Watch What You Say

I sometimes have trouble with the English language. My thoughts can come too quickly and end up in a garbled mess like this:

While playing with my new baby at a mountain lake a woman older than me comes up to me and we begin talking.

Lady - How old is your baby?

Me - She's three months old.

Lady - She's cute. How many children do you have?

Me - I have two. Do you have any grandchildren?

Lady - Oh, I have x number of grandchildren and x number of great-grandchildren. (This was 19 years ago and I don't remember the exact numbers)

Me - Wow! You don't look YOUNG enough to have great- grandchildren!

At which point the lady looked at me in amazement and walked away. It took me at least two minutes before I realized that my intended compliment had really been a put down. I have since wondered how young a person should look before they are a great-grandmother.

Here is another gem:

Me - I sat between my mom and another man on the plane.

Really? My mom is a man? This is news to me. (But that would explain some things...)

Another problem with language in general is putting things into proper context. This is a conversation that I was having with my sister-in-law when my son thought he'd help the conversation along:

Me - My mom blah, blah, blah ...

Sister-in-law - How is she doing?

Son - Oh she's alright but she still rubs her bum on everything. (referring to our cat).

Erm...

And if I didn't already have problems with getting my English sentences straight, now I'm adding Korean to the mix. Korean sentence structure is different than English. In Korean a basic sentence goes subject-object-verb (English is subject-verb-object). I can understand that. The trouble comes when trying to say something a little more complicated. Like this - "I gray sweater purple sweater rather than more like." (The exact translation from my most recent lesson.) What the what? Do I like the gray sweater? Maybe it's the purple one? I don't know! And context doesn't help much either. I feel a cramp in my brain coming on as I try to puzzle this out.

I can just imagine a conversation in my future -

Dude-Man - Should I wear this tie with cats or the one with constellations?

Me - You cats tie constellation tie rather than should wear. You look too young, another man rubs her bum on everything.