In our home, if I say a "bad word", Agent M is allowed to collect a quarter from me. Some weeks have cost me more than others, but I have pretty much gotten a good handle of things at this point, and have made one "exception rule." That rule is that saying a "bad word" from another language does not count. Well, they don't count for me at least - he still is not allowed to say them, but it gives me a little wiggle room and keeps me from going broke when I stub a toe or discover that the cat has missed her litter box again.
Another language "thing" we have going on right now is that we, mostly me actually, are learning Swedish. Which leads us to spending some of our lazy summer mornings laying on my bed in the sunshine, listening to free language programs on my laptop. One such morning, I typed in the word "silly" in a sentence, and discovered that it auto-translated to mean "dumb". Definitely not the meaning I had in mind. Agent M and I talked about it for a moment, and how that could lead to confusion between two speakers, and moved on.
Later that day, I was doing something at the bottom of the stairs, got annoyed by it, and loudly exclaimed, "Bugger!" Agent M was on it. He came running out of his room and made it halfway down the stairs, all the while chiming, "You owe me 25¢! You owe me, I heard you!" Not this time buddy, I thought. "No, I don't", I replied. "It's only bad in England" He was not amused. As he stomped back up the stairs, he grumbled, "Yeah, well you're silly - IN SWEDISH!"
I didn't know if I wanted to laugh at his wit, or tell him to watch it since he technically was saying I was dumb. I couldn't help it, I went with laughing. At least I knew he was paying attention that morning, right?
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