Years ago, while working as an internal auditor for a large gold mining company, I was in Val d’Or, Quebec auditing two gold mines that my company had in the area. I was there with a colleague from Chile for two weeks; Pablo is Chilean and speaks both Spanish and English.
I went down for breakfast on the first morning and arrived before Pablo and was seated. I looked at the menu, it was in both French and English; I chose what I wanted to eat. Pablo arrived a little later and chose his meal.
The waitress came over to take our orders, Pablo ordered in English; and I ordered in French, partly to show off, since I had studied French in both elementary and secondary school.
The waitress cocked her head to one side, and Pablo laughed out loud. He looked at me and said “Try again, this time either in French or English, John. I don’t think she understands Spanish!”
My first thought was “Great! Now I’m an idiot in three languages!” I quickly apologized and reordered by reading the French directly from the menu. The waitress laughed, thanked me and said “Now I have a good dumb customer story for later” as she was leaving the table.
Breakfast came and we enjoyed it. We didn’t have any more language misadventures like that for the rest of the trip, thankfully.
My company had several mines in Latin America, so as a department we had been studying Spanish for a little while, since company policy was to be respectful of each country’s language and culture when operating there.
For some unknown reason, my brain decided that since we weren’t in Vancouver, I must need to speak Spanish, and then proceeded to translate what I wanted to order from the menu into Spanish, instead of simply remembering the French that I had read only moments ago!
The moral of the story is to double check where you are before you try to show off your language skills!
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