Wednesday, August 11, 2010

A few language faux pas

Lovely people in my life!

Clearly from my last post, I've been a bit stressed out by classes and adjusting to university life here. Unfortunately, this has continued, BUT today I had successes with participating in a group assignment (via email, so I could read what everyone was saying and then later look it up in my Spanish English Dictionary) and for another class I was brave and asked a girl to work with me on a group project. I communicated effectively and now we are brainstorming topics. And tomorrow, I'm going to the beach with friends. Clearly triumphs are destined to come my way.

So, rather than complain about classes, I thought I would share with you all a couple of my most recent language goof-ups. I'm proud to say that I can now understand Chileans....but it's them who can't understand me.

1) One of my host brothers asked me if I had a boyfriend in the US and upon my reply (no) began asking me a whole slew of personal questions, including details on the type of man I'm interested in. I told him that I like men who are alto (tall); however, he heard this as auto (car) and told me I was rather materialistic. After fixing this confusion, we decided that my ideal man is seventy years old and rich, with multiple cars. When he bites the dust, I'll inherit all the money and my host brother will drive me around Santiago in my new fancy car.

2) At lunch a few weeks ago, we were eating chocolates which were made in Costa Rica but had English writing on the packaging. My host family asked me to read the ingredients and translate them. The first candy was a mixture of chocolate and guava fruit; many fruit names are the same in spanish as they are in English, so I figured guava was the same. After saying this word, the table went silent and my host brother laughed out loud; the word for guava fruit is guayaba, they all thought I said guagua, which directly translates to "baby". I'm pretty sure outting myself as a cannibal is not proper lunch time etiquette.

Shout out goes to my lovely parents, I had such a good time with you guys and miss you already! Enjoy Buenos Aires!

Abrazos,

Abby

1 comment:

  1. Oh my gosh Abby I was literally laughing out loud at this post! I love ya and am SO happy you are goofing up so I can enjoy the stories ;)

    love love,
    Genna

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