Making a killing

As a foreigner in Denmark, I have made many language mistakes - some of which I am aware of and some I am sure I am luckily blissfully unaware of.

My Danish family are always very kind and forgiving about my Danish. There was the time when I told my mother-in-law that we were having roast kitten for dinner; the Danish word for chicken (kylling) being very close to the word for kitten (killing).

And the time where I mixed up the word for pillow with another very rude word that can't be written here. I have also told people at a very formal dinner party that I didn't want anything else to eat because I was too drunk ( I wasn't - I was full - which sounds the same as the Danish word for drunk.) I know I am not the only one to make these mistakes.

I have an English friend here who once cheerfully explained that her husband had caught, killed and barbecued a goat in their backgarden (she was really talking about a type of fish, a Pike, which is very similar to the word for goat in Danish).

My sister-in-law recently sent in an article to a Danish newspaper that they published. It was about a telegram that my father-in-law received when he graduated (in 1949). His English uncle, keen to congratulate him and having had an interest in language, particularly the scandinavian languages, since he had shared a trench with a Norwegian soldier in WWI, decided to write the telegram in Danish. And so he used an English-Danish dictionary to look up the words. When he looked up the word for "well-done" he found "gennemkogt" - which in Danish means "thoroughly boiled or cooked" (or well-done in the context of a steak). And this is what it says on the telegram.

Google-translate, eat your heart out!