erratio

One thing you can say about the language barrier: It doesn't stop you from making innuendo upon innuendo. Naturally the first thing everyone learns in a foreign language is how to be obscene in it*. First there was Muid, telling me "I like your ass. I like to slap it!" and asking me what lubricant and condoms are for. In fact the condoms and lubricants section of Coles provides us with an endless source of cheap shots. Then it was Kallol with his neverending stock of how to say various things in about a million different languages. He'll ask "What is the meaning of nuts?" in a completely innocent tone. He'll tell us horrible horrible jokes about using cricketing jargon to describe women. And yesterday he informed us that rand/rund (the vowel is halfway between the a and u sound) is Hindi for prostitute. My last name only takes a very slight mispronunciation to turn it into prostitute in Hindi. And so it went this morning. I've been a rund all my life. My family have been runds for generations. This must have kept us going for a solid twenty minutes before we got bored of the "jen is a prostitute" game.

It's all so juvenile, and yet it's about all we have in common. A couple of my coworkers think Adam Sandler and Jim Carey are the pinnacle of comedy. *rolls eyes* And in the end when we can barely understand eachother both in vocabulary and accents, dick jokes are the lowest common denominator. At least no one's yet resorted to yelling "Penis!" in a crowded aisle.

And on the other side of the scale we have me with a better command of English vocabulary than most people I know. And yet somehow, when called upon to speak, nine times out of ten I'm the one who purely by accident keeps making sexual innuendos. Here are some excerpts from the list of shame:

--- "I love huge organs!.... Oh God, I can't believe I just said that" (referring to organ music playing in some distant room at the Powerhouse Museum)
--- "Head, anyone?" (referring to a whole trout that was delivered with head severed but on the plate)
--- Ge: My dad's a taxi driver
Me: What's he look like? I've probably had him a few times
(as a taxi driver damnit!)
--- "Tonight I'm just gonna close my eyes and open my mouth" (referring to a set menu at an Asian restaurant and the fact that I couldn't be bothered keeping kosher for once)
--- Matt: Oh look, I accidentally brought a third sock
Me: For your third leg?
(he usually goes barefoot so he'd brought socks with him. And I was trying to be witty and suggest that perhaps he really did have another leg stashed away somewhere. Sigh)

* I personally know how to swear in Hindi, Mandarin, Hebrew, and probably a couple of others that escape me at this moment.