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TIFU by translating word to word from one language to another

Obligatory not happened today but few years ago. My mother tongue is Telugu (A South Indian language). My second language is English and Hindi my third(not as fluent).

In college, I gave audition for a play. It was a simple audition where you have to speak in Hindi in front of 100 other students until the judges say to stop.

It was my turn and it was going okay. I said about myself, about my city, etc. I was running out of things to say. The judges didn't say stop. So my brilliant mind came up with this idea to talk about my roommate who was also at the audition in the audience. So I pointed at him and started saying things about him. This is where I fucked up.

Telugu and English doesn't have the concept of gender, but Hindi does. In English, everything other than a male or female person has a neutral gender. The pronoun will be 'it'. In Telugu , everything other than a male person has a female gender. The pronoun will be 'she'. In Hindi, everything has a gender and is assigned arbitrarily. A bus is female but a car is male.

Naturally I didn't have the concept of gender in languages, since the languages I am fluent don't have it. So word to word translation from Telugu to English and vice versa works well but not to Hindi.

English: The dog(it) is running.

Telugu: The dog(she) is running(female).

Hindi: The dog(he) is running(female).

So, I pointed at my roommate who is a guy and used the female gender markers because that is the default in my mother tongue.

"My ( female ) roommate is a great guy. She is from Rajasthan." As soon as I started speaking, everyone started laughing including the judges. I didn't understand why everyone was laughing but that did not stop me from speaking. The judges were having fun. They let me speak for 5 more minutes.

This is how I learnt that there exists a concept of gender in languages.

TLDR: I fucked by getting confused with gender markers in front of everyone

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