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Hey there!

My name is Paola and I am from Venezuela, I came to England in 2014 and my knowledge of English was next to zero.

I never thought I would need to speak English, never mind moving to England.

Since then, I have had to forcedly learn English (a los conazos) which have ended up helping me to create some really funny memories (now, because at the time sometimes wasn’t).

I met my boyfriend in 2017, Daniel, who is English, and it has been funny (mainly for him) this journey of dating someone foreign and watching my many attempts to communicate.

I don’t know why this is going to be, but I’ll be writing some language and cultural related stories that have been happening to me over time. (And if you are kind enough, I can also share yours)

Thank you for reading this far.

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Within just a few weeks of arriving to England, I had a call for my first interview ever.

I was so nervous to say the least.

Anyways, I get there, they ask me to go to this meeting room with what felt like a really long table and the manager asked me to take a sit (at the very end of it, while he sat on the other end).

He proceeds to ask me something, which I did not get at all and my eyes popped wide open, and he asked again.

But nope.

I didn’t understand any of it.

He asked for a third time, and I was so embarrassed, and I asked him in my super broken English to please write it down.

He did.

When I see the question, I just wanted to disappear.

It said: “What is your name?”.

I did not get the job.

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A few weeks after my first interview fiasco, I found a job in a coffee shop. You must be wondering: How in earth did she get a job after she couldn’t understand the most basic question in the world? Maybe this can be a story for another time.

My job at the coffee shop was simply to clean tables. Take the plates, clean the table, and take the trolly back to the kitchen.

Simple right?

As you can see this was just a few weeks after my first interview, my English wasn’t any better, and I still couldn’t understand a word of what people said to me.

On the first day, a customer comes to me and asked me to get her a saucer. I didn’t know what a saucer was, I didn’t want to ask anyone because I was afraid that they would realise that I couldn’t understand a word of English and fire me.

So what did I do?

Well, I brought her ketchup, mayo, mustard, brown sauce, knives, forks, spoons, napkins, salt, pepper, sugar, and everything you could think of.

She knew straight away that I didn’t know wtf a “saucer” was until she showed me her husband’s saucer.

Turns out that a saucer is the little plate that goes underneath the cup.

I will never forget that day.

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I met my now boyfriend though a dating app, Bumble, we'd been chatting for several weeks and had finally decided to meet up. We met at around 1pm and after a wonderful first date I took the last train home at 9:30pm. As we were saying goodbye I said "I had lots of fun today" to which he responded "iPhone 2", I was obviously incredibly confused as that response had nothing to do with the current conversation let alone anything to do with phones! He repeated himself, a second and a third time and I still couldn't piece together what he meant. Finally, he slowly repeats the words "I had fun too" and surprisingly, it suddenly made much more sense! It remains a favourite story to this day.

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When I was at College, I was in my math class, with my favourite teacher, in my favourite subject. Anyways, that day happened to be a trial lesson, where somewhere from another department was going to inspect the teacher or something along those lines.

Anyways, at the very end of the lesson the lady asked the teacher to leave, and I am left with the other students, and she asked us what we thought about the teacher, and one of the guys, for my understanding, said the teacher was a lizard!

And I was like WT*?

How in earth this guy was going to call my favourite teacher a "lizard"?

I was super annoyed to say the least.

I came out of the lecture and I told my two friends, WHAT THE ****? WHY *insert guys name* called *Favourite Math’s Teacher* a LIZARD?

They were both super confused! And one of them laughs and said to me, “Paola, he said he was a wizard! WIZARD! As in, he was a really good teacher!”

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After a couple of months dating my partner, I told him I was going to go to the shop and if he wanted anything, he asks me to get figs.

To give you some context, I didn’t really know what figs were, and sometimes for non-native speakers we read words, but we don’t actually know how to pronounce them, or we hear words, and we have no idea in how to write them.

Well, there I go in my shopping adventure, I go to the chicken aisle and go to get thighs, chicken thighs, because that’s how I thought you wrote figs.

Anyways, he comes home, and asks me, did you get the figs? And I was like, yeah, yeah and I gave him the chicken, he laughed and laughed until almost crying and I did not understand what was going on until he proceeded to tell me the difference.

And now, that is how we refer as thigs to chicken thighs.

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This one more than language is about culture, I guess.

I was born and raised in Venezuela, I moved to England when I was 17.

For those who don’t know, Venezuela due many reasons, hasn’t been able to develop, in fact, it is extremely difficult to survive there. When I lived there, there was food shortages everywhere (and everything pretty much), making people to queue overnight outside supermarkets just to see what they could get. Some days we will be able to get milk, however, we might not see it again for weeks, which made people to buy and hold products which they didn’t need at the time and made it worse (kind of what happened at the beginning of lockdown with the “basics”).

So, as you can imagine, going shopping was a nightmare, as we couldn’t really choose or eat what we wanted, it was more about what it was available at the time.

So, when I moved to England I felt like a 🤬 Queen. (In fact, I spent hours in the supermarket not queuing (for a change) but looking at all the products!
(A little overwhelming tbf)

One day, my boyfriend asked me to go to the shop and get him cheese, so there I go in my shopping adventure again. I went and picked any yellow cheese, which is how we call all the yellow cheeses in Venezuela (Queso Amarillo) and I go home.

When I got home, he asked me why would I buy a cheese strength 3? That it was too strong and that he didn’t like the taste of it, and I was like, are you for real? Cheese is cheese!

Well, let me tell you, apparently is not. Which made me realised how lucky I am to be able to live in England.

Thank you, England, for teaching me about cheeses.

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Well, I don’t know if this is a family, a south American or a Venezuelan thing.

But we are quite superstitious.

For example, when I was growing up, my mom would only allow me and my sister (Pame (the one that is drawing the cool drawings)) to get haircuts in crescent moon, so that our hair would be long, healthy and beautiful. Because if we got a haircut in waning moon, we would make our hair to stop growing and fall off, or something along those lines.

However, I did not really realise how crazy this was until I moved to England and I started explaining these believes to other people.

Like: "Please don’t sweep my feet as that means that I won’t get married", or "my cake turned out horrible because I will have my period soon", or "EVERYTHING is going wrong thanks to retrograde Mercury"

There was a day my boyfriend was having a terrible day, and as a good superstitious Venezuelan I googled to check if it was Retrograde Mercury, (WHICH IT WAS BTW!) so that would explain everything.

(right? Hahaha.)

Anyways, I told him, oh I know why you are having a horrible day; it is because Mercury is in his Retrograde phase.

He started laughing.

And I was like: haha, really!

He asked me, do you seriously believe this?

And kept laughing.

I didn’t actually know what to say, because I have believed those things my whole life, however, looking at it, I know it sounds really silly.

At least I made his day a little brighter, but even though I don’t look at the calendar to see when I can get a haircut anymore, I still run away when people are sweeping close to me and I still blame mercury for my bad days, (it doesn’t hurt anyone I guess)

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Could you please tell me about a funny (or not) language or cultural story that have happened to you or someone you know
:) <3
You can reveal your identity or leave it anonymous if you prefer.

Thank you so much for your help!

with love,

Paola.

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I'd pass a cafe in Korea a lot, which had two names: 'Meeting' was one, a transliteration of the real name, '미팅'. I had no idea the two names were related, or that it even described the same venue. I'd often say to my partner 'Look! It's the DIE! shop!' and she'd look at me, confused. I had no idea this was how to phonetically write the English word 'meeting' in Hangeul.

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Giuseppe lives in the Apeninnes around Bologna in Italy. His very English friend Pete from Sheffield sometimes comes to visit. One evening while sitting on the terrace looking out onto the mountains beyond and the street-lit town below with the 1000s of stars above, Giuseppe asked his friend if he would like a 'copertina' (blanket) as it was getting a bit chilly. Pete in a flash replied, "A cup of tea? Yes, that would be lovely!"

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Coming to this country I was nervous to start school, so when I was asked about pronouncing my name which is Yelena, I changed it to Elena thinking it would be easier to pronounce. Little did I know that in England there are also 5 different ways to pronounce Elena, so the frustration of teachers and peers getting my name correct continued on for 15 years.
E-lee-na
El-eN-a
El-ey-na
El-en-or.

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I had just moved to the UK and I had to spell a security code, a complicated sequence of letters and numbers, to a government official over the phone. I had to make sure they understood it perfectly, so after saying each letter I also stated a word starting with it. When it came to the letter R, I panicked as I couldn't think of anything... The first thing that came to mind after a few seconds was "R like... Rambo". It did the job.