Who said learning Spanish wouldn't be embarrassing?
Sunday July 22, 2007
As you learn Spanish, it's inevitable you'll make mistakes. And if you keep at it long enough, it's inevitable that some of those mistakes will be embarrassing. Perhaps you'll use a word not knowing it has off-color connotations, or perhaps you'll unintentionally insult someone without knowing it. When it happens, please share it with us, either in the forum or by clicking the Comment link below. Read the mistakes others have made...
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I was helping to entertain my brother’s Spanish speaking friends from Puerto Rico. They were very much intrigued by the wild black bears that visit my parents’ backyard. I told them that my son killed a bear when he was just 10 years old they were very solemn though I told the story with pride. My brother called me a week later saying that they had inquired further about my near relative who was killed by a bear at age 10. We all had a big laugh. I still don’t know how to communicate that story in Spanish. But its fun to make mistakes!
Both cases from my first office, when I spoke very little spanish…
Once a collegue said to me, that he cannot read my mails anymore, because he cant help laughing. To my surprise, he explained, that during the last half a year, every other time, I´ve been calling the key field (”campo clave”) of the database “campo clavo”, which literally means “field of the nail”. Being a polite person, he waited for long time, hoping, that I would learn, but now his patience has expired and would I please decide, what I wanted to say, because such variety distracts him from working….
The second time we were joking at each other with the same guy, and in response to another joke I said to him (jokingly!): “Cabrón!”. To my surprise, he stopped laughing and didnt continue the game, he was offended.
After excuses and everything, I started to make questions, why he got so offended, if yesterday I heard, he addressed Santiago, saying “Que cabrón!”. At last, it turned out, that “Que cabrón!” is an expression (frase hecha), that doesn´t offend, while if you call the person “cabrón”, it is very rude and offensive.
When I was first learning spanish, I took a conversation course at a local community center. The teacher organized a party for the students and some of his friends. The rule was that we could only speak Spanish at the party. The teacher introduced me to a particularly attractive young cousin of his. Wanting to express how happy I was to meet her I said, “Estoy exitado de conocerte” The room had an awkward silence and then laughter that didn’t stop for 5 minutes. I eventually learned what I said and have not been able to live it down since.
I’m a songwriter and one of my funniest moments came from a Spanish-language flub. On this particular project I was working on a Spanish gospel song with salsa flair, and was quite proud to have done all of the lyrics myself. After hearing the demo, however, the young Argentinian woman thought it was quite interesting that God was interested in saving us from our “pescados” (fish) instead of “pecados” (sins)! Oops.
My wife and I entered a village shop looking for milk. Not being able to find any on the shelves She strode womanfully to the male shop owner and delared “Tengo leche”. He seemed more suprised than interested!
I was in Cuenca the day that the US dollar became the official currency of Ecuador. There was a great shortage of US coins so change was given in the old Sucre currency. The final rate of exchange was 25,000 Sucres to one dollar, so the people of Ecuador had never had the experience of making change of less than one unit. If a Sucre is worth only 1/25000 th part of a dollar you are not going to find anything cheap enough to receive change of less than a whole unit. If something cost 23 cents and you paid with a dollar the clerk became flustered trying to determine how much change to give you.
I happened to buy a few items in the supermercado that came to $4.02. I gave the clerk a five-dollar bill. The store had a modern register which showed that I was to receive 98 cents change, but of course the store really had no American change at all. While the clerk was trying to figure out how many Sucres I should get I said: “Momento, tengo dos penes” as I stuck my hand deep in my pocket and groped around for a couple of pennies. I wish I had a picture of the clerk’s face as what I said registered. I had meant to say “dos peniques” - two pennies, but it came out two penises.
Once over the shock and after a laugh, he still could not grasp the logic of being given a five dollar bill and two pennies in payment for something that cost less than the five dollars. Only after I asked him to enter $5.02 for the amount tendered and he marvelled that the register now told him I was to get one even dollar in change did the logic become clear to him. He was still chuckling as I left the store.
Today’s word “hogar” played a funny part in my life with Spanish. As part of a teacher’s certification test I took, I was asked to imagine that I was a coordinator for an exchange program and that I needed to write to my counterpart in Spain, in Spanish of course, explaining my progress at finding host families for about thirty Spanish students. So I wrote that I was only able, so far, to find 15 families to … and here was my problem: I could not remember the word for “to lodge” in Spanish. I could FEEL it, but it was not quite there and the clock was ticking. I knew that “hogar” meant “home” or “hearth”, so I figured TO home or hearth someone meant logically “to lodge” someone, ergo “a + hogar” must be Spanish for “to lodge”. It even sounded about right in my head. The time was up and I had to hand in the test. Still something about that word was buggin’ me. Later on the way home on the Boston subway that nagging feeling made me check my dictionary and I realized my blunder.
I had written “En este momento solo encontre quince familias para ahogar a sus estudiantes”, which translates roughly to “at this moment I have only found 15 families to drown (or suffocate) your students”. The word I was looking for was “alojar”, “to lodge” (alojamiento). “Ahogar” — “alojar”, you can see how my brain fooled me. I started to chuckle like a loco on the train. I imagined the folks scoring my test. I imagined my imaginary counterpart in Spain receiving the disturbing news. I hoped my testers would recognize my mistake, which they must have since I passed. I still chuckle whenever i think about that.
In alicante last year I needed a fork (tenedor) with which to eat my tortilla. in error I asked for un tendero (a shopkeeper) which the waiter thought was hilarious. the positive side to this is that he took me in the restaurant and gave me a lesson naming all the cutlery and crockery in the place.
so something good comes out of something stupid!