OK, if I am going to laugh at mistranslated English, it’s time to critique my Arabic! As most of you have heard, my written and reading Arabic is not that bad, but my speaking needs a whole lot of work—hence the study abroad. Thus far, here are my major missteps—PLEASE laugh to give me a taste of my own medicine:
My Most Used Arabic Word: (kaleelan, قليلاً) = a little. As in “I speak the Arabic language a little.”
Most Misused Arabic Word: (tatakalam, تتكلم) = she talks (speaks). As when I try to say “I talk (speak) the Arabic language not very good.” (atakalam, أتكلم)
Favorite Arabic Word: I just realized this the other day, when we had to say aloud any Arabic word. After I said “mustaqbal (مستقبل) ” = future, I thought about how much I love that word, as in, “I want to speak better Arabic in the future.”
AND THE CRÈME DE LA CRÈME, Most Used New Arabic Phrase, Which I Have Managed to Butcher BIG TIME: (ma bidee kees, كيس بدي ما) = “I don’t need a bag.” Other than my attempts to try to conserve plastic bags, in general, apparently, this is one of the largest sources of waste and trash in Jordan. (Please don’t remind me about the plastic bottles, which are not recycled here. One of my fellow Miamians and I are getting ulcers due to the plastic bottle waste…) Instead of this useful phrase, though, I was just saying “No bag.” The problem was that I looked it up once or twice in the first few days here, then decided I knew what I was saying well enough to remember.
Well, it turns out I didn’t. Instead of saying “No bag (laysa kees, كيس ليس),” I was saying, “No paralytic (كسير ليس)!” [Take a deep breath here, when you have stopped laughing. I know I have to!] I was politely corrected at the University bookstore last week, although I was mortified to think what I had been saying! Daddy can attest to a far more embarrassing misstep in Spanish in Guatemala in ’76! :) The female clerk smiled and gave me the right word. I said excuse me, but she said that it was OK—I just need to keep practicing! A few days later, a nice store clerk at the Mecca Mall informed me that it was better to say “ma bidee” than to just say “no bag.” Good thing I had the right word for bag by then!
1 comment:
That's nice that she taught you a better way to say it, rather than just trying to figure out what you were saying and then letting you repeat it!
The most common French faux pas that I've heard of (which apparently Jason was told about on his FIRST DAY of French) is that people want to say they like French food because it has fewer preservatives than American food, but use the word préservatif, which means condom.
In Spanish, the word for pregnant is something close to "embarrass" so people are always going around saying they're so pregnant.
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