Conjugate your verbs correctly – or you’ll fart

Do you know what happened to me when I was on holiday in Spain? I was sitting in a restaurant in Alcudia with my children and soon-to-be sons-in-law when I conjugated the Spanish verb pedir incorrectly – yo pedo. Instead of saying “I would like”, I said “I fart”. The correct form is yo pido. ☺

Even the famous linguist Danny Bate wrote in Denník N that language barriers are best overcome on holiday precisely through these kinds of slips of the tongue. The more we misspeak, the less afraid we are of making mistakes. After all, we learn best from our own mistakes.

Pronouncing things correctly – even against my German-speaking instincts

I have an even better example of an amusing mistake from my own experience. My son Adam wanted me to read a nice quote in English: “Always be a little kinder than necessary.” My immediate question was: “What Kinder?”

Instead of pronouncing it as [kaɪndər], I pronounced it as the German word Kinder (children). I couldn’t help myself – I am a German teacher, after all.

And that’s not all! Once, I was driving in the car with my children when the duet “Die with a Smile” by Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga came on the radio. The German speaker in me read the title out loud: “Dee with a smile? Like the one with a smile?”

My children immediately responded: “Muuuuum! It’s [daɪ], not ‘dee’ – die is the German word for ‘the’!”

I promptly instructed my children not to tell anyone that we run a language school.

The most important aspect of running a language school?

It’s listening to the younger generation and learning from them, because they are better at certain things, such as English and digital skills. It’s also important to work with people who are more skilled than you and who motivate you and help you learn. They can expand on your ideas and make them even better.

We can’t be masters of everything – the more we learn from each other, the better.

You don’t need to be better than everyone else. You just need to work on yourself every day. Be better than the you you were yesterday.

And while we’re at it, it’s perfectly okay to make a fool of ourselves from time to time, isn’t it?