Anyhow, Englisch folk has on the other hand a connotation of tradition, e.g. folk story, tale, not unlike Ger. Volksmärchen. In particular, Volksweisheit may be translated variously as "folk wisdom" (dict.cc) or "wisdom of the crowds" (common knowledge? majority opinion?) but “saying, idiom, aphorism, maxim" (collins: Spruch) is closer to the truth (“[…] im Volke überlieferte Sentenz”, Wörterbuch der Deutschen Gegenwartssprache: Volksweisheit).

In French, the name for a certain type of window is le vasistas, almost certainly from German was ist das? ("what is that?"), inquiring about that particular type of window (which is far more common in France than in Germany).

Förstemann, clearly reinventing the wheel, defines Volksetymologie as a form of corruption, e.g. woodchuck for Cree ocêk, otchek, and was lauded for summarizing a slew of similar concepts. He pitted Volk "the people" against the learned (“gelehrte”) and the scholarly (“wissenschaftlich”). I am not sure what Schmeller said.

However, it is at least possible that kangaroo became reanalyzed as something like "false" as in kangaroo court and eventually repurposed for etymology. The etymology of kangaroo court remains obscure, anyway.

As for kangaroo etymology or, there are many stories of one language's "What? I don't know" being handled as pseudo-etymology in another language's lexicon.

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There’s an urban legend that the word kangaroo is from an Aboriginal phrase that means, “I don’t know.” This is not true: the word is actually from a Guugu Yimithirr word for a particular species of kangaroo, gangurru.

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But are there any known cases of this kind of thing really happening? That is, a misunderstanding or lack of understanding of another language leading to a term being borrowed for something even though it has a totally different meaning in the source language.

Folk or German Volk (Volksetymology) have different connotations. The coinage of Volksetymology is often credited to Förstemann (Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der Indogermanischen Sprachen, 1852). French etymologie populaire appears some time later, possibly mediated by English. Wiktionary credits folk etymology to Smythe Palmer (1882) in turn "from a calque of German Volksetymologie (1820s, in 1821 as Volks-Etymologie in J. A. Schmeller's Die Mundarten Bayerns grammatisch dargestellt)".

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Examples of mistranslations taking root so as to be true etymology will be left as exercise to the reader until further notice.

Meanwhile, Wiktionary has folk etymology "also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation" and distinguishes it from false etymology "or pseudo-etymology". Rebracketing, mondegreen, egghorn and more have separate entries, which makes for a confusing situation. Ex falso quodlibet. The folk element remains important because any legend has a kernel of truth which distinguishes it from false etymology.