In some ways, Spanish can be very straightforward to learn. For example, you can turn a statement into a question with the inflexion in your voice, and the word 'hay' covers 'there is' and 'there are' in all sorts of situations, both as a question and a statement.
However, some words are very similar indeed, with only a single letter distinguishing between one word and another. But oh, what a difference a letter can make to the unwary, as you will see.
A friend of mine wanted to order cushions for her new sofa in Spanish. After much perusal of her Spanish grammar book, she confidently told the assistant, ‘Quiero comprar los cojones verdes para mi sofa, por favor.’
She was extremely puzzled - and a little hurt - when everyone within hearing range fell about laughing. After a couple of minutes, the store manager - whose English was much more advanced than my friend’s Spanish - calmed down enough to explain that what she’d actually said was 'I want to buy some green testicles for my sofa!' Of course, the word she meant to use was 'cojines' - replacing the ‘i’ with an ‘o’ gave the word a completely different meaning, and also gave the furniture store manager a great story to dine out on.
Remaining with the male anatomy for a moment, take care if when you ask for a ‘pollo.’ (chicken) In most cases, getting the gender of a word wrong doesn’t really matter, as your meaning will usually be clear from the context of the sentence. However, if you ask for a ‘polla’ by mistake, you’ll get some very funny looks and may even be thrown out of the store, as this is a (very rude) slang term for – well, another part of the male anatomy. If you don’t believe me, Google ‘Chupame la polla,’ but whatever you do, don’t say it to anybody who’s bigger than you or wearing a uniform!
Don’t let these anecdotes deter you from learning Spanish - I don't want to put you off, but I am trying to make the learning more fun. Just be careful out there. I also need to be careful in choosing an image for this, otherwise this could well be my last blog post!
