{"id":3673,"date":"2017-02-02T08:46:17","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T07:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=3673"},"modified":"2017-05-28T10:55:24","modified_gmt":"2017-05-28T08:55:24","slug":"talk-inadvertently-dirty-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=3673","title":{"rendered":"Talk Inadvertently Dirty to Me"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Machu Picchu, name of a place, a thing, and the current president<\/p><\/div>\n

I am reading a humorous travel narrative about Machu Picchu. I needed something lighthearted, what with the present state of the globe. I can\u2019t turn the news on without wanting to move to a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas, and even sites which used to represent fun, like Facebook and Twitter, are now rife with bitter political battles.<\/p>\n

And indeed, the book is making me giggle. The writer has a sense of humor I relate to. And if that\u2019s not enough, on every third page, I get to say the word \u201cPicchu.\u201d<\/p>\n

You may have just said it aloud to see what all the humorous hoopla is about. But if you\u2019re Czech, you know why this is funny.<\/p>\n

Czechs pronounce that site in Peru like this: Mah-choo Peek-choo. If you are from my native land, you pronounce it: Mah-choo Pee-choo. And this is where the giggling starts, because if you say Pea-choo, you are saying an extremely vulgar word for a woman\u2019s main reproductive organ or, as it happens, an extraordinarily appropriate term for the current President of the United States.<\/p>\n

My giggles are no doubt adolescent, but they are also nostalgic.<\/p>\n

I got this little vocabulary lesson in my third week in Prague, when teaching a group of 18 year-old girls for a Cambridge exam. It was part of a subject phrase and so I said it several times in succession. \u201cMachu Picchu is a site\u2026Why is Machu Picchu important here? Machu Picchu is part of what\u2026?\u201d Again. And again. And again. Obviously having no idea that the Czechs pronounced Picchu with a hard K or what it meant when I pronounced it as Pea-choo, as I always had, I sang it forth with unbridled ignorance.<\/p>\n

I only took pause when I noticed that the girls were unanimously holding in laughs to such a degree that I was teaching a group of cherry tomatoes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d I asked the closest girl.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re saying something funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am? Machu?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPicchu?\u201d<\/p>\n

Explosion. Rapturous laughter. My face became the cherry tomato.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does it mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a part of the body.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh God. Which part?\u201d<\/p>\n

After deliberation. \u201cI have one and you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOK, that\u2019s the end of class, go now and, remember, no need to give the school any official feedback, right? No\u2026I\u2019ll see you next week, if I still have a job.\u201d<\/p>\n

I related the story to my colleagues, who informed me that I had just said \u201ccunt\u201d a dozen times in front of a class of 18 year-old girls.<\/p>\n

I wondered if I could still get my job in Pittsburgh back. But I felt less embarrassed after the next year or so, when it became clear that one of the fringe benefits of ESL teaching was the inadvertent dirty talk.<\/p>\n

One morning, a beginner student was singing a popular pop tune: \u201cI\u2019m horny, so horny, horny, horny.\u201d And when I asked if she knew what that meant, she said with a shrug, \u201cOf course, ‘I’m happy. So happy happy happy.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Uh, sort of…but maybe not yet?<\/p>\n

There were so many others. One student complained \u201cI don\u2019t get off with my grandfather very well.\u201d Another student explained her indigestion by the somewhat physically dynamic: \u201cI ate myself out last night.\u201d When another woman told me about being flashed on the tram I asked how she responded, to which she said: \u201cI got off.\u201d When I asked one student, who was rarely able to attend class anymore, why she seemed upset, she explained with a suspiciously deep sigh: \u201cOh, I wish I could come more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t we all.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it\u2019s a translation thing. I once asked a group to paraphrase one of their culture’s folktales, and one woman told us in slow detail about the mythical \u201cblack cock\u201d that visited a village every year. The villagers waited in earnest for the black cock (rooster) all night. To which I could not resist remarking, \u201cWell, we all know it\u2019s not a holiday until the black cock arrives.\u201d<\/p>\n

English doesn\u2019t have the corner on this market. Every expatriate I know or friend I have who speaks another language bemoans similar experiences. I once accidentally called a woman a bitch (d\u00edvka) instead of saying something was weird (divn\u00fd). I informed an entire room of my bosses that I was impotent simply because of leaving the letter L out of a word. I have informed a friend that I was on the brink of orgasm\u2026much to the delight of the packed barroom I was walking through.<\/p>\n

Inadvertent dirty talk is all part of the fun of learning (and teaching) languages. No doubt if you have studied or taught a language you have experienced similar mix-ups. If so, I\u2019d love to hear them. Write them in the comments below.<\/p>\n

Until then, please join me in calling the President of the United States, one big giant Picchu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am reading a humorous travel narrative about Machu Picchu. I needed something lighthearted, what with the present state of the globe. I can\u2019t turn the news on without wanting to move to a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas, and even sites which used to represent fun, like Facebook and Twitter, are now rife with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/machu.jpg?fit=280%2C180&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-Xf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3673"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3844,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673\/revisions\/3844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}