I’ve come to realize in Mexico that a pretty good measure of how fluent you are in a language is how well you get the jokes. It’s happened several times that we’ve been in a tour group with Mexicans where the guide will make a joke, or so I assume, because everyone but the Americans will laugh. I usually end up laughing too, because the site of 20 Americans looking at each other trying to figure out what happened is almost as funny as whatever it was the guide said.
In my art class a couple weeks ago I realized that the language barrier, like most things, is two-sided. I’m the only American in the class, and my classmates were asking me if I understood their slang and swear words. I explained that I was getting better, but a lot was still over my head. They told me that they watch mainly American movies, so they have a pretty good grasp on American slang. They then proceeded to demonstrate.
“F***,” said the girl next to me. “That’s a really bad one, right?”
I laughed. “Yeah, that’s a pretty bad word,” I said. Then the rest of the class joined in, going through a list of every curse word they knew. Before I knew it, the professor had joined in too. At this point I was cracking up, and at first they thought they were saying them wrong.
“No,” I explained, “it’s just not that common to hear in class.” They realized how ridiculous the situation was then and we all had a good laugh.
Another time something is lost in translation is during movies. We went to see Gone Girl here, which was in English with Spanish subtitles. We noticed that the rest of the audience was laughing at different parts than we were (not that there was that much laughter; NOT a funny movie), and it was obvious that some of the references just did not translate well.
Stories like this have been some of my most educational moments in Puebla. It’s incredibly eye-opening to live in another culture, especially one with a different language, and I’m hopeful that one day I will get the jokes. 🙂
Viajes en Puebla 