Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Language Errors or Another One Where Jeff understands how important a few letters can be.

So I'm working on expanding my vocabulary a lot and my instructor is really doing a great job. For example: right now we're going over invitations, how to accept them, decline, how to be very formal, or very casual. This is great because I invite people over and am invited over as well. Here's where it gets funny. I'm working on the phase, to pop in, to swing by, to stop in, etc. It's just like in English where we have a thousand variants. So I go to say this one (to swing by) and I miss a couple letters. Instead of saying zaskakivat' I said zakakivat'sya. The little three letter combo on the end is a reflexive marker. Meaning, I did it myself or to myself. So the 's' that I missed DRASTICALLY changed the meaning. Instead of just swinging by, I said, "I have thoroughly pooped myself!" I hope you're laughing so hard that you're almost crying - or crying outright. I sure was. I originally made the mistake in the car with Jim and Sally and Zhanna when we went to pick up my malaria pills. I repeated the story to my instructor today and she actually cried laughing. It was worth the mistake to hear her laugh like that.

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