I’m funny in Spanish!

Heather Aspinall
Jul 25, 2017 · 1 min read

Not to toot my own horn but I’m aware that I am quite a funny person… in English. Since moving to Madrid, it has become my life ambition to be just as funny in Spanish. But my sarcastic, British sense of humour paired with a lack of vocabulary makes this bloody hard for me, and up until now I’ve found myself relying on ridiculous facial expressions to make my Spanish friends laugh.

To be fair, there was actually one time when my friend was buttering her bread and she dropped her knife to which I responded ‘¡Oooh, manos de mantequilla!’ which I like to think was at least a bit witty.

Anyway, this afternoon I went with my colleague, Bencomo, to pick up our pinchos de tortilla at a bar nearby and on the way back up, some olive oil spilled from my plate onto the floor in the lift. When we got out of the lift, our CEO was standing there waiting to get in. Bencomo warned him ‘cuidado, se ha caído un poco de aceite’. In an attempt to avoid getting into trouble with the CEO for the mini oil spill, I decided to blame it on Bencomo and so said ‘es el aceite de Bencomo’. They both suddenly burst out laughing, leaving me standing there completely confused.

Turns out ‘perder aceite’ means to be gay in Spanish, which I didn’t know. And it also just so happens that Bencomo is gay. So it seems that I am finally funny in Spanish… but just accidentally funny.

Heather Aspinall

Written by

Thoughts of a slightly mad guiri in Madrid.

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