Learning another language can all too easily lead to amusing results like this. On my recent trip to Thailand, I memorised the Thai phrase for "She doesn't eat meat" so I could let waiters in restaurants know that my wife didn't want any meat in her meals. The trouble was, whenever I said this to a waiter, they looked at me strangely, and it was only after a lot of gesturing and careful repetition that I managed to get my meaning across.

After this happened a few times, I checked my phrasebook to make sure of the pronunciations.

I discovered I'd been using the wrong pronoun all along. Instead of telling the waiters "She doesn't eat meat," I was telling them "You don't eat meat."