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Viewing Careful Fun and Slip-Ups with Foreign LanguagesCareful Fun and Slip-Ups with Foreign Languages
By Dr. Ron McCluskey In the beginning of our Mexico travel experience, we still had not learned much Spanish. In fact, when we arrived, our huge Spanish vocabulary consisted of about two words: si and no. We were in Villahermosa for about a month before we felt comfortable in most situations, and that was only because we were experiencing full immersion learning of the language. One big encouragement to learning the language is that we ate in the hospital cafeteria three meals a day. Unfortunately, they did not eat at the times that we expected meals. As a result, for the first couple of days we made it to about one meal a day. I can tell you that an empty stomach is a strong reason to learn the language! During that early time, one woman asked my wife if she could use the baño. My wife, knowing that baño means the bath, told her that she could not use the baño until the next day. However, the woman was asking to go to the bathroom. She really was not interested in waiting until the next day! While the local Mexicans were laughing at that, they told us about a minister who had come over from Florida and had a church service while he was there. He showed up late and told the people that he was muy embarasado for showing up late. Unfortunately, the words for embarrassed and pregnant are very close. He had used the wrong one. We asked several people, and nobody could tell us what the topic of his sermon was. My father-in-law was driving in Mexico as a tourist once, when soldiers at a checkpoint suddenly stopped him. The soldier came up and forcefully asked him something in Spanish. My father-in-law was all flustered and blurted out, 'No speaka de English!'. The soldiers laughed and waved him on. The problems work the other way, too. I had a teacher in high school, who was from Germany. He had been taught English from the time he was in grade school. However, some of the subtleties still escaped him. When he first came to the United States, he was asked to introduce a speaker for some meeting. He told us that this woman was quite large. In fact, she was very large. She was also fairly important. Her reputation was of being simply tremendous. Therefore, he proceeded to introduce here like this: 'I want to present to you a lady who is simply enormous.' You might think that I am trying to tell you not to bother trying to learn or speak a foreign language. However, nothing could be further from the truth. I am trying to tell you that along the way you may give other people a good laugh. However, it is a rare individual who will take offense at you slaughtering his or her mother tongue. You can take comfort in the fact that when you screw up, you are certainly not alone. About the Author: Our family has traveled all over the world on vacations and doing volunteer work. We have been to every continent except Antarctica and hope to go there someday. Find more about our experiences with travel at I Love Travel Vacations. Article Source: A Language Guide - http://www.a-language-guide.com More free articles: 1st Rate Articles - 1stRateArticles.com |
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