Miraculous conception (English/Spanish)
When I was teaching Spanish as a foreign language in Mexico I had a very nice old lady in my class probably in her 70s. In one of our lessons she made a mistake in one of her sentences and she said to me lo siento, estoy embarazada, I am sorry, I am pregnant. She was thinking about being 'embarrassed' but the most embarrassed was me as I could not help laughing!
Sent by: Victor
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While spending 3 months in Ecuador as an exchange student I remember telling my Ecuadorian family how I had said something silly in class that day and was very embarazada which by the look on their faces I immediately knew was not correct. I had actually told them I was just pregnant!
When I was first learning Spanish I noticed that many of the chemists (farmacias) advertised pruebas de embarazo. I very quickly found out that the chemist was not an expert in "blue" stories.
In Panama, my friend was taking pictures of a very interesting shop window. The owners came out, though, and were not happy about the picture-taking. My friend told the most vocal owner that he had made her be embarrassed, and only realized later that she had told him he had made her be pregnant.
How interesting! I am majoring in Spanish language and always make such mistakes!
That's a little embarrassing but you'll be laughing about this in years to come and telling everyone.
This story may be an urban myth, I heard it while studying in Guatemala from another student who claimed it happened to girl she knew. The girl had been living with her Guatemalan host family for a number of weeks, when, on her birthday, they kindly gave her a cake complete with candles and sang to her. She declared herself estoy embarazada. The family responded with great delight and repeated shoutings of ¡Felicidades! ¡Felicidades! ¿Quién es el padre? Being exceptionally confused, not speaking a large amount of Spanish and hearing repeated shoutings of ¿Padre? ¿Padre?, she responded by simply staring at the father of the family. As you can imagine the mirth died quite abrutly. The girl who told me this didn't know what happened next, but I guess we can assume order was restored, possibly with the help of a dictionary and a rather more subdued party continued. So when the textbooks tell you to beware of false friends, we'd better take heed.
On a foreign exchange we were visiting a parador that had previously been a monastery. My friend asked the male students with us if they still had servicio there, meaning 'mass services'. When it was pointed out she had asked if they still had 'toilets', she declared herself tan emabarazada - so pregnant.
Ed's note: Servicios was half way there. Mass services are servicios de misa, whereas servicios in its own mean toilets.
:) but yes the adjective "embarazoso/a" does exist. "Esta situación es embarazosa" means this situation is embarrassing.
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