One of the clichés of travel is the idea that when trying to speak a foreign language, it's often easy to inadvertently say something offensive. I had a great laugh the other night, as did my host family, in this regard. Here's what happened:
We were all having dinner, the meal that breaks the fast of Ramadan right as the sun goes down. During the second part of the meal,where the quintessential Moroccan mint tea with sugar is served as well as pastries and sweets, I noticed that the daughters had a funny way of shaking their empty tea glasses at their mother and saying what sounded like, “hada, hada, hada” as a way of asking for more. I could tell it was something that the mother found amusing so I thought it would be funny to imitate Wiam who had just done this a second before.
I held out my empty glass and said, “hada, hada, hada” to which the entire family burst out laughing. The laughing went on for a bit longer than I expected and that's when Wiam told me that I had actually said, “shit, shit, shit.” I guess there was an "r" on the end of the word they were saying: "hadar" if I understood her correctly- a slight difference I couldn't detect. Yes, there I was, wagging my glass at the mother looking her in the eye saying, “shit, shit, shit.” Ah well, if nothing else, at least I can provide some cheap entertainment.
I heard Wiam retelling the story to several others later; she gave herself away that she was talking about me and this slip up when she acted out the shaking of the glass part and then would bust up laughing saying, "hada, hada, hada."
