Hej there!

One of the confusing things about being in Denmark is that the Danish word for hello is hej, which is pronounced "hi". You'd think that would be simple enough, but if we said "hi", they might think we spoke Danish, so our conversations went something like this:

DANISH PERSON: "Hej."

ME: "Hi."

DANISH PERSON: "Sæøre lårøæå røæø?"

At which point I, being an idiot, would not say anything but would just stare in awe, at which point Gretchen would elbow me in the ribs until I asked if they spoke English.

(Of course, this was still probably better than Japan, where "hai" is also pronounced "hi" and means "yes". So we would walk into a shop and they would say "hai", as in "yes?", and our natural response was to reply to "hai" with a "hi" of our own, which I'm sure was quite confusing because the conversation was basically: "yes?" "yes!".)