You know you’re in a quality hotel when the sign on the back of your room’s door doesn’t denote the best course of exit in the event of a fire, but rather tells you where to locate the condoms.

“HAY PRESERVATIVOS EN EL SERVICIO DE LA PRIMERA PLANTA,” read the sign in my room in Seville, Spain. It was translated into English, too: “THERE ARE PRESERVATIVES IN THE BATHROOM ON THE FIRST FLOOR..”

Yup, that’s what they call rubbers in Spain. Preservativos.

Which makes for a pretty funny English translation faux-pas. But believe me, that faux-pas works both ways. In French, condoms are called ‘preservatifs.’ Predictably, I learned this little language lesson the hard way.

When I was first studying French a few summers ago in Toulouse, I found myself enjoying a fine bottle of red wine with a group of French friends.

Proud to be eeking out my first few solid French phrases in a bonafide conversational setting, I decided to try to explain to the group that I really liked the reds in France because they never leave me with the awful hangover I get from red wine at home. When there was a pause in the table chatter and I had the group’s attention, I worked up the nerve to recite the line I’d been saying over and over in my head.

So many words in French are the same in English – and when in doubt about a certain word, my policy is just to Frenchify the English version of it. It usually works, or at least leads to enlightenment by context clues.

“In the States, we put a lot of preservatives in the wine,” I said to the group. Only I said it in French.

And I was in doubt about how to translate the word ‘preservatives,’ so I just Frenchified the English and ended up saying that in America we put a lot of condoms in our wine.

The group loved it and the laugh, of course, was on me – not to mention our inferior North American wine quality. Which is probably why I couldn’t help but return the ribbing a little by teasing the owner of the Seville hostel about the sign in my room last week.

“It’s been there for years and nobody’s ever said a thing,” he said, perplexed.

- by Terry Ward