Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan seems to be brushing up on her languages this week, speaking Italian, French and Arabic over social media Tim P. Whitby/Getty

Lindsay Lohan shared a quote in Arabic on her Instagram page this morning, which she thought said "You're beautiful" but which actually translated as "You're a donkey".

The 28-year-old appears to be attempting to polish up her foreign languages recently. On Monday she tweeted "Habibi", a term of endearment meaning anything from "my friend" to "my love".

The Mean Girls actress, who is of Irish and Italian descent, shared an image of her grandparents on her social media profiles too, captioning the photograph in Italian which read: "Un amore eterno #nonno #nonna @dinalohan". She then finished her tribute with the French words, "c'est très jolie".

Fortunately for Lohan, she could simply delete her misspelled post as if it never happened, with only the worry that millions of her followers had glimpsed the mishap before she erased it minutes later.

Ironic ink

Other celebrities that have had a problem with spelling in a different language have not been so lucky, often sharing their quotes through a much more permanent medium.

In 2010, David Beckham wanted to get a tattoo in honour of his wife Victoria Beckham by getting her name inked on his forearm in Hindi Sanskrit but his tribute literally reads "Vihctoria".

Close but just as unlucky (and painfully ironic) is Heroes actress Hayden Panettiere's back tattoo, which the star intended to be translated as "live without regrets". An extra letter added to the script accidentally turned the phrase into gibberish, regretfully.

Back in 2010, singer Rihanna thought she was getting the words "rebellious flower'" in French tattooed on her neck but due to the differences in sentence structure in the language, ended up with a tattoo that literally read "flower rebel" instead.

However, at least it still had the same meaning essentially, unlike Britney Spears' spelling mistake. The Hit Me Baby One More Time hit maker had hoped she was decorating her hip with a Chinese character that means "mysterious". It actually means "strange".

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