Spanish 101 or How Not to Embarrass Yourself Immediately

Anyone who has successfully learned a second language as an adult will tell you that it’s not easy, but the more risks you take, the more rewarding the results will be. Rather than looking at the Spanish language as a minefield of potential mistakes, look at it as a journey during which you will explore communicating in a new tongue. And your tongue and mind will certainly work overtime as you attempt to roll your r’s, formulate questions and thoughts, and understand what native speakers say.I always liken learning Spanish to child development: a baby first learns to crawl, then to stand upright, and then finally to walk. Don’t expect to be running a language marathon before you’ve even learned to roll over.

At the beginning, your attempts at communication may seem simplistic. This can be frustrating for adults who have been thinking and expressing complicated ideas in their native language for years, but it’s part of the learning process. Let’s start with a couple phrases that you might try to use that will definitely get a giggle.

You may feel self-conscious and timid when faced with a conversation with a real-live Spanish speaker and you want to let them know. Your first impulse is to share your embarrassment and nervousness so you carefully say “Estoy embarazado(a),” because you want to tell them you are embarrassed. There are several issues with this statement:

• You tried to translate your English thought directly into Spanish.
• You unintentionally used a false cognate, which is a word seemingly similar in English and Spanish, but actually has two very different meanings in each language.
• You just told the listener that you were pregnant and not embarrassed.

What you should have said was either “Me da pena” “Me da vergüenza” (It gives me shame) or “Tengo pena” “Tengo vergüenza” (I feel shame).

When we have few words at our disposal to describe our feelings or we find ourselves making small talk with a new person, what topic do humans often resort to?

If you thought about the weather and our reaction to it, you hit upon the most common topic for idle chit-chat as well as the one with the most probability for mortification for a new Spanish-speaker.

Imagine that you’re sitting in a tropical garden with your new host family and you’re from a cold climate or that you’re sweating through a business meeting with new clients in a Latin American country close to the equator. You decide to open a dialogue about the heat, so you search your brain for a phrase to describe how you feel about the weather. Translating directly from English, you come up with “Estoy caliente.” Your companions either stare at you or hide their smiles behind their hands.

Why would they have this reaction when you simply mentioned the heat? Well, because in translating directly from English, you just told them that you were sexually aroused rather than warm. You should have said “Hace calor,” both of which express that the weather is warm and have no sexual connotations.

Also, beware of the possible sexual connotations implied in doing something as simple as ordering breakfast. You’re probably used to inquiring about whether a restaurant or your host has a particular item in stock by using the phrase “Do you have…?” Beware of using the phrase in Spanish when asking about eggs, as in “¿Tienes huevos?” or the more formal “¿Tiene usted huevos?” What you are asking the waiter or host in this direct translation is “Do you have testicles?,” since huevos is slang for testicles. You’re better off using the generic “¿Hay huevos?” if you’d like eggs.

Next week we’ll explore more common errors for Spanish language learners.