Embarrassing Moments While Learning Spanish

Humiliating Moments While Learning Spanish Committing errors goes with the job of learning an unknown dialect. Most missteps are kindhearted, yet when you commit those errors in an alternate nation or culture, some of them can be absolute humiliating. A gathering that used to be a piece of this site highlighted a conversation on humiliating minutes in learning the language. Here are a couple of the reactions. Arbolito: While living in Madrid while getting my Masters certificate, I went to the mercado, explicitly to where they sold poultry. I pleasantly requested two pechos. I had discovered that pechos was the word for bosom. Much to my dismay that there was an alternate word for chicken bosoms, pechuga. So there I was, approaching the man for 2 human bosoms! What's more, I likewise utilized the word coger in Argentina, despite the fact that I have known always that it is a profanity there. Be that as it may, in different spots, it is only a typical method to state to take. So I asked somebody where I could coger el autobã ºs! Apodemus: On a Spanish course in Salamanca I met a Belgian young lady. I solicited her, in Spanish obviously, regardless of whether she communicated in Dutch or French. Her reaction was: En la oficina, hablo holandã ©s, pero en la cama hablo francã ©s. Out of nowhere the entire room was taking a gander at her, she went brilliant red and faltered En la casa, dije en la casa!! Rocer: In Chile, cabrito small child, however in Peru, cabrito gay (or is it the opposite way around?) A companion of mine from the U.S. was in Chile, and he took in the word cabrito. Individuals called him cabrito on the grounds that he was youthful. He preferred the word cabrito, so he called himself cabrito. At that point he went to Peru, and a few people asked him for what good reason he didnt get hitched with a Peruvian young lady, he said Es que yo soy muy cabrito (he needed to state indeed Im youthful, and he wound up saying indeed Im gay). Individuals just took a gander at him bizarre, and snickered at him. Later on, he came back to Chile, where individuals giggled like insane when he revealed to them his story. Hermanito: Lo siguiente no me pasã ³ a mã ­ sino an una amiga mã ­a, quien apenas comenzaba an aprender espaã ±ol. Esta entro an una tiendita mexicana y le preguntã ³ al dueã ±o si tenã ­a huevos, sin saber el sentido alternativo de la palabra. (The word huevos, which means eggs, is likewise a slang term for balls.) El Tejano: In Mexico, women never request eggs - they generally state blancos. Glenda: I have three stories. The first is from a companion here in San Miguel, who subsequent to eating a flavorful supper, needed to praise the cook. She stated, Compliments to the cocino. Cocino implies a fat pig. She ought to have said praises to the cocinero. At that point, there is this story, from our neighborhood paper. A modestly experienced horsewoman comes to Mexico and is taking riding exercises from a Mexican male instructor. He doesnt acknowledge how experienced she is, so he needs all her the pony roped. She is disappointed yet consents and keeps a rope on the pony all through her exercise. They are talking in Spanish about the following days exercise, making game plans, and she completes the discussion by saying, Sã ­, est bien ... pero maã ±ana, sin ropa. Lastly, from my own understanding. A nearby server in an eatery we like is additionally a craftsman. My better half and I saw his work showed in the eatery and chose to get it. He was thrilled, and consequently offered to pay for the cut of cake we had requested for dessert - an extremely sweet signal. Toward the finish of the dinner, I stated, Gracias por la pastilla (the pill) rather than el pastel (the cake). I am certain that there have been a lot all the more humiliating minutes which I have caused ... however, presumably individuals here were so considerate I never at any point knew. El Tejano: Twenty odd years prior, I was in a shoe store in Mexico purchasing another pair of shoes. My Spanish was a ton more terrible than it is presently and I couldnt recall the word for size. So I turned size upward in my weakling word reference (consistently an extremely hazardous practice) and the primary passage was tamaã ±o. So I told the youngster that my tamaã ±o was 9. She was extremely youthful and I was around 50, and I heard her mumble, scarcely discernibly softly, rabo verde. In the event that you dont get it, Ill leave the subtleties to another person, in any case youll be calling me rabo verde as well. Heres another: Im a resigned painting contractual worker from Houston and we had a major business work down in the Rio Grande Valley, which is indistinct from Mexico itself. A gringo painter on our group needed to ask an appealing chica who worked at the Wal-Mart in Carrizo Springs to eat with him. We instructed him to state, Seã ±orita, es posible que quisieras comer conmigo? Be that as it may, he got confounded and subbed cojer for comer. The outcomes were unsurprising! Spanish Expert:Â One that strikes a chord happened numerous years back during an outing to Mexico when I expected to purchase a razor. Not knowing the word for razor, I went in a little store and requested algo para aceitar and got just unusual looks. Gesture based communication proved to be useful, and Im sure that they at that point made sense of the word I implied. I had utilized the action word for to oil (aceitar) rather than the action word for to shave (afeitar). I didnt acknowledge what I had said until later that night. I made a trip to Peru a couple of years prior with a then-high school child, and he needed to have a go at utilizing his insignificant Spanish at an outside market. He chose to purchase an alpaca cover and asked the amount it cost - quince soles was the appropriate response, about $5 U.S. at that point. He imagined that was a decent arrangement, and expeditiously pulled cincuenta soles (about $18) from his wallet. He would have paid it in the event that I hadnt got his error. So as to spare himself the shame of giving the merchant an excessive amount of cash, he chose the cost was one he couldnt leave behind and expeditiously chose to purchase two. Donna B: We had prepared a turkey supper for a Mexican international student, and my child, who was learning Spanish, revealed to him we were having polvo for supper rather than pavo. Our student from abroad gave him a shocked look and would not descend for supper. We later acknowledged he had told the international student we were having dust for supper rather than turkey for supper. TML: The first occasion when I went to Madrid I was approached to go to the supermercado and get some chicken (pollo). All things considered, I got a little silenced and as opposed to approaching the man for pollo, I requested a particular piece of his life structures. Discussion about a humiliating second! He at last made sense of what I was requesting and I returned home with some genuine chicken parts! The family I was remaining with practically wet their jeans giggling. I have since been returned to Madrid multiple times and have taken in a significant exercise ... We are simply the ones who put the weight on ourselves. Each individual I met truly needed me to succeed, and they were incredibly useful. They didnt attempt to cause me to feel idiotic - yet were increasingly moved by my craving to speak with them - even in lieu of my syntactic mistakes. Exercises learned: If you are hesitant to commit errors, you won't learn. A long time not far off you will have some clever and regularly superb recollections of individuals you met and how you each helped each other out. Lily Su: I was looking into the word dulce in my fantastic word reference (which records bunches of approaches to utilize words and expressions) needing to check whether it was utilized to make statements like, gracious thank you, that was sweet of you, and so forth., and not simply that you favored sweet pastries, for instance. I was perusing along and stumbled into the word boniato (yam). I should not have been perusing cautiously in light of the fact that I some way or another got the possibility that you could consider somebody a boniato as an affectionate nickname (perhaps like we call somebody darling). So I circumvented saying, hola, mi boniato to a significant number of my Spanish companions, just one of which at last remedied me. It despite everything makes all of us laugh out loud when we recall that! Additionally caught wind of an American cleric who remarked at the Spanish mass that he adored los calzones bonitos (calzones is underwear) when he intended to state las canciones bonitas (the lovely tunes)! Patty: I was looking for food supplies in Los Angeles with a Spanish-talking companion, and in endeavor to assist her with picking her squeezed orange I asked her (in Spanish) on the off chance that she needed the one with mash or without. It ended up being one of those events that speculating the word by including an o toward the end didnt work. Pulpo implies octopus. Luckily, I was close enough; the word is pulpa, so she had the option to think about what I implied. AuPhinger: The expression y pico was regularly used to mean and a bit, or a tad, as in ochenta pesos y pico for a little more than eighty pesos. One of the colleagues in my dads office moved to, on the off chance that I recall accurately, Chile. He utilized the expression - for a brief timeframe! Until part of the gang in the workplace pulled him aside and educated him that there, y pico implied a smidgen of just a single thing! Liza Joy: Once in a college night class I was instructing, an as of late separated from moderately aged understudy chose to utilize the Spanish she learned in my group out traveling to Mexico. She needed to escape from the vacationer course thus went to a café where nobody seemed to communicate in English. She figured out how to arrange a scrumptious dinner, however when it came time to request the bill, everything she could consider to state was how a lot, which she deciphered truly as como mucho which implies I eat a great deal, rather than the right cunto. This fairly full woman revealed to me that she continued pointing at her dish and saying como mucho to the server, who looked humiliated and continued saying, No, seã ±ora, usted no come mucho. At last, she assumed out her praise card, and he abruptly comprehended. She didnt comprehend what the issue was until she returned to class after Easter break. Moral: Learn your inquiry words! Russell: This didnt really transpire, yet an associate of mine disclosed to me this story