I Invited My In-Laws to Try My Nipples

It’s not what you think

“Does anybody want to try my nipples?” I asked to a room full of strangers.

Silence. Some jaws dropping. A bunch of eyes staring at me. Adults covering the children’s ears. The horror.

*Fffffuuuuuuuuuu*ck!*

The strangers were my boyfriend’s extended family when I met them—the whole lot. Grandparents included.

It was Christmas day. Can you think of a better occasion?

They heard I was friendly. Never expected me to be that friendly.

Foreigners risk their reputation every day.

No matter how well we speak our second language or how long we live in another country, we will always be foreigners to that culture. There are dozens of micro reminders every day.

Suppose the local language is our native tongue. There will still be many moments where everybody around us laughs at a joke we don’t get, sing an old commercial tune, use local expressions that we can’t find in a dictionary, or mention a super-famous person you’ve never heard of who died decades ago.

If we aren’t natives, we also have to add the challenge of a new language, especially when that language has a tricky pronunciation full of tiny little sounds that only natives perceive and no rules whatsoever, like English.

Let me share with you the 5 tips I wished I knew to avoid social suicide in your new language.

#1 Don’t you dare use a word you didn’t practice before

English is particularly evil. A tiny sound will automatically change an innocent word into something sexual, scatological, or both.

My favorite examples as a Spaniard are sheet>shit, and beach>bitch. I quit long ago. After years of changing my bed’s shits, I only change the blankets now. And I don’t enjoy the bitch anymore, I enjoy the sea.

I found a way to pronounce those words correctly. I need to fake a super-wide (and creepy) smile while I say sheet and beach to make sure it sounds with a long eee, and put an angry face to tell the other two.

But what happens with new words? Do.not.use.them. Trust me on this one.

I lovingly prepared some homemade, delicious, traditional Spanish tapas. I was nervous, wanting to give a good first impression. I asked my boyfriend if there was a translation for tapas, and he said nibbles.

Nibbles. With b, not p.

Proud of myself, I went where the whole family was gathered, with my best smile and a tray full of delicacies. Only to create the longest silent moment that a noisy family could ever produce.

Yes. That was my entrance into the family. Try it if you want to create a glorious first impression that nobody will forget. It breaks the ice while making it, isn’t it genius?

#2 Don’t you dare use a word you learned in a book

If that word is Spanish, French, Portuguese, even German, do it. I only have some notions of German, but they have clear pronunciation rules. I know how to pronounce a word from a book, even if I don’t know its meaning.

English is a different story. They write long words only to pronounce half of the letters. The same letter has many sounds (for the love of God, can anybody explain when ch sounds like /k/ or /ch/, please????). They learn to spell like champions because they have to spell all the time.

Spelling competitions don’t exist in Spanish. There’s no challenge because words are written exactly as they sound. I was 8 the last time I spelled in my language. I thought the Spelling Bee was a Sesame Street character.

Never. Let me stress this one. Never ever do a presentation or talk about an English author if you read his surname in a book. Thankfully, we have Internet nowadays. Check the pronunciation first.

#3 Some people will be very obtuse and unhelpful.

Honestly, guys, read the room. Context is everything, and sometimes the situation is so obvious that it could be understood in a silent movie.

A friend went to the bar at an English pub in London to order a beer. A confused barman asked her, “wait, did you just ask for a bear?”

Seriously.

Let’s read the room. A foreign tourist arrives in your pub, you are behind the bar, literally surrounded by booze, and there is a barrier of 6 beer taps between you and her. And you honestly think that woman is asking you to go to the zoo and bring a bear for her?

Another day I said, “count sheep if you can’t sleep.” Of course, that person thought that I count boats jumping a fence. Why wouldn’t I?

#4 Assume you’ll never pronounce some words well.

Whenever I need chalk, I have to do a couple of deep breaths before starting.

Can I have some chalk, please? Excuse me? *sigh! Here we go…* Yes. Chalk. To write on a blackboard. What teachers use for their lessons. Chalk. Chaaaalk. Challlk. Chalkkkk. I gesture dramatically trying every possible variant. Oh! Chalk! of course.

To this day, I still don’t know what I do wrong. It sounds exactly the same to me.

Sometimes Ash Jurberg and I engage in hilarious conversations on LinkedIn comments. I never confessed this, Ash, but you made my day when you wrote “I’m only being facetious.” Oh! the joy! I didn’t know that word, I pronounce it horribly, yet I can’t stop trying. It’s like music to my ears. You know this Ash, I’m a simple soul.

Let alone Tom Kuegler’s surname. We built a friendship, talk daily on every social platform under the sun, and I coach in his LinkedIn sprint program. I spend more time with him than with my mother, but his surname is still a mystery to me.

Don’t take it personally, Tom. I still don’t pronounce my husband’s name well.

Yes, for some mysterious reason that family accepted me, and my boyfriend became my husband. I became the funny member that speaks adult words committing children’s mistakes. Of course, I mispronounce every single one of their names, but they don’t care, they tried my nipples after all.

#5 Don’t you dare repeat an expression you only heard once.

When we learn a language, we are open to any new word or expression, finding some of them hilarious. I’ve been learning English my whole life, and I heard the term “breakneck speed” yesterday. I find it fantastic in both sound and drama, so I can’t not use it at every opportunity now.

But I know better now. I double-checked it first.

“I’ll be late, there’s an elephant on the road,” a friend casually said. She said it with the same emotion that she would order a coffee in a bar, but for us, it was as crazy as, “I’ll be late, there’s a rhino in the subway.”

Guess what. She’s a Swede married to a Spaniard. One day he was driving to Madrid, and there was a horrible car accident. A truck carrying animals overturned on the highway, and the poor things flew everywhere. It was horrible. Thankfully, most of them survived.

She was with his family in Madrid when he called, “I’ll be late, there’s an elephant on the road.” He then explained the situation, but she had stopped listening. She had learned a new Spanish expression. A cool one. She was delighted.

The next day she used it with us, although there was no road and no elephant this time.

Obviously, it actually became an expression in her circle.

The takeaway

Never relax when you speak a second language. You’ll never know which expressions you misuse, what the locals will be hearing when you talk, or what you might be implying without knowing it.

But if you have a foreign accent and you want to use it to your advantage, maybe you want to read this:

Another day, I’ll explain to you what to do when you ask your future mother-in-law if she enjoys doing bl*wjobs. But that’s another story, and no, I didn’t want to ask her that. And yes, it was as excruciating as it sounds.

I’d better stop being facetious now. I have to go to a meeting at breakneck speed because I’m late, there’s an elephant on the road 😉

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