Not lost in translation

One of the dangers of trying to use a language you don’t really understand or don’t have the mouth shape to create words can be errors in pronunciation. Now if you are lucky you may get away with it in a safe setting. Always be careful. A great example of this was when I was at the exhibition centre with the hotel boys. The man from the Saeco coffee stand made us some real cappuccinos. Mazen thanked him and added a term of endearment to the thank you. So the phrase went something like, shukhran al khamar. Which means something like, you are like the moon which is apparently a nice saying. I asked him about this and as we were walking out I was practicing this phrase. Now because of the guttural way in which words are pronounced you end up with an h sound if you’re not careful. The boys started cracking up to which I enquired as to what was funny. My slight change of sound now made the phrase mean, thank you, you donkey!