There is a Jordanian who owns a local restaurant/grocery close to where I live. I speak Arabic, so I like to speak it with him. He is Muslim, so I usually throw out an "As Salaam Alaikum" when I enter his store. 2 days ago, I was in a rush, so I yelled out the Arabic equivalent of "How are you?" to him instead, on my way to the back of his store. An older American couple, were in the store.
When I got up to the counter with my items, my friend said "That couple just apologized for your rudeness, & assured me that all Americans were not as intolerant as you." I laughed so hard that I cried.
The phonetic Arabic for "How are you" is "Eh, fuhkoo."
A childhood belief about foreign languages
others believed things like this
- that the word "couple" as in "a couple of items" was synonymous with "several", rather than "just two".— Blair A. Petterson
- pizza hut made their pizzas in a tiny hut out back of the store
Anon - I used to believe that the "Employees Only" room in the back of the store was where the employees lived. — KewlKid
- I used to believe that every time i went in a store that the grown ups had to buy me something.— jvf
- I used to think that the clothes in the thrift store were new— Ellie
- I thought change was the store's way of saying thank you.— Madeline