4/21/16
Anyone who has ever gone through the process of learning a second language knows how difficult it can be. Language is something that can only really be learned through a series of embarrassing, silly, and confusing trials and errors. It was in Costa Rica that I experienced the many hilarities of second language learning first hand. Living with a Spanish speaking family and going to a Spanish speaking school ensured that I had plenty of very embarrassing stories to tell.
Anyone who has ever gone through the process of learning a second language knows how difficult it can be. Language is something that can only really be learned through a series of embarrassing, silly, and confusing trials and errors. It was in Costa Rica that I experienced the many hilarities of second language learning first hand. Living with a Spanish speaking family and going to a Spanish speaking school ensured that I had plenty of very embarrassing stories to tell.
Within the first week of class I made my first
memorable mistake. My professor had arranged our tables in a circle and instructed
us to write, from what I had gathered, “una historia.” Why were we writing about
history in music class? I couldn’t figure it out, but one thing I was sure of
was that I didn’t know any music history. So, in my best Spanish I wrote out, "No sé historia de música." I
don’t know music history. We were then told to pass the papers to the person next to us, and
the professor instructed us to add on to the historia. The paper that had been passed to me seemed to be an opening line to a story about a dog, which of course only added to my confusion. It was truly a
humbling moment when I figured out that the word historia did not mean history*,
it meant story, and I was not in music class, I was in literature class and we were playing a game where you added on each other's stories. But it was a fair enough mistake! *In some dialects of Spanish the word cuento is used for story and historia really does mean history! Never-the-less I was still embarrassed.
Speaking of which--That was almost as bad as the first time I tried to say “I’m embarrassed” in Spanish. I can't even remember the circumstances surrounding it, I did a lot of embarrassing things those days. Of course whatever I had done certainly wasn't as embarrassing as trying to express this embarrassment by saying, “Estoy embarazada.” Sounds about right, right? Wrong. Embarazada means pregnant. I had just unknowingly told my group of very confused school friends that I was pregnant. That took some explaining.
Speaking of which--That was almost as bad as the first time I tried to say “I’m embarrassed” in Spanish. I can't even remember the circumstances surrounding it, I did a lot of embarrassing things those days. Of course whatever I had done certainly wasn't as embarrassing as trying to express this embarrassment by saying, “Estoy embarazada.” Sounds about right, right? Wrong. Embarazada means pregnant. I had just unknowingly told my group of very confused school friends that I was pregnant. That took some explaining.
But the worst experience came when my host mom took me for a
walk around the family farm, showing me the cows in the barn. They were huge and much too close
for my comfort, so combing through my brain to remember how to say “I’m scared”
I turned to my host mom and exclaimed, “¡Tengo mierda!” My host mom gasped, and for a
moment I thought she understood until I saw how shocked she was. I repeated the
phrase a few more times, but it quickly became clear to me that I wasn’t saying the
right thing so I decided to pantomime it out. After a few dramatic renditions of me acting fearful my host mother suddenly burst into
laughter. You can imagine how confused I was as she laughed so hard tears were running down her cheeks and she could barely breathe.
I would later learn the correct way to say “I’m afraid” is “Tengo mieda.” Not mierda. As it turns out, mierda=shit, and I had just spent the last ten minutes telling my host mother that I was full of shit.
I would later learn the correct way to say “I’m afraid” is “Tengo mieda.” Not mierda. As it turns out, mierda=shit, and I had just spent the last ten minutes telling my host mother that I was full of shit.
 |
| One of the many confusing moments in school... Never figured out exactly what was happening here. |
