The Humor of Language Barriers

I love when I get to tell ESL students about English words they wouldn’t normally use (my favorite being “fart”—and yes, it comes up more often than you think).

The other evening I was working with an ESL student. When referring to a poor family whose last resort to earn money was to have their daughters sell their bodies on the street, he stated it a bit more bluntly:

“The daughters would have to be sluts and whores.” His professor had marked out “sluts and whores” and corrected it to say prostitute. I couldn’t stop laughing. I told him, you can’t say “sluts and whores” in an English paper.

Another error came when one of the daughters was mentally handicapped. Rather than say something pc, the student stated that “Her mother didn’t like her because she was retarded.”

I once again couldn’t control my laughter. I explained that “retarded” is considered an offensive term by some and it might be best to state it a different way.

It might sound cruel that I laughed at this student, but it was all in good fun. He laughed too, though he was laughing more at my reaction than his error.

Enjoy your weekend you retarded sluts and whores!