Language Flubs

I told my student that she had a duck in her soup instead of telling her it was spicy.

I often tell my students (not intentionally) that the work they are doing is bad luck when what I mean to say is that it’s beautiful . . . one tone and I turn a compliment into discouragement. I am pretty sure they realize that I’m not great at speaking Thai and that what I say and what I mean are generally opposite.

My Thai counterpart was trying to talk to me about how she went to the doctor because she was having issues with her blender. I was pretty sure that dr.s in Thailand weren’t trained in appliances as well medicine, but I wasn’t sure. It took me a minute to play charades with her and show her what a blender was (I made the arm motions of me putting things in a pitcher and made the blending sound – I was actually impressed with my blender impression skills). She quickly shook her head as to say that’s not what she meant and then it dawned on me that she was talking about her bladder. I will always think of a blender when someone says bladder and a bladder when someone says blender.

My housemate Emily was teaching first and second grade about lunchtime vocabulary. Her students just can’t get the r sound and when she shows them a picture of rice, they scream “lice!” Then, she showed a picture of chicken and one of her students screamed “elephant!” Hopefully the house parents don’t think we feed their children elephants and lice for lunch. :-)

Never a dull moment.