EMBARRASSING MOMENTS WHILE LEARNING SPANISH


Making mistakes comes with the territory of learning a foreign language. Most mistakes are benign, but when you make those mistakes in different country or culture, some of them can be quite embarrassing. A forum recently featured a discussion on embarrassing moments in learning the language. Here are a few of the responses. Please feel free to email me with any others! There are loads!

Pechos: While living in Madrid while getting my Master's degree, I went to the mercado, specifically to where they sold poultry. I very politely asked for "two pechos." I had learned that "pechos" was the word for breast. Little did I know that there was a different word for chicken breasts, pechuga. So there I was, asking the man for 2 human breasts!

Coger: And I also used the word coger in Argentina, even though I have known forever that it is an obscenity there. But in other places, it is just a common way to say "to take." So I asked someone where I could "coger el autobús"!

Huevos: Lo siguiente no me pasó a mí sino a una amiga mía, quien apenas comenzaba a aprender español. Esta entro a una tiendita mexicana y le preguntó al dueño si tenía huevos, sin saber el sentido alternativo de la palabra. (The word huevos, which means "eggs," is also a slang term for "testicles."). In Mexico, ladies never order eggs — they always say "blancos."

Y pico: The phrase "y pico" was commonly used to mean "and a little," or a little bit, as in "ochenta euros y pico" for "a little over eighty euro." In Chile however "y pico" meant "a little bit" of only one thing!

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