Tienda Lingo....

Ok, so tonight I helped work in the little tienda (store) on our school campus and the result was being present for some funny moments:

The first wasn't really a problem involving English to Spanish or vice-versa, but it was pretty good none the less. "Gatorade" is pronounced more or less like we do. And the word "gay" is the same here as it is in the states. And the people here like to shorten words just like we North Americans do. The result...

A student asking for "gay", which is an unfortunate shortening for Gatorade in either language. He was told by a friend that he should be patient because they are going off campus tomorrow and be seeing girls.

The other happened right at closing when one of the counselors (think camp counselor type position, not like psychology) came and when asked how he was he said he was hugry ("Con Hambre!") which directly translated is "with hunger" but another gringo was there and he heard "con hombre" which is "with man"...much laughter ensued.

In the world of language learning one quickly learns that one must not simply be able to write the word or know what world one is trying to say, one must also be able to pronounce the word in question.

I have heard the world "trump" pronounced as "tramp". Oops.

Many of my students aren't able to hear the difference between words that to me sound very different. Example: son/some.

Sometimes the word is written differently, but is said the same: son/sun. However, one might (incorrectly) pronounce "sun" the same as "soon".

And then there are words like "wind" which have different meanings depending on how you pronounce them.

When I think of all these things I think about how hard it must be to learn English. Then I think about verb conjugation in Spanish.

And to be fair, Spanish has it's confusing words too.

I was with several other ladies translating letters my students had written into English and we kept coming across the sentenceL A mi me gusta ordenar las vacas. (I like put the cows in order.)

So...like brown cows over here and white cows over there? according to height? What?
Turns out the were forgetting to put the "ñ" instead of "n". This changed the sentence to "I like to milk the cows", which makes a lot more sense.

Thank You. Goodbye.

After being in Honduras for about five months. The following conversation left me reeling with laughter.

Husband: I don't think he likes me very much.

Me: Why do you say that?

Husband: Because every time I talk to him he dismisses me.

Me: What do you mean?

Husband: I mean he always tells me "Thank you. Good bye." every time I tell him what I've been working on.

Me: No, honey. He says "Gracias a Dios" (Thanks to God), which is different than "Gracias. Adios." (Thank you. Goodbye.)

No wonder the poor guy thinks no one in Honduras likes him!

Messing up is so easy to do...

There are certain words that are very similar in Spanish, but with very different meanings:

"Cabello" -hair
"Caballo" -horse
"Caballero" -gentleman

Examples:

I wrote the "cabello" (hair) on the board in my class while we were learning animal vocab. I was quickly corrected-with much laughter.

My friend shouting, "Caballero, I meant caballero!" after she accidentally told our Spanish speaking friend that his suspenders made him look like a caballo (horse).



And there here is "hambre" (hungry) vs. "hombre"(man).

So, in Spanish the way to say "I am hungry," is "tengo hambre," which is basically "I have hunger".

While walking with a group of English and Spanish speakers my friend said, "Ugh...TENGO HOMBRE!" (I have a man).



The words "cansado(a)" (tired) and "casado(a)" (married) are likewise a cause for confusion.

One volunteer was walking along with a group of people and a girl asked him if he was married. He didn't hear her correctly and responded, "oh, no I'm ok, I can walk for a long time."

Learning English is hard to do. It's also hard to learn Spanish. I teach English to Spanish speaking students in Central America. I also am an English speaker learning Spanish. This means that I hear and make a lot of language mistakes everyday.

While sometimes the mistakes are very embarrassing in the moment, they are always funny afterwards.

There's an interesting word: embarrassing. To me it involves shame (although shame seems a bit strong for many of the instances in which it is used), but when I teach this word to my students they start laughing and think that I am kidding. The word "embarazada" means "pregnant" in Spanish. Yeah.

I have found too that the harder a student tries the more they learn (of course), but also, the more they make interesting mistakes. One of my students who sometimes tries to speak beyond his ability has made several fun mistakes:

"I lik womans." (This was only about my second week teaching and I nearly fell to ground laughing because this kid does "like" women, but he's a very respectful kid.)

"I give food at the cat." (Somehow, an image of a giant cat comes to mind where this student stands and hands out food to long lines of people).

In another class a student was learning verbs that begin with "have" or "has", but hadn't quite mastered the concept yet. He wrote:

"I am already eaten." (My co-teacher and I could barely control our laughter.)