The Best Worst Guide to Speaking Spanish

According to my Spanish teacher, my writing and grammar level is B2, which is really awesome relative to the time I've studied. However, my listening and speaking skill is lacklustre at only a A2 level. I think that makes me a visual or logical learner rather than an experiential or auditory learner.

Anyway, enough about me! Here are a few trials and tribulations from my Spanish class to help you not make the same mistakes that I did!

1) Let's start with an easy one: Changing one vowel from A to O changes the meaning completely.

Depending what you really meant to say, this is a rookie mistake that's easy to make.

2) Along the same line: Changing one vowel from O to E. After a day of surfing, you may want to say that your shoulders are sore / hurt.

3) Now let's move on to a real life example: Imagine you're hiking through a jungle to get to a secret  surf spot with your surf buddy.

You point excitedly at a pair of brilliantly coloured birds, and exclaims, "Pajeros! Pajeros!"

Little did you know that you just screamed out "Masturbators! Masturbators!" Imagine the shocked look on your surf buddy's face quizzedly looking at the trees to see what you're pointing at. Repeat after me:

4) One more vowel play.

One of the first lessons in Spanish is that typically, masculine words end in "o" and feminine words end in "a".  For example, dog is "Perro" for a boy and "Perra" for a girl; cat is "Gato" for a boy and "Gata" for a girl. However, this rule does not apply to chicken you order at a restaurant.

To order chicken, you can say "Quisiera Pollo" but if you try to get fancy and order a hen, you're actually asking for a plate of male sexual organs ("Polla").

 
In some culture, that may be a delicacy. Otherwise, you've been warned!

5) Time to get steamier!

There are many ways to say “Hot” in Spanish! If the food is spicy hot, it is “Picante”.

If the soup is boiling hot, it is “Caliente”.

While in Costa Rica where it is hot everyday, it may be tempting to say “I’m hot”, which literally translate to “Estoy Caliente”, which actually means “I’m horny!”

If the weather is hot, we say “Hace Calor”!