Need softer, less potentially offensive word for "malapropism" [closed]

Say the phrasing is not idiomatic.

That says you are not judging the words as wrong, but the understanding will be confused because English is particularly idiomatic.

After all, there's no accounting for the idiom in any language. In their English, Spanish speakers say I have two years here, I have 25 years old, and I have two meters tall. English uses I am, and the easiest explanation is "It's idiomatic:"

Peculiar to or characteristic of a given language. - American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Ed.

Jeez, when you are making a reference to a comic-relief character in a comedy of manners first produced onstage in 1775, I think you have sort of bottomed-out when it comes to "soft" and "inoffensive".

Perhaps you could have fun with the idea. "Not the pineapple of accuracy." "My affluence over your spoken English is slight." "Your physiognomy is not grammatical!"

For my own ESL wife, I composed aphorisms to straighten distinctions she reversed. Like she would confuse "door" and "window", so I taught her "the WIND comes in the WINDOW; the DOg comes in the DOor."

They haven't helped at all but it's only been 28 years, so I'm still hopeful.