When I was living in Japan for a few years, I ended up dating a Filipino lady for a while. But she had no concept of colloquialisms; she took everything I said 100% literally. I quickly discovered that the English language is riddled with colloquialisms and we use them constantly.

One evening, she had called me maybe 6 times over the course of a couple hours. On the next call, I picked up and said, "Damn, you're killing me!"

She immediately broke down crying. She wailed, "Why would you ever say that?! I would never want to kill you!"

It took maybe a half hour to calm her down and get her to understand that this is an English expression and not meant to be taken literally. She finally agreed that I didn't mean it, but she told me I'm not allowed to use that expression again, because it hurts her heart to hear me accuse her of wanting to kill me.