Language Blunders

Learning a new language is frustrating because a) it is hard to remember what to say b) there are so many verbs c) there are so many different tenses which you d) you have to remember to conjugate the verbs depending on the tense and who you are talking to/about and finally e) it is so easy to make blunders whilst talking which either offends people or makes them laugh.

I have made a few blunders and thought would share them to make people laugh and also to let others out there learning languages that we all make blunders, well I hope we do, don’t want to be the only imperfect one!

Blunder 1:

A few weeks ago my Rut-Maria (my Peruvian mother) asked me would I like to come to walk the dog with her (all in Spanish of course) and I replied in English, hang on till I get my zapallos on and pointed at my feet... she looked at me funnily and then I realised I just told her I was putting my pumpkins on as the word for ‘pumpkin’ is’ zapallo’ and what I wanted to say was’ zapatos’ meaning ‘shoe’.

Maybe I could start a new line of business when I get home – vegetable shoes!

Blunder 2:

At the end of every week I have to pay my fees to the language school.  After my 4th week there I decided I would try and speak Spanish whilst asking Pedro if I could pay him, so confidently I went up to him and said “puedo pegar?”  - meaning ‘can I pay?’, and in response Pedro put his arms up in defence.  It took me a while to realise that I asked him if I could hit him as in Spanish the word for ‘pay’ is  ‘pagar’ and the word I said ‘pegar’ means ‘hit’  -can you see how similar they are and how easy it would be to mistake them...... but an important lesson learnt there. Thankfully Pedro laughed about it, but someone else might just have hit me first!

Blunder 3: 

Last Wednesday night the Latin Link group met at my house, so the night before Rut-Maria and I cleaned up and made sure everything was sparkling and ready for them to come.  At one point during the clean up session, Rut-Maria was out of the room and Fred had come into play, and he was very bouncy, too bouncy in fact because he broke a vase. I went to tell Rut-Maria about it who in turn shouted at Fred whilst I cleaned up the broken pieces of glass. Afterwards I said to Rut-Maria, “Yo sentar mal” which means ‘I feel bad”. At that Rut-Maria burst in to fits of laughter, and I asked ‘Que?’ (What?) and she said ‘sentir que no sentar’ which means ‘feel not sit’.  So instead of saying ‘I feel bad’ (Yo sentir mal) I said ‘I sit bad’ (Yo sentar mal).

Why are words so similar for me to make mistakes like that!

Blunder 4:

Fred, the family dog, eats a lot of food and every mealtime he is jumping around trying to get tit bits of the food we are eating. One night over tea whilst Fred was scrounging for food, Rut-Maria and I were discussing his eating habits and all he likes to eat (which is everything, except he is not that keen on carrots). And I said to her, ‘Fred le gusta cocinar mucho’ meaning ‘Fred likes to eat lots’. Again she laughed and again I was like ‘Que?’ (What?) And I slowly realised that instead of saying ‘eat’ which in Spanish is ‘comer’ I said ‘cocinar’ which means cook. So really I was saying that ‘Fred likes to cook a lot’... can you imagine a dog standing by the cooked stirring the gravy for the roast dinner?!

Blunder 5:

Ok so the latest blunder happened today in language school. Each day my conversational teacher AnaSe asks me ‘what time is it?’, ‘what time did you wake up?’, ‘what did you have for breakfast?’ etc in order to practice talking in Spanish. Today AnaSe asked me ‘¿qué tienen para el almuerzo de ayer?’ which means ‘what did you have for lunch yesterday?’ and I answered with ‘pescado, arroz, zanahorias y tomates seguidos por un perro’ meaning ‘fish, rice, carrots and tomatoes followed by a pear’. This time it was AnaSe’s turn to laugh but before she could correct me, I had realised my mistake....  I had told AnaSe that I had eaten dog! I don’t think Fred would be very happy if I ate him. So what was the mistake, well instead of saying ‘una pera’ (a pear) I said ‘un perro’ (a dog).  I think that is by far the stupidest blunder I have made and in some places I could probably get in trouble for saying I ate dog.

Hope you had a good laugh at me. The good thing is that I have been able to laugh at myself and learn from my mistakes.