I was working at a local restaurant and bar as a server and bartender. I had already accepted a teaching position in Colombia and was beginning to practice Spanish on my own and at the restaurant with some of the Spanish speaking kitchen staff.
One day, I was in the kitchen waiting for an order when my face turned red. I can’t remember the reason why, but the only thing you need to know as it relates to this story is that for most of my life, my entire head turns into a dark red tomato whenever I feel embarrassed in front of a bunch of people.
At any rate, Rosie from the grill looks at me and says, “¿Por qué te pones rojo?”.
I answer, “Porque estoy EMBARAZADO.”
With a slight grin on her face, she asks me to repeat, “¿Qué?”.
I attempt to clarify, “Mi cara se pone roja cuando estoy embarazado.”
The rest of the Spanish speaking kitchen staff was listening in and laughing hysterically at this point. Something has gone wrong. What could it be?
Rosie was nice enough to come to my rescue, “Tom, no estás embarazado. Estás AVERGONZADO. Embarazada significa [makes a gesture indicating pregnancy] … que tú vas a tener un bebé!”
The deep red tomato head is now more of a purple than a red. It turns out that this altercation ended up being my first lesson in what are called “false friends”.
A “false friend” is a word in the target language that is written like and sounds like a word in your native language but has a different meaning.
In this case, the false friends are embarrassed and “embarazada“:
English – embarrassed (to feel shame or self conscious)
Spanish – embarazada (pregnant)
Moral(s) of the story
- False friends exist between Spanish and English and between other languages too (I’m learning now that these also exist between Spanish and Portuguese), so watch out for them!
- This was a learning experience and is part of the process. The more embarrassing the mistake, the less likely that you will ever make the same one again later on.
- Learn to laugh at yourself. I remember being hard on myself that I made this mistake, but now I have a story to tell and get a good laugh out of it. After all, it was pretty funny.
I hope that YOU have learned a lesson from my lesson learned and that maybe I’ve saved you from at least one embarrassing encounter.
Have an embarrassing “false friend” story? Leave it in the comments, I’d love to hear it.
If you have found this post useful and/or entertaining, I invite you to share it to your social media accounts.
Until the next time…
