This quirk I have of wanting to learn a little of the language of my colleagues so I can say Good Morning and Goodbye each day can have its drawbacks.
Today I said Shub Prabhat (Good Morning in Hindi) to a guy in the office from Pakistan. He looked at me like I was insane. I repeated what I said and still he stared. Then he asked an Indian co-worker to translate what I was trying to say.
It turns out Shub means 'night' in Urdu so he thought I was a crazy woman standing there saying Night to him at 8:30 in the morning.
Thursday, 28 August 2008
Shub Prabhat
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1 comments:
Yes, a little learning sho nuff be a dangerous thing! When our horses were boarded, the stable help was Mexican and every day I'd practice something to say before going out there. One freezing winter afternoon I wanted to make sure they planned to run the barn heaters that night, so I thought I said "Please turn on the heaters." Veya and Jose fell down laughing...and Jose, who knew some English, kindly explained that what I'd said was an idiom for "get your mojo working"---something about a "hot machine."
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