Trilingual Blunder....ooops!

Speaking Spanish all day can leave you mentally drained…and more prone to make very silly mistakes - like the following…

Since April, I’ve been teaching English classes to the youth of my town. A few weeks ago, I was in my class for the older group, from 8 to 10 at night. This particular class we were discussing food and the associated verbs.

I would write a sentence and people would say food to put into the sentence. I wrote, “estoy comiendo’ and someone said, ‘chancho’. Translated, that is, “I am eating pork.” Well, I know the Quechua word for pork/pig and everyone gets a kick anytime I say anything in Quechua (because I’m white), so as I was writing this, I said, “Estoy comiendo chupi.” I expected to get a giggle. The room was silent. Maybe they didn’t hear me, I thought, so I said it louder. Nothing.

I turned around and saw startled faces, so I said it again and was like, what? Then in my head I realized I must have made a mistake. And I did. My face turned bright red and I corrected myself, “kuchi, kuchi”, I pleaded. At this, everyone began laughing hysterically. I had mixed up the words ‘chupi’ and ‘kuchi’.

You see, the word “chupi” means vagina. I was saying, translated, ‘I am eating vagina.’ I’ve been getting teased ever since, even from people who weren’t there…big ooops.

Love,
Jake