Donkey Joté

My mother tongue is Spanish, but I began learning English at a very young age. By the time I was five years old, I was able to speak both.

Speaking two languages allows us to talk to people from other cultures. It also allows us to misunderstand people from other cultures.

One misunderstanding I had was when my mother told me a story about a piece of classic Spanish literature called Don Quixote (pronounced: dawn-key-ho-tay).  

Everyone in my family purposely pronounces the book "Donkey Hotay (Joté)" which caused me at the time to think that the book Don Quixote was about a donkey named Hotay (Joté). 

The book is not about a donkey named Hotay (Joté). Sometimes combining sounds and concepts from one language and erroniously applying them to another causes confusions like this one. Even though there is no donkey named Hotay (Joté) in the book, I'm happy to report that there is a donkey named Dapples.

The biggest misunderstanding between English and Spanish happened for me when I was little. We had a dog named, "Chuleta". In Spanish, the word "chuleta" means "porkchop."

One night, my parents announced we were eating "chuleta" for dinner. My heart dropped.

My mom said that I ran and grabbed Chuleta by the neck, hugged him tightly, and said, "No, Mommy, we can't eat Chuleta. I love him!" I'm not exactly sure why I thought we were going to eat our dog, but I think it had something to do with the number of jokes my parents made about food. 

Whenever we didn't know what we wanted to eat for lunch, my dad would always suggest "pig's feet." My mom, who was just as twisted with food humor as my dad, would say, "Let's go out for tacos." Then, we'd find a good taco stand. My mother would say, "This is a good taco stand. Look around, you can see dogs everywhere begging for a bite." "Why does that matter, mommy?" I asked. "Because dogs don't eat dogs," she replied. This tidbit of international advice would send chills down an American's spine. Having grown-up between cultures, I can see the humor in this statement as well as feel repulsed by it.To further complicate matters, the more we traveled internationally, the worse this joke became when I realized that in parts of the world people do eat pig's feet and dogs -and that it's not just a weird family joke.

Once I knew just exactly what it was we were eating, I was able to relax and join eating some really good pork chops with my family.

I still study world languages, but now, I also question whether we should eat any part of an animal. Though, that's a thought for an entirely different post!