I had children before my brain was fully developed and learned the word episiotomy before the word etymology. Due to the nature of an episiotomy I was scarred to the point that any word that sounded vaguely like episiotomy, such as etymology, would make me squirm, look away and gag enough to remind me how much l hate the taste of vomit.
When I met someone who referred to himself as a part-time Etymologist at a cocktail party, he looked surprised that someone as verbose as me would immediately shut up, squirm, look away and shove my beer bottle up against my closed mouth. Possible questions for this fellow careened around my brain and none were appropriate for the occasion.
As an expat, etymology is a mine field. Though we might think a particular word in a new language sounds like it should have the same meaning as a word in our native language, we are often embarrassingly wrong. One favorite example is the word embarazada in Spanish as in ¨Estoy tan embarazada¨ which when used to explain how you feel about your poor Spanish really means you are quite pregnant. Letś hope you don´t need an episiotomy.
An earlier experience had to do with the word caravan. I was 16 and living in rural India as an exchange student when my host sister came running in the door screaming, ¨a caravan, a caravan¨! Being a big fan of camels, elephants and gold, I flew out of the house to view what could only be a grand procession that included a Maharaja and his scantily-clad harem.
What I saw was a battered old van with a foreign license plate. And while the occupants may have been scantily clad, they were to my disappointment just a disheveled and dirty group of euro-hippies following the hash highway.
What I learned that day was that caravan in most countries is what we refer to in the US as an RV. While the rest of the world buys some caravan insurance, we buy some RV insurance. While the rest of the world goes caravaning, we go RV´ing. And while the rest of the world uses a word for ¨large car¨ that conjures up images of half-naked women, we use two single letters that conjure up images of old people who don´t realize their turn signal is on.
As a wise old episiotomist once told me, the word is sharper than the scalpel as long as you don´t get embarrassed by pregnant pauses in the caravan (RV) of life. And etymologially speaking, I am probably safer abroad than someplace where I can be mistunderstood correctly.
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You gave me my first laugh of the day. Having lived in a number of sort-of-English speaking countries, I have had many incidences of word-confusions and word-adventures. It’s a fun world. Most of the time.
When I first arrived in Spain, I told everyone at school, that I had fallen down the stairs and afterwards I was so “embarazada”! ANother good Spanish one is “constipado”which doesn’t mean what you may think but that you have a cold!
Hello,
I am working with BaListings.com to find links to include in our link exchange. We are looking to add links to our website with regards to Buenos Aires, Argentina, South America, or travel in general.
BaListings is a new website that is dedicated to listing temporary apartments in Buenos Aires. Apartments are added to our site by both agencies and apartment owners.
We would like to display a link to your blog with a short description on our website in exchange for our link to be posted on your website.
The purpose of the link exchange is to help each website gain more visibility online and to generate more traffic for both websites.
If you would like to participate in our link exchange, please reply to patrick@balistings.com and provide me with the link you would like to use as well as a short description of your blog.
Thank you
- Patrick
The BaListings Team
“…where I can be misunderstood correctly.” Loved that ending!
I find the danger is when you know a similar language and think you can just combine the two. I know a little bit of Spanish and a little bit of Italian and always manage to not be understood in either country because I’ll just manufacture words that don’t exist. It may sound very Spanish saying, say, “tabola” when you mean table, but unfortunately those tricky Spanish have decided to call it “mesa.”