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Advanced Speaker 30 – Spanish Jokes and Funny Stories

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error scaleFun Stories and Spanish Jokes

Being a Spanish teacher has many fun moments, but none as funny as the ones in which a student makes an error that is simply hilarious.

Why is it, however, that most times the error converts an innocent sentence into something totally vulgar or rude?

This happens nine times out of ten. Perhaps its the fact that so many rude words have an equivalent ‘normal’ with only one letter difference.

Chicken or Cockerel?

Probably the most common mistake is the mix up between POLLO (chicken) and its rather rude sister (or brother for that matter) POLLA (cock/dick).

A student of mine tells the story of when she first started going to Spain with her (then) husband. He knew the difference between the two words but she didn’t and every night in the restaurant he would encourage her to order “polla con patatas fritas”.

Each evening, oblivious to the sniggering coming from both her husband and the waiter, she would proudly ask for her “cock and chips” and, even more surprisingly, receive her chicken and chips without problem.

On the last night of her stay, she once again ordered her usual from a smiling Spanish waiter and waited for her meal to arrive.

Suddenly, all the waiters from the restaurant appeared at the table with a plate of chips with an enormous plastic willy stuck blot upright in the middle of it.

Finally, she realised what had happened and, as you might imagine, was very embarrassed.  The joke was on her!

Later that year, the tables turned and the joke was back on her husband when she divorced him and took half of his money! haha.

The Spanish Jokes work the other way too.

English is no safer than Spanish for the unwary student. Cynthia’s father, José Luis came to England to visit us and whilst here was obliged to use his limit English to ask for things when Cynthia and I weren’t around.

To ensure he had things right, he would say them to us at home and we would make the necessary adjustments. Despite his limited vocabulary and knowledge of English grammar he always seemed to get by. However, there were a couple of times when we were glad that he had told us what he intended to say.

Lonely Coffee.

José and Mercedes were going to the local café and Cynthia wanted to check how he planned to make the order:

“Voy a decir…” he said, “Wan coffee weet meelk and wan coffee ALONE.”

What he had done was to faithfully translate “Un café solo.” which is ‘a black coffee’ or literally ‘a coffee on its own (without milk).

We all laughed about what the waitress would have thought of that strange order.

X Rated alcohol.

Then, one day he wanted to go to the bar and have a ‘cubata’. (Spirit with mixer.)

“¿Qué vas a decirle, papá? asked Cynthia.

“Voy a decirle: ‘I wan a dick with cock.'”

We nearly fell through the floor with laughter. What he meant was that he wanted a Whisky DYK, which is a well known Spanish brand, with a COKE.

Once more we thanked our lucky stars that he never got to order that drink! Goodness knows what kind of reaction he would have gotten from the barman in the small corner pub that he was heading off to.

Listen in to the podcast and hear the other hilarious Spanish jokes and fun stories we tell about what our students have said over the years.

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31 Advanced Speaker Mercedes on the Spanish Learning English

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The Great Pushschool-books-scale

Thanks to the ongoing crisis, there is a enormous wave in Spain of the Spanish learning English. Why? Well, what they know is that if they are going to find work in their own country, then they will have to have something extra to offer the hiring company.

In addition to that, what is at the forefront of most of the Spanish learning English is that if they are to escape the crisis by heading off to other countries, then they must first have a good level of English to have any chance of getting the most basic of jobs.

All the major cities in the UK are now quite literally echoing with Spanish voices as they arrive in search of any kind of job that might be available.

Most times, the only jobs that they can get are minimum wage roles in restaurants. This may seem to be highly unfair, especially when you realise that most of the Spanish that arrive here are educated to degree standard. However, when faced with the choice  between maybe finding a minimum wage job in Spain, or working in the UK, the  logical action to take is to come to the UK.

Minimum wage in Spain is calculated monthly and equates to around 21 pounds per day. So, in an average 8 hour day they will earn less than 3 Euros per hour. Compare that to £6.50  an hour in the UK for those over 21.

No wonder, then, that so many of the Spanish youth are packing their bags and flying over the the UK with most major cities as their destination.

Parents are learning, too.

Another result of this mass exodus from Spain is that many parents are having to learn English, too? Why? Well, it’s inevitable that many of their children, once in the UK, are finding partners and settling down to have family.  Therefore, many Spanish parents need to learn Spanish so that they can communicate with their grandchildren, their daughter or son-in-law and, even more worrying for them, with the rest of the in-laws.

The one thing I do admire is the willingness of the Spanish to ‘have a go’. They always seem to make an effort to give it their best shot, even if they don’t always make it.

Now, in Spain, many English classes are filled with many parents in their fifties or more all trying to brush up, or start from zero with their English skills. In this podcast, we hear a similar story from Mercedes, my suegra (súper simpática) who is now attending English classes to better communicate with my English family.

I really admire her efforts and wish her every success. Who knows, one day we may even be able to interview her on LightSpeed English! jaja.

Enjoy the interview.

Gordon:)

 

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