>>One of the cohosts on a local sports radio talk show is John Jurkovic, nicknamed Jurko. (Pronounced yerk-o, not jerk-o, and yes, the last name is Croatian).
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>Should be yoork-o, but there's no way to spell a short u in English.
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>>He is actually a pretty erudite guy for a former NFL defensive lineman but he uncorks the occasional malapropism, to the great merriment of his cohosts, Mac and Harry. One of them coined the term "Jurktionary" for his wanderings from the straight and narrow of the English language. "There's another one for the Jurktionary!" they'll cackle. Jurko takes it all with good humor.
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>I do such things on purpose sometimes - some proverbs or movie quotes tend to sound good when translated literally - and sometimes, well, on blind chance :).
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>One thing that still confuses me in American English is the accent (aka stress, since accent is now something that belongs to home decoration and clothing). There are many words that I know from reading, but never heard them spoken - comes from being around monitor and books more than around people - and when I need to use such a word in speaking, I get it wrong most of the time. To Americans' credit, they don't laugh at me. Got a giggle once, and indulged the request to repeat, when I pronounced "yahoo" with the oo stressed, as in baloon.
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>The Hungarians and Germans are also very well mannered in that area, to the degree where it doesn't really help - they are so happy that someone's trying to speak their language, that they never tell you when you say it wrong. I usually had to tell a few people to start pointing my mistakes or I'll never get it right - how could I if I never knew where I was wrong.
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>On the other hand of the spectrum you got the French and the Serbs, who usually openly ridicule those who learn the language - or so I heard. I did have a German friend who learned, and while he did get a lot of laughs, he also got a lot of help from everybody.

I once heard that the French are attempt to rid all non-french based words from their current language. Namely English. (I wish I kept links to these articles).