In “You’re Gonna Make Mistakes. Might as Well Learn From Them!”, I mentioned that the best way to learn something in a foreign language is to do it the wrong way, and then the humiliation will do the trick. Sometimes, though, someone else’s humiliation will do just fine.
My husband’s aunt was visiting relatives in Italy, and thought that she was doing a great job conversing in Italian. She grew up speaking English, but knew enough Italian to get by. Or so she thought.
The aunt–we’ll call her Zia–was speaking to one of her cousins and his friend, both avid skiers. She meant to ask them if they skied together often, but confused two similar words in a particular dialect of Italian. One means ‘to ski’ and the other refers to poultry excrement. You got it, chicken, um, poop. Basically, Zia was asking, “Do the two of you chicken **** together often?”. Neither one would answer her, so she asked again, several times, each time louder than the last. Finally, someone took her aside and told her to be quiet.
Poor Zia learned the hard way, but now I know that the word for ‘to ski’ is ’sciare’.
