The dangers of a foreign language

LOST IN TRANSLATION: Travel in a country where you do not speak the language may get the impression that you are in a bubble.

My Mexican friend Ricardo had a problem. He was awakened with a serious teeth rage, and he needed to see a dentist. This was not, however, the major problem.

The problem was he was living at the United States, but was after only a few weeks, not yet satisfied with his English. Yet, the tooth wasn't going to fix itself.

"So I thought about what I will tell the dentist" Ricardo told me later, perched behind a bar back in his home town of Puerto Escondido. "" "" I think about what you call things in your mouth and I know it's "teeth", so I think on the plural should be for this. Put a ' on it and "teeths", right?

"Now, remember that for the Mexican it does y no"th"sound so it leaves everything just like 't'." So I visited the dentist and everyone y I say the girl at the counter, "I have pain in my teets.

"Everyone laughed me!"

What was worse, is that at that time, Ricardo didn't even know that the English word "nipples" served - he thought that everyone was laugh at his teeth pluralization.

Embarrassing as it was Ricardo, I find this story refreshing because it reminds me that we monolingual Australasians aren't the only ones to have a problem with the language when we travel. It is a global phenomenon.

I've always had a problem with the language, I speak only one of them. This is not a large part of the Australia issue. in fact, I rarely noted. Step off our coast, however, and I find that I am a disadvantage serious. I am cut off from the rest of the world. Conversations with strangers may be very interesting to ask directions to the nearest toilet.

In non-Anglophone countries I travel around in a bubble bizarre, cut off from the rest of society by my inability to communicate with it.

But hey, travelling from life goes.

I bumble by things, making a fool of myself, as I go along. I play games little charades, tap out of pricing negotiations on calculators and feign horror when costing an inordinately high. It is really part of the trip fun and should be, because you can try as much as you want, but you're never going to master all the languages of the world. You can yourself linguist envy, but you will always find themselves somewhere where you speak the lingo.

This is when the charades, or desperate words in common research. (I found "cristiano ronaldo" works - everyone knows him and everything the world has an opinion).

Yet again, I contacted a friend of a friend through the magic of Google. He could not speak English, I didn't speak no Portuguese. No problem. He whipped on her laptop, sailed on its way to Google Translate, and we talked about connecting our conversation in the limited space and clicking on "translating". Worked a treat.

Depending on the country in which I am in my language skills range from the primitive to the appalling. With Asian languages, I have absolutely no chance. I have enough disorder to memorize words, and still less learning different intonations to apply these words. European languages, I got a bit more successful, even though I am still embarrassingly bad.

I can read menus, I can greet people and I can thank them. I can even ask a few questions. problem is if the answers are more complicated than silence pointing the finger in the direction to go, then I'm completely buggered.

I learned to say, "I'm sorry, I can't understand you" in a dozen languages. I myself embarrassed on countless occasions.

I constantly the words put in the wrong places. I tried to thank someone saying: ?gracias por favor. In other words, "Thank you please." That?

Again, I think that story "lost in translation" best I ever heard belongs to my friend Kylie old-school. She was Argentina few years during an especially hot part of the year. One day, a beat down that punctuate, one of the locals was asked how she was doing.

He asked to "Como estas?

"Oh," Kylie said, fanning his face with his hands, "muy caliente."

This was met with a roar of laughter, which was enough confused for Kylie because she was, she simply replied, "hot".

Problem is "caliente" is a funny Word. When applied to something inanimate, such as water or time, this does not mean hot. When applied to a person, however, this means something completely different.

This is how the conversation sounded for Argentine guys. He asked to "Como estas?

"Oh," Kylie said, fanning his face with his hands, "very horny.

Have you ever committed a faux pas of language? Post a comment below.

-Sydney Morning Herald

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