Hair!

A student's description of something she likes to do, provided by a colleague:

"Me gusta morir mi pelo."

I'd rather just dye mine, I think ...

You Go to School Where?!

Contributed by someone teaching Spanish at Oklahoma State University in the town of Stillwater (pay attention to that city name!):

"Soy un mayor inglés en Oklahoma Universidad Pública en la Agua sin gas."

That's one translation of "Stillwater," I suppose.

Aiming for that Hispanic market share ...

Welcome back from summer vacation!

Spotted at a Lowe's hardware store on a "contractor's pack" of electrical plugs:

"BUY IN BULK AND SAVE"

"COMPRE EN BULTO Y EXCEPTO"

At least they got the "buy" and the "and" right! I particularly like "excepto" for "save", since you don't often hear "save" used that way nowadays.

Saving Up Your Rice

A student of mine doing a dictation exercise heard "cuenta de ahorros" as "cuenta de arroz" - a great mental image!

This just in ...

This just in from a reader:

"la mamá de paso"

..................

"stepmother", naturally!

My reader points out that there's a nice unintended meaning here as well.

And one from a friend ...

A professor friend reports this translation for "stream of consciousness":

"el ‎arroyo de la conciencia"

Which I suppose could also be translated as the brook of conscience! Or maybe creek or rill ...

and of course, it helps to spell the words right in English before looking them up ...

At least this one wasn't hard to figure out. A first-year student writes:

"Mi familia y yo pasamos dos débiles en Puerto Rico."

"two weeks", "two weaks" - it's amazing what a difference one vowel makes!

La mujer era persiana ....

Another intermediate student wrote in a story,

"La mujer era persiana."

I automatically crossed out the "i" and the final "-na", assuming that the student meant to say, "The woman was Persian" and went with the false cognate rather than looking it up to find that it should be "persa."

Then, of course, I stopped, because I realized that the woman being "Persian" made no sense - not an adjective commonly used by modern middle-American college students except when talking about cats, or perhaps Jake Gyllenhaal's recent movie stint as the Prince of Persia. Do they even know that Persia is another name for Iran?

So, more pondering, more re-reading - and then it hit me what the student was trying to say:

"The woman was blind."