TML: The first time I went to Madrid I was asked to go to the supermercado and buy some chicken (pollo). Well, I got a little tongue-tied and instead of asking the man for pollo, I asked for a specific part of his anatomy. Talk about an embarrassing moment! He finally figured out what I was asking for and I went home with some real chicken parts! The family I was staying with almost wet their pants laughing.
I have since been back to Madrid 8 times and have learned a very important lesson ... We are the ones who put the burden on ourselves. Every person I met really wanted me to succeed, and they were extremely helpful. They didn't try to make me feel stupid — but were more touched by my desire to communicate with them — even in lieu of my grammatical errors.
Lessons learned: If you are afraid to make mistakes, you will not learn. Years down the road you will have some funny and often wonderful memories of people you met and how you each helped one another out.
Lily Su: I was looking up the word dulce in my excellent dictionary (which lists lots of ways to use words and phrases) wanting to see if it was used to say things like, "oh thank you, that was sweet of you", etc., and not just that you preferred sweet desserts, for example. I was reading along and ran across the word "boniato" (sweet potato). I must not have been reading very carefully because I somehow got the idea that you could call someone a boniato as a term of endearment (maybe like we call someone sweetie). So I went around saying, "hola, mi boniato" to many of my Spanish friends, only one of which finally corrected me. It still cracks us all up when we remember that!
Also heard about an American priest who commented at the Spanish mass that he loved los calzones bonitos (calzones is underpants) when he meant to say las canciones bonitas (the beautiful songs)!
