Misunderestimations...

Was in the office the other day and my work colleague was typing away, writing up something. He turned to the room and asked, "How do you spell Michael?" (The name Michael in Irish is pronounced: Mee-Hall.) Always wanting to be helpful, ;) I started spelling away: "Sure, it's M-E-A-T-B-A-L-L." After everyone in the room started laughing their asses off (except for one other colleague who also thought he was asking about how to spell meatball) I realized my mistake. Whoops. Mee-hall, meatball...same, same.

On the same mispronounciations and general word-mangling tip, I heard this story from a friend recently: She's a flight attendant on Aer Lingus and regularly works the Dublin to US destinations routes. She was standing in the airport in the states while the passengers filled out their flight boarding cards to board the plane to Ireland. An American woman approached her (Why are they always American?!) and pointed to a word on the boarding card. "I don't understand this," she said. "What don't you understand?" asked my friend. "This word," the passenger responded and pointed to the card, "Ser-nom-ie." After realizing that the woman was not talking about tidal waves in Southeast Asia, my friend realized that the word the passenger was pointing to was, "Surname." The correct pronounciation did nothing to help the clueless passenger who still didn't cop the fact that a surname is your last name.

In her travels, my flight attendant friend also ended up staying in the same hotel as a bunch of members of the SWAT team (who were at a SWAT team convention - who knew?). Apparently, their brawn is a whole lot bigger than their brains as a number of them thought that Belgium was in Ireland. Hello? Basic geography people. I told her that she should have asked them if Mexico was in the United States and see how they responded. ;)

Where do these people come from and why, why are they allowed to represent my homeland?!