On the TV show NCIS, Ziva often makes humorous mistakes using idiomatic expressions (English is not her first language - she is Israeli).
I would expect the most common way a non-native speaker would make mistakes in an idiom is related to meaning - either saying the underlying meaning outright (translating the translated meaning back to English from their native language), or substituting synonyms for words in the correct idiom (if they do not remember it exactly).
Examples I would expect are:
Pitch a fit
becoming either
Complain childishly
Pitch a tantrum
However, she substitutes words that sound like the appropriate word, but mean something entirely different, such as the following two:
Does a bear sit in the woods?
American idioms drive me up the hall!
Are these common errors likely to be made by a non-native speaker, or are they just used in the show for comedic effect?
I'd like to hear from non-native speakers who may have had trouble with English idioms (not necessarily American). Did you make these same kind of mistakes, or is it uncommon to do so?