hey guys and welcome back to love English today I've got a funny and
relaxing hopefully lesson for you on my most embarrassing mistakes as a language
learner as most of you already know I'm a British University English teacher but
I've also been a language learner myself and I've learnt Spanish and Italian so
today I'm going to share some of my most embarrassing stories with you from when
I was learning Spanish if you are new to this channel then don't forget to
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of our lessons and you can follow us on our social media Instagram Facebook and
Twitter now the reason I wanted to tell you
about this guys is of course to make you laugh and to have a little bit of
relaxing lesson but also because I think a lot of learners they worry a lot about
speaking in English because they think they're going to make embarrassing
mistakes or they think they're going to pronounce something incorrectly and it's
going to sound wrong people won't understand them and that of course can
happen but I want to show you that it really doesn't matter now let's get
started with telling you some of my most embarrassing stories right story number
one so when I was about 18 years old I traveled to South America and I worked
there as a volunteer teaching English to young children before I went to South
America I had learned some Spanish I'd really tried hard to learn as much
Spanish as I could but I was still very much at the
beginner pre intermediate stage I could say things like a que hora es el desayuno
or hola me llamo Sabrah como estas? these were my basic
Spanish sentences but I could understand some basic Spanish so when I
arrived at the airport a host family so the family that I was going to stay with
were collecting me I was feeling very tired I had had a long flight and they asked me
how are you how are you feeling nice to meet you everything like that and I said
nice to meet you too and then I thought I had replied by saying I'm very tired
however the words in Spanish for tired and married are very similar
one is casada which is married and what is cansada which is
tired so I replied forgetting the n in cansada and I said casada so I said
I'm very married i'm very married and they said oh really
oh we didn't know you were married is your husband here and I was like what
and I was very confused by the situation we did manage after a little bit of
laughing and miscommunication to understand what the other meant but I
was very confused and I was like why are these people asking me where my husband
is when I'm only 18 and I'm here to have a travel experience however easy mistake
to make I think this one is probably more embarrassing to be honest I was a
little bit older my Spanish was a little bit better by this time I thought it was
and I was dating an Italian guy at the time who spoke perfect Spanish he was
fluent in Spanish and we were on holiday together in Paris so we were on holiday
together in beautiful Paris and we were practicing our Spanish we were talking
together in Spanish he was making some jokes than saying that he was going to
push me in the fountain making some jokes another reply I wanted to say to
him I'm not scared I don't have any fear I'm
not scared bring it on like that however in Spanish the words
for fear so to be scared and this emoji are almost the same so so similar so
instead of saying I'm scared which in Spanish it would be I don't have scared
I don't have scared no tengo miedo I actually said no tengo mierda so I said
something really really embarrassing and he was like he laughed so
much he really really laughed horribly embarrassing mistake but they are very
similar meido meirda very similar so it was really difficult for me to be
able to hear the difference story number three
this is the most embarrassing I think save the best until last because it was in front of my
teacher so what I think a lot of you have probably realized from learning
languages is that language structures are not the same so something will not
be expressed in the same way in every language we will have different verbs
that we use before adjectives one language will use the verb to be in a
certain situation another will use the verb to have another will use the verb
to stay things like that so in Spanish for example you don't say I'm hot you
would say there is heat or you would say what heat but you wouldn't use the verb
to be to say I'm hot however I did not know this and I was in
a Spanish class in Murcia in the south of Spain learning Spanish and it was a
very very hot in the classroom and I said
estoy caliente and my teacher looked at me like what
and then other members of the class started to laugh and I started to open
the window because I was saying I was hot and my teacher said ah and he
understood now to say estoy caliente I'm hot the direct
translation it's more like saying I'm in the mood or I feel like kissing somebody
and a bit more maybe you can understand if I show you this emoji that's what it
actually means in Spanish the correct way to say it would be que calor or hace
mucho calor but I did not know that at the time so I got that very wrong and
then my teacher looked quite shocked but we did all have a good laugh about that
afterwards ok everybody so they are my three
embarrassing stories now what I wanted to talk to you guys about is the fact
that in English it's also very easy to make these embarrassing mistakes but if
you're aware of the kind of danger areas in pronunciation where you could make a
mistake hopefully it will help you avoid being embarrassed and looking very silly
so one of these is the difference between the E and the i sound e and
i if you say the word beach with the e sound that is correct
beach if you say it with the i sound you will say a bad word
it's also the same for the word sheet the thing that we put on our bed that we
sleep on if you say it with i you're going to say a bad word if you want to watch
more about this and these kind of funny mistakes and then you can watch this
funny video the italian goes to Malta and that will teach you about dangerous
areas where you could easily mispronounce something and say a bad
word another sound which it's important to tell the difference between is the
sh and the ch st and Ch sh ch I've done a whole video on this
guys which you can watch just up there but the ch sound is used in the
word for example cheat and chop whereas sh is used in shop and sheet however
if you confuse these you might say something you don't want to say like I've
heard many Spanish and Colombians say I'm going chopping at the weekend which
means you're literally chopping something with a large knife like wood
or vegetables I don't know how many people are going out shopping but that
doesn't sound very believable the correct would be shopping the same
would be for sheet and cheat now I've heard one Brazilian girl saying that her
boyfriend cheated on her but not only did she say the Ch with a sh so she
said sheeted she also changed the e for i because she could not tell the
difference between E and i so can you imagine what she said a lot of people
started to laugh but she was very embarrassed and we had to explain to her
that is a bad mistake to make so remember guys learn your ch-sh and
your E and your i and this will hopefully help you avoid making
embarrassing mistakes but don't forget that mistakes are part of the learning
process it doesn't matter try to see the funny side but do not let
mistakes stop you from getting out there and speaking in English with native speakers
because that is the best way to improve your fluency levels if you did like this
video guys then don't forget to give it a thumbs up and share the video and also
don't forget to subscribe we'll see you soon on love English bye bye