The other day, I was feeling a bit lazy and decided to order up some groceries from across the street (Yes, in South Asia, you can actually order groceries over the phone & have them delivered right to your door with no extra fee attached.) I had asked the shopkeeper for two packages of Oreo Cookies & was surprised to see that when my delivery was made, there were no Oreo Cookies to be found, but instead there were two random packages of Cooking Oil. Apparently the guy on the phone thought I had said "Oil Cooking" instead of "Oreo Cookies" and then I remembered that the word "cookies" doesn't translate in this part of the world, because all "Cookies" are called "Biscuits" here.
The good news is that it wasn't a total waste, because I was actually out of oil. I just now have to bake my own cookies instead of getting to enjoy them staring from the package ;)
This also happened to be on the same day that I told my housekeeper (in perfect urdu) that she will have to wait to clean my room and bathroom, because I want to shower and dress first before she cleans that area.
She looked at me funny and then preceded to tell me that what I actually just told her was that
"She will have to wait to clean my room and bathroom, because I Need to Dance."
The words for "Bathing" and "Dancing" are similar and I had gotten them all mixed up in my head.
But the worst part was that I didn't even catch it the first time she said it,
& I actually agreed when she said
"You want me to wait to clean your room so you can dance?"
She had to actually "dance" a little when she said what I thought was the word "bath" so that I would understand that I was telling her I really needed to Dance before she cleaned!
So all in all, it was a little bit of a rough day for language. However, the good news is now I will probably never again mix up those two words, nor use the word cookies.
