Roberto

My husband Bob and I just got back from a wonderful trip to Argentina.  While we both speak incredible 7th-grade textbook Spanish (i.e. words next to clip-art images mainly centered around a town square), we were not able to form sentences.  It seems the clog-wearing, cheese smelling middle-school Spanish teachers didn't care if we knew the connecting words such as "the", "of", "to"...you know the words that are small but HUGELY important in conversational settings.   That would have been helpful.

I wanted to share a few of the sentences my husband used in South America, and please note that when he said these statements, he was calm, confident and convinced that what he was saying made sense.  Not so much...

1.  When asking people to take a picture of us, Bob would ask "Toma una pictura?"  Which translates to "will you take a painting of us?"  You can imagine the reaction we had from locals when he asked for them to sketch us.  Here is the correct way of asking this (thanks FreeTranslation.com!)  "¿Tomará una imagen de nosotros? "

2.  When Bob's dinner was served and place in front of him on this plate, he looked at the waiter and then to his plate to check out his food and said "Mucho gusto."  I think he believed this to mean "thank you very much," but in fact this means, "nice to meet you."  Waiters seemed entertained that Bob was addressing his food with such formality.  I think he meant to say "muchas gracias" thanking the waiter, but I let him keep that one up the whole trip for my own entertainment as well.

3.  And who knew Bob speaks Italian?  When he wanted to say excuse me to get someone's attention, he said "scusi," and he said it a lot.  I made fun of him and explained "pardon" is probably better since that is actually Spanish, but he decided he liked "scusi" better, especially after a few glasses of wine.