![]() The two-week trip around Mexico was the first time I’d traveled to a Spanish-speaking country, so I was still quite shy about practicing the Spanish I’d learned in school. When I was twelve, I traveled to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula with my parents. Have you made any of these embarrassing language mistakes while traveling? Click To Tweet Grab some coffee or tea and enjoy these stories full of laughter, a bit of embarrassment, and some cultural reflection. If you’ve traveled much cross-culturally and you’re anything like me, you’ve probably made a few blunders along the way. So I asked readers to contribute their stories of language mishaps and cross-cultural blunders while traveling abroad. I know I’m not alone in having received those confused looks from people I’m talking to in Spanish. Instead, I was greeted by a stranger speaking Spanish…which is when I realized that she had been calling to her mom, “ MaMÍ!” Absolutely mortified. “Hello?” I said, expecting to hear my family or boyfriend on the other end. I rushed inside to grab the phone, and she shook her head with a confused look, but then handed it to me anyway. MÍ!” Naturally, I thought she was yelling, “ NoeMÍ!” to me. My host sister went inside and answered, and I heard her call out from inside, “…. One morning, I was eating breakfast with my host family on the patio, and the phone rang. When I first arrived in Costa Rica for my study abroad semester, I was missing home and desperately wanted to talk to my family, especially during the first few weeks. I’ve had my share of mistakes and frustrations, too–from ordering the wrong food to being told by my 5-year-old host sister in Cuba, “ T ú no entiendes nada de español!” (“You don’t understand anything in Spanish!”). He opened his arms and loudly proclaimed, “ Pobreza!” What he intended to say was “ Abrazo!” which means hug, but instead he had greeted them with “Poverty!” ![]() Another friend, upon meeting his extended host family, wanted to greet everyone with a hug. But instead she basically told her, “I don’t give a crap” in strongly worded language. She wanted to say, “Sure, doesn’t matter” in the way we do in English to be agreeable. But sometimes, the language learning journey is just stressful, and we have to let loose and laugh at ourselves a little.įor example, one friend of mine was staying with a host family in Costa Rica, and her host sister asked her if she wanted to watch The Passion of the Christ. In the last two posts in this language and travel series, I shared why language learning is important for travel as well as some awesome language learning resources and tips. ![]()
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