Forgive us, we really didn't know

So we had a girls night out last night. We watched MAMA MIA and went for ice cream after. I totally forgot how loud we Brazilians can be when we get together. I hope we didn't disturb too much the people that were around us...

I used to be very conscious about my English. Well... I still am, but after last night, I started feeling pretty good. I'm not trying to say that my English is so much better than everybody else's, although it sounds like it. I just realized that we all make mistakes, and that it's okay to laugh about it. We talked about some of the things that we try to say in English, but it comes out with a completely different meaning of what we really want to say. I'll start out with some of the examples that were given last night:

1 - One of the girls were saying that she was talking to someone about bathroom decoration, and she was trying to say that her husband likes those hooks that you use to hang your shower curtains. Instead she said: "Oh yeah... my husband loves hookers in the shower." (I hope this is not offensive to anyone.)

2 - We also talked about some words that we shouldn't try to say at all because eventually, when you're trying to say something fast, they will come out sounding like something else. Like the word beach, or sheet. My friend said that one time when her mother-in-law was over, she was making the bed for her and she said: "I already got all your sh... ready for you." She said that her mother-in-law's stare was pretty strange, and that she just realized what she said after her husband told her.

3 - This example is in Spanish and I hope I can explain that well enough... My friend worked in this place in Idaho where 75% of people spoke Spanish. That can be really tricky, because Spanish is very similar to Portuguese, but a lot of words that sound the same have completely different meanings to them. She said that she was telling everybody at her work this: "Mi esposo me pega todos os dias." In Portuguese that means that her husband picks her up from work everyday. In Spanish that means that he beats her everyday. And she kept telling everybody that she needed to learn how to drive so that her husband didn't come to pick her up anymore. People kept asking her why did he do that to her and her answer was: "Ele es un esposo mui bueno" - translation: He is a good husband. After a long time someone decided to ask her if she really knew what that meant and explained that the word "pega" has a different meaning in Spanish. The worse part was that her husband worked in the same company that she did.

So next time I make a mistake, it's okay to laugh. That's all we did last night. I'll laugh with, I promise. And if we, immigrants in general, ever say anything that sounds offensive to anyone, please forgive us, because we really don't know what we're saying.