(with some updates from later)
Orientation nears its end, and our Bahasa Indonesia language class includes us giving a final presentation. I choose to talk about my family.
I give a stellar presentation. If you ignore the slight stammer, time spent double-checking words mid-sentence, and entirely forgetting half of what I wanted to say, I probably should have been given an award for public speaking.
I mean, I was prepared. I knew some of the basic grammar rules and some general vocabulary. I leave the room at the end of class with full confidence.
Later that day, we return to class to go over our presentations.
Moko, our teacher, kindly lies and tells us that we each made only one mistake. He fixes small grammatical errors in classmate after classmate before turning to me. "Oh Clare," he chuckles, "Today, you make me laugh."
There is a pause so that the class can laugh hysterically while I assure him of the perfection of my ridiculous attempt at a presentation.
Here is what happened:
In Bahasa Indonesian, to make a word plural, you often double it. For example, "ibu," means "mom." "Ibu-ibu," means, "moms." What I did not know, was that this is not a universal rule.
"Mata," means, "eye." Ergo, I assumed, "mata-mata," means, "eyes."
Not so. It means, "spy."
In conclusion, I quite literally told the class, "My mom has a brown spy. My dad has a blue spy."
Here is Moko explaining the fact that I am ridiculous:
I wish I could tell you that my language mistakes are minimal, but languages are difficult and I have a talent for uncomfortable mistakes. Recently, I have taken to confusing the words for, "head," and' "coconut." In my defense, they are remarkably similar. Still, when I tell coworkers that I want to try young heads, they make no effort to maintain a straight face. As of late, the first thing said to me at school is, "let's eat young heads. Hahaha."
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