Im not that (kind of) excited... - a podcast by Failla Family

Today I went to an office where they make informational videos. They needed someone who speaks American (they have a word in Chinese to distinguish American English from British English) to record a voice-over for a video. I wanted to impress them as they pay pretty well considering the ease of the work, so I dressed a little nicer and went out of my way to perfect the script I was to read. The first run through went alright, nothing special. They asked me to read a little faster and (I think) with more enthusiasm. As their English was pretty limited and so is my Chinese, I consulted the dictionary on my phone to find out the word for "passionate," to make sure that I understood. I found a word whose initial definition looked pretty accurate and showed it to my "boss" to verify. He made a weird face, shook his finger and said "no, no, no." That confused me because then I didn't know what they wanted from me, so I asked him again and he responded the same way, even a little disgusted this time. So I clicked through to the full explanation of the word and here is what I found:

-to get excited
-passionate (thats all I could see when I showed it to him initially)
-aroused to passion (!)
-to fall in love
-in heat (of animals) (!!!!)

No wonder he was disgusted- I had asked if he wanted me to read the script while "in heat" or at least aroused!

Lesson learned!

P.S. They did ask me back in spite of my...forwardness.

P.P.S. I should have known better. In Spanish, if you add an "o" to the word "excited" you have the same meaning as the Chinese word I found. The word you're looking for instead is "emocionado/a". I've messed that one up before too!
 

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