A lot of times when I'm in New York foreigners will have interactions with me that I will just find hilarious. I get to laugh at the silly things they say in English and tell my friends about it later. One times these Chinese people came up to me in the subway and asked how to get to the cruise ship docks. I told them, and when I asked where they were going, they told me Florida. Coincidentally, I was wearing a shirt that said "Clearwater Beach, Florida" on it, so i pulled it out off my chest to show it to them. The lead of the group looked at me pulling the front of my shirt out and just yelled "YEAH, YEAH, YOU BIG STRONG BOY." I nodded in agreement, and then went home and laughed about it. I will never again laugh at someone stumbling over language barriers. All I do nowadays is stumble.
The story: I'm talking with my host mother, Teresa. She asks me what I'm doing. I tell her Jose and I are gonna meet up with some amigas. She asks where. I tell her, la esquina de Santa Fe y Paraguay. She asks me para que? (As in, what for?). I thought that she was correcting me on the pronunciation of the word Paraguay. So I pronounce it more like her: Paragay. She responds again, para que? I think that maybe my pronunciation is still off, so i try it again, Paraqay. She looks back at me, and says, "Si, pero para que?" I hit her back with Paraqay. She says back Para que? Paraqay! Para que? Paraqay! Para que? PARAQAY!! We go back and forth for about 5 minutes. Finally, I think she's messing with me and she thinks I'm mocking her. We lock eyes, she picks up a water bottle on the table, and smacks me in the head with it. Suddenly it snaps into my head: Ohhhh, para que?!?!? Para ir al cine con nuestras amigas. She lets out the biggest sigh ever, shakes her head, and walks off. I'm pretty confident it's not the last time I'm gonna take a waterbottle to the head from her.
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Let me just say, weon, that at least this instance of the language gap that you've described here didn't result in public humiliation--the kind of which you only hope that your nervous look-how-clueless-gringos-are laughter will remedy. For instance, mistakenly calling Concha y Toro (Chile's famous vineyard) Conche (the substitution of the e for the a, apparently, turns the name into a vulgar term for the female anatomy) y Toro when talking to two chilenas at a bar. Then, upon realizing my mistake, trying to laugh it off, only to be met with very serious expressions from las chicas.
ReplyDeleteI'm still trying to understand that one.