This is my language helper, Yoshi. She and I have become good friends, and I REALLY appreciate her help …and her patience with my mistakes.
Well, it finally happened. I have been terrified of the day that I would accidentally say something awful by accident. I feared that I would accidently say something like, "Your grandmother is a cow." when I meant to say something totally innocent, like, "Your house is lovely."
I think I topped my own fears on this one. A couple days ago in my language session, I was trying to figure out what I should do if I accidentally bumped into someone as I was walking down the street. It was just a tiny piece of culture I wanted to investigate. My language helper recorded a great story for me about these two guys named Roberto and Pablo (or something like that). Roberto was walking down the street and he came around a corner and bumped into Pablo. He excused himself and helped Pablo get up, and they went on their way. I listened to this story over and over because I wanted to be able to get all the vocabulary down so that I could retell it in my own words at my next session.
Then came my next session. Somehow, without realizing it, I told a story about Roberto and Pablo who were touching each other in the street! My language helper laughed and laughed and I was SOOOOO embarrassed. The word I should have said: topa. The word I said: toca. On a recording, these two words sound EXTREMELY similar because Spanish has no aspiration (my linguistic-geek friends will know what I mean). Man, some parts of this language just really leave no room for error! That was a consonant error. I did something WAY worse the other day when I messed up a vowel in a Spanish word. I can’t even tell you about that one. I would turn every imaginable color of red just typing what I said! But please don’t wash my mouth out with soap. I didn’t mean to say such awful things!
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