Language Confusion

My manicurist who is from Venezuela was reminded of a conversation when I told her I had been to Ohio on a trip. She said she and some other Venezuelans were talking about how when they first got to this country they mispronounced words badly. She was laughing about it and said that one fellow said he pronounced Ohio as Oh-hee-oh which is how you'd pronounce it in Spanish. I asked her what she mispronounced and she said there were too many to name.

I am often struck by how difficult English must be for a non-native speaker, as well as pronunciation and spelling.

That reminded me of when my brother was small and he was reading a lot of Western history and would see Sioux and had never heard the word and in his head, while reading, would pronounce it Sigh-ux. The Si-ux Indians. Then he finally put two and two together and realized that Sioux was the "sue" indians.

I had wondered if I had any experience like this, and I couldn't think of anything until today. And I'm still sort of in a state of surprise about it. Ok, you know the suitcases that have wheels and a handle that fit into the overhead compartment on an airplane?  During boarding, the flight attendants would tell passengers to put these kind of suitcases in "wheels first."

I didn't know they had a particular name, but the flight attendants would call them (I thought) "roller boards" -- that's what I thought they were... roller for the wheels and board for the hard surface of the outside.

You can imagine my surprise today when I read the word "roll aboard" and the lightbulb went off. Oh, so it's ROLL ABOARD! Never knew that.  Of course, I sound like an idiot, thinking all this time they were roller boards.