In the office of the Association today. I was sitting across the room on my computer, half waiting for the internet to load pages, half playing with my phone, when I hear Remone say from the couch against the opposite wall, "Is that a banana?" (the entire sentence in Arabic except for the last word). I'm looking around for the random piece of fruit when I realize his friends sitting on either side of him have started laughing hysterically.
He says it again, deadpan, not quite realizing his mistake. "Is that a banana?" I am still in search of yellowish-brown fruit when one of his English speaking friends says through his laughter, "He means is that an Apple." He looks over at Remone and says to him in Arabic, "The word is Apple, you idiot. The computer is an apple, as in 'tuffah'." Tuffah being the Arabic word for apple. After this, it took me a while to get my breath back.
This may have been/probably was one of those you had to be there moments. But one of the things I love about this place is when the miscommunications between languages are downright laughable. Besides the one above, here are just a few I've had the privilege of hearing:
"Pedesterians" (I'm guessing these are Presbyterians who like to walk)
"I'm an addictive." (This after having discovered where something was located. It took me quite some time to figure out he wanted to say "detective.")
ob-STACK-el (this also took several minutes of me wracking my brain. This one was in the middle of a paragraph about something else so was repeated several times before I realized they were saying 'obstacle.' emPHASis on the wrong sylLABle.)
Yet to be fair, I've probably said 'I need to go to the pigeon' instead of bathroom, 'I've been here a hair' instead of month, and 'No, I just live in a cat, there aren't a lot of cats, just one cat' instead of saying I live in a room. I guess all's fair in love and foreign languages.
Good morning how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Egypt? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Egypt in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28903 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez