My boss got a request (petición) for an American English teacher for a CEO of a well-known (muy conocida, pronunciado "NOun") company, so there I went.
This was an older gentleman, the kind of student that constantly distracted me from the lessons I meticulously prepared with his questions about English language and American culture.
He looked like (se parecía a) Eduard Punset without the wind tunnel hair.
He was obviously very intelligent, very agile-minded and very curious about the language.
So, one day, a word comes up (surge) that I don't understand because his pronunciation was sometimes weird (extraña), so I ask him to spell it (le pido que la deletree). It was something like "Arizona".
CEO: "A, R, I, Zed.."
Me: "Wait a minute, zed?"
CEO: "Yes... A, R, I, Zed..."
Me: "Wait, what do you mean by zed?"
CEO: "The letter.... the last letter of the alphabet"
Me: "That's Z (pronunciado "zee" en USA). (I start to laugh) So, what, are we
spelling things in Greek now? Are you gonna throw in a Gamma or an Epsilon? Like fraternities... Pi Kappa Phi! HAHAHAHA"
CEO: "Maybe that's the British way..."
Me: "Hahaha, I've never heard that in my life!"
Then I went home and told my Spanish wife about it.
"Hahahaha you're not gonna believe what my student said today!!!"
And then she calmly stops me and confirms that yes, the British say "zed" for the last letter of the alphabet.
Dead silence befalls the room as I remember chuckling at and making fun of a CEO to his face. The room starts spinning as I see myself in my mind's eye in slow motion laughing and saying "...PI KAPPA PHI!!! HAHAHAH!!!!"
Needless to say, the next day, I tucked my tail between my legs, sat down in his office and ate me a big helping (ración) of humble pie.
Luckily, he was nice enough to just give me a good slap on the back and chuckle back at me.
Haha I have thought a lot of British ways of saying things were wrong. Oops!
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