One of the biggest treats for English-speakers just learning to speak Spanish is the enormous number of cognates available to us. And, one of the biggest traps for us are words that we assume to be cognates, but are not. For example, we might tell someone that we are very embarazado/a that we forgot to come to an evento they had invited us to.

We are trying to say that we are very embarrassed that we forgot to come to an event they had planned, and invited us to. What we really said is something along the line that we are very pregnant and forgot to come to a spontaneous, or chance occurrence, which of course can not planned for, or announced.

An event: el suceso

I am embarrassed: me da pena. Pena is emotional pain, and not to be confused with dolor, which refers to physical pain.

I am humiliated, or deeply mortified: tengo vergüenza. We are advised by a native speaker that using tengo vergüenza can cause even more pena, and is usually avoided because vergüenzacan conjure up the word verga, which refers to a specific part of the male anatomy.

In the next Gringoism, find out why you want to tell only your best friend that you had an adventure.