Cosas Chistosas

The other day I was talking with F and both of us have Spanish as our second language, my first is English and his first is Portuguese. One of the primary sources of comedy in Spanish is mixing up words, or words with double en tenders, or words that sound similar but mean two different things. Yesterday we each had the opportunity to commit major language errors that are worth sharing.

I was talking about being able to cross cultural boundaries in High School and said:

"Yo andaba con todos, con los indigenas de aqui, con los hueros, con los mexicanos, con los filipenses..." which translates, "I hung out with everyone, native americans, whites, mexicans, Phillipians...."

For the record, the word I was looking for was "filipinos" = Filipinos not "Filipenses" = Philippians

Then later A was talking and he said:

"Fue una situacion embarazoso"--you lose something in translation, but basically it means "it was a pregnant situation" (embarazada is a false cognate in Spanish/English and the word for embarrassed is "avergonzado"), so A should have said, "fue una situacion avergonzosa"--"it was an embarrassing situation"!