Tower of Babel

Peppermint Kiwi writes:

One of my Spanish teachers was Cuban, and she told us about her American boyfriend who was attempting to communicate in Spanish to impress her father. Unfortunately, he didn't realize that embarazada means "pregnant," not "embarrassed."

It's tough to pick up a new language, and if you do so as an adult, there are always stumbling blocks like that. When I was more advanced , I had a very good Spanish teacher who invited our class to come to a Three Tenors concert and "assist." We all thought we'd have to work (and most of us worked in the day before coming to class at night).

None of us accepted the offer. It wasn't till a few years later I discovered that the Spanish word asistir means "attend" while the word atender means "assist."

There the guy was, offering us free tickets to an expensive concert, and none of us had the remotest notion what he was talking about.

Guagua

My Spanish 1 teacher was from Chile. She would not hesitate to announce, "For homework, please do exercise C,D,E, F, G, H and I. You know what? Also do J,K, L, M,N O and P." You never knew whether the mood might strike her to add Q to Z, so it was important to try to ask an unrelated question at that point. It was summer, and she gave a test every other day.

She was a holy terror. But I never learned so much Spanish from anyone, anywhere.

For example, she taught us the word guagua means "baby" in Chile. But it means "bus" in Puerto Rico. Also, in Spanish, you don't miss the bus. You lose it.

When she first came to the US, having fled from the junta, she met a worried-looking Puerto Rican woman at a bus stop. She asked her what was wrong.

"I lost the guagua," the woman said.

"Oh no!" replied my teacher. "What on earth are you going to do?"

"Don't worry," she replied. "I'll just get another one."