Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Language Mistakes

I'm sure that it will not be the last, but I made my first (at least that I'm aware of) embarrassing mistake in speaking Spanish. I took a taxi the other day and told my taxi cab driver that I am new to Trujillo and I am anxious to learn much. I said that I wanted to learn about his city, his people, his language and his "país" which means country or nation, but what I said instead is that I wanted to get to know his "pies" which means feet. When I saw his face drop, I reiterated it thinking that I just didn't articulate it well.

I'm just glad he didn't make me get out of the car right then!

2 comments:

Nan said...

That's hilarious! Could have been worse though I guess...
Nan

Joshua Butcher said...

Reminds me of an old (and awful) Carmen song, "addicted to Jesus" which had the lines, "praise the Lord with your feet." Considering the relative time range for song selection in Peru, it is not an unlikely possibility that Carmen's song would have been "airing" (that is, if it had ever been good enough to reach the airwaves back in the day).