Tangent: this neatly illustrates that trying to express yourself in a foreign language and failing outright, such that what you said doesn't make any sense, is not actually the biggest problem you can run into. It's much worse when you try to express yourself and come out with a perfectly-formed sentence that means something quite different from what you were hoping.

It's easy for people to make adjustments allowing for your badly-formed sentences. It's much harder for people to make adjustments allowing for the possibility that even though you said something natural, you might have meant something else entirely.