Job Discussion Forums

[Stephen Jones]

A Spanish friend was dating a Mexican girl and told her "Te voy a coger a las siete" intending to mean, "I'll pick you up at seven". Unfortunately "coger" has a rather more vulgar meaning in Mexican Spanish and neither the girl nor her father were amused.

Then of course there was the Mitsubishsi Pajero, which means "wanker" in Spanish.

Incidentally white is the color of death in the Indian subcontinent as well.

[dmb]

Staying in Spain and with cars the Nova didn't sell well in Spain. It means it doesn't work (or something like that)

[Tamara]

When I was teaching Spanish at a US high school and was pregnant with my daughter, I told people at different times. One ESL student from Venezuela often spoke to me in the halls, even though he wasn't my student. I told him in Spanish, "Estoy embarazada!" He said, in English, "Why?"

I turned to him and said, "I'm not going to tell you that, if you don't already know!"

(Obviously, embarazada isn't the cognate it sounds like. It means "pregnant," not embarrassed. Of course, both of us were embarrassed after that exchange!)



On my first trip to El Salvador (after one year of high school Spanish) I asked the question "Es todo?" (If I remember, the context was whether all the people in our group had arrived.) Everyone looked at me quizzically because they thought I was saying, "toro," the word for bull. That's when I learned that the Spanish "d" is much softer, and the Spanish "r" sounds very close to the English "d."

When I taught HS spanish, we had an open house for the students and parents to meet teachers and learn schedules. I welcomed students into my classroom with a handshake. One young man came in with his brother and mother (dressed in a head covering). I reached out to shake his hand, and he stepped back, lifted his hands up, and said, "I can't touch you!" The mother stepped in and took my offered hand and said, "But I can!" (My blunder, not theirs!)

[Stephen Jones]

There was a female teacher in Madrid who wanting a chicken salad "una ensalada de pollo" asked for "una polla salida" (an erect penis). Unfortunately for her the waiter understood what she really meant.

[thelmadatter]

Don't translate things too too literally. I volunteered to bring deviled eggs to a potluck but was wondering how to translate that. The lot of us being in a silly mood ... "huevos del diablo" came up, knowing full well that "huevos" is used like "balls" in Spanish. Our monolingual secretary began to giggle and blush much to the amusement of us older women! I have since found out that deviled eggs are called "huevos rusos"

[Twisting in the Wind]

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[Cardinal Synn]

"Nova" means "No go" in Spanish. So that's why it wasn't a popular name for a car.
Chicken is slang for prostitute all over SE Asia.
"Business Woman" = Prostitute in Indonesia, though not exclusively
so it is best avoided.

[Kurochan]

Well, you could mention that in China, it's common to hold your same-sex friend's hand -- that's something that could get you in trouble if you did it in the US, anyway!

One of my friends nearly got beaten up in Argentina because he gave the OK gesture to somebody, not knowing that there it means "a$$hole."

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

As most in China know, "bee" means a woman's private parts.

Well, my middle school kids had a laugh when during the summer a bee was flying around our classroom and I (unknowingly at the time) was yelling "Get the bee! I hate bees! Kill the bee!"

Then, to re-inforce my stupidness, went on to explain that most bees are females (entymology is a hobby) and they go from flower to flower collecting pollen (which translates into "flower sperm").

In China, a flower is a boy surrounded by girls, which I also did not know.

So here I am basically saying that "vaginas go around looking for hot young studs to get their hot young stud sperm"

The kids were rip-roaring laughing their guts out and I didn't know why.

One more reason to learn the language of your host country.

[thelmadatter]

I suppose it's not coincidence that almost all of these stories have something to do with sex!

[Cardinal Synn]

Oh yeah!
I'm reminded of the great amount of offence I managed to cause while hitch hiking in the Middle East. I wasn't aware that the common sign of sticking your thumb out equates to what we in the west would achieve with our middle finger. Ooops...

[Twisting in the Wind]

[Twisting in the Wind]

[quote= " Yes, one has to be careful when using the word eggs in Spanish. Asking the owner of the local grocery store if he has eggs is bound to get some type of reaction from him and those within earshot.

Once in Honduras I asked in all earnestness in the workplace cafeteria, "Tiene Ud. huevos?"

And the disgruntled, albeit somewhat amused response was, "Srta. Si, hay huevos, pero no los tengo!"

I had asked if the cook (female) had balls (slang), and she retorted without missing a beat that there WERE eggs, but that she didn't have them.

I remember at the time being perplexed as to why she would say (literally) "There were eggs, but she didn't have them..." HUH?????? When my Spanish got better (sheeesh, I had had 5 friggin years in high school....you'd
think it'd be good enough, but apparently.....)