux pas.

"The Wrong Word(s) [non-native speaker slip-ups]"

And thanks Louis Wu for translating. :-)