In Spanish the "v" is pronounced as a "b" and as a result many Spaniards have the tendency to pronounce the "v" as a "b" as well when speaking English.
Some time ago I was with a German and Mexican guy and we were talking (in English) about movies. The Mexican guy was talking about a move he saw called
The Last Boat . But while he was talking there was no mention of any boat so I didn't understand the title after which I just asked if there was any boat at all. It seems that he meant
The Last Vote.
I was rather surprised since I assumed that Mexicans would have a better knowledge of the English pronunciation due to the proximity to the U.S.
At work, we had a meeting with a Swedish customer. It was a project to design a mechanism and associated electronics. At some point, the (Spanish) electronics guy said that he needed 9
Volts afer which the Swedish responded what he needed 9
bolts for.
—————————-
In Spanish there are no words that end with "m" and many Spaniards have the tendency, while speaking English, to replace the "m" with an "n".
(I have no problem since I am Dutch/Spanish bilingual
).
We had a teleconference with the same Swedish customer and they asked the SW guy when they could expect a particular task to be finished. He replied with "
some day next week" after which the Swedish responded why he would work on a
Sunday.
—————————-
I was told about this particular anecdote about an e-mail exchange between a Frenchman and German that got out of hand. Apparently, the Frenchman "demanded" something and the German got outrageously pissed off because of his rude attitude as he thought that he was in no position to demand anything.
The verb "demander" in French means "to ask" and it seems that he assumed that "demand" in English also meant "to ask" which is not correct. ("To demand" is "exiger" in French). So it was a simple misunderstanding due to a false friend.