Oops, I Did It Again: ESL Pitfalls

Whilst in a busy park with my children, listening carefully to their lovely stories, I shook my head in amazement, acknowledging them with a very loud and an exciting: 'fakt jo (pronounced /Fa:k jəʊ/)?!' which casually translates to 'oh really' or 'wow' in Czech. It doesn't help that my children speak English to me (unless I insist otherwise) as was the case here – so to an outsider it must have been quite a picture to hear my Czech 'oh really' at the end of the conversation.

It is always comforting to hear that I am not the only one though: Speaking to my Italian friend about these embarrassing but funny moments where languages cross (even though you don't want them to!) we laughed at her: 'dai' (/d:jɛ/). Of course she was not telling her children 'to die' but she was only prompting them to hurry up!

Mastery vs. Perfection

Just recently when I thought that, after all those years, I had mastered the English language yet another conversation ended up in a pronunciation error. We talked about the reasons for animals such as dogs having to spend time in quarantine before entering the UK. As I described, it was because the UK did not want to have problems associated with 'rabbis'. After this mishap, I promised to remember to know how to pronounce 'rabies' correctly.

The same friend also enlightened me about the whole Christmas Pantomime thing. I thought the show was very odd and that we must have had bad luck as the original male actor must have fallen ill at a last minute – why else would there be a female actress playing Aladdin and what's with that man in dress playing Aladdin’s mum? It was then explained to me that traditionally, that's what happens in every Pantomime and is what makes it special, just a fun casual tongue in cheek light-hearted play!

Similarities in words also sometimes took me and the listener by surprise. Jumping off a screwdriver is not what I meant to say while having a serious chat about unfortunate people desperate enough to commit suicide. Skyscraper was the word I was looking for! Well, at least we embarked on a merrier conversation after that.

In times back 'then' before mobile phones, it was harder to get things right immediately and correct a misunderstanding – once I waited in Marble Arch for a friend of mine for two hours wondering if she had forgotten about our appointment while she was thinking the same waiting for me – in Archway.

It Can Happen in Any Language

In other situations you think you are safe with your own language, as my friend and I did once. While on a London bus, we engaged in a conversation about the difference between male and female anatomy. We were talking about bodily hair and sweating being connected to 'being hairy'. We used the man sitting next to us as a 'typical' example as he was not exactly Matt Lucas type, quite the contrary. Little did we know the man was Czech, enjoying our conversation, and letting us fully engage in it before thanking us at the end for an educating and enlightening view. He also promised to wax next time.

Another time, whilst in a Spanish class in Spain, I was asked to describe how my day starts every morning. I started describing how I loved my pet bunnies, how I fed them as soon as I woke up and played with them every morning. I should have known that conejo has more than one meaning. Of course, my classmates thought I was playing with the plastic type. I tried my best to explain that I didn't engage in such activity every morning, but whatever I said did not mean much as since that day my entrance was followed by laughter and never-ending jokes.

Well, apart from occasional embarrassment and the odd awkward moment there is a positive side to this: ESL can sometimes be used as an excuse for my unsuitable and politically incorrect language!

Michaela Rossi was born in the former Czechoslovakia and moved to the UK at the age of 19. She followed her husband on his work assignment to Spain in 2004 where their children were born. In 2011, they moved back to the UK, this time to Hampshire, where they love being outdoors, always admiring the beautiful English countryside and exploring their local area.