Estoy constipado

Sometimes my students just crack me up! Today, I laughed so hard that I was crying.

For some reason, we all got to talking about false friends. Words that sound and look the same but have different meanings in different languages are called false friends. For example, the adjective, embarazada, sounds like embarrassed, when really it means pregnant. Oh wait, I just remembered why this came up. I was talking about how much I love non-pregnancy pregnancy tops because it hides the gut! I have no idea how we get into these topics. Last week, we started talking about Amsterdam, which led to talking about the Red Light District, then to whores, then to sex, etc.

But I digress...so back to false friends...

So after clarifying the different between embarazada and embarrassed, Isabel, one of the more advanced students, brought up the word constipado. She points out that constipado means to have nasal congestion, but to English speakers, constipado sounds like constipated. Suddenly, Mar, another pretty advanced student, says, "but I don't understand...what does constipated mean?" I start to awkwardly explain it to her. When she realizes what it means, she gets this look of horror in her face. She says, "What??? Many times I talked to English speaking people and used the word constipated instead of congested!!!" The class bursts into laughter.

Then it gets better...

Maria starts telling her "constipado" story. Let me preface this with the fact that everyone refers to Maria as someone who speaks Spanglish. We all know she is very smart because she is an economist. She has traveled the world and has visited the US numerous times. She understands English concepts fairly well. However, when she speaks, it sounds like she can't decide between English and Spanish. She mixes it so badly sometimes that it almost sounds like gibberish and no one can understand her!

Anyway, she starts telling us about when she was in Washington D.C. with her husband, who unfortunately got the flu. She went to the the pharmacy to get some medicine and talked to the pharmacist to get suggestions on which medicine to get. She says to the pharmacist, "my husband is bad in bed". Isabel and I looked at her, started laughing and said, "ummm what???" She repeats it again and still doesn't realize what she is actually saying. Isabel starts telling her in Spanish the literal translation of what she said. At this point everyone started laughing. Maria starts laughing as well and says in Spanglish how now she knows why the pharmacist was looking at her like she's crazy! To make things worse, when she talked to the pharmacist, she said, "My husband is bad in bed. He is constipado!" Everyone started laughing even more. Everyone started making comments like, "He doesn't need cold medicine for that!" or "No no no, her husband is a latin lover!" (This one is from Mar who was trying to save Maria from her embarrassment).

I was dying of laughter. I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt! It was great. I haven't laughed that hard in so long and it felt good!