An Ouch By Any Other Name

    While reading a book about discovering your inner Minion to my grandchildren at quiet time this afternoon I came to the part where it mentions that Minions say “oh oh” often. And so it did not take me long to find my inner Minion. But something else also came to mind.

     So I stopped reading and I told them a story about the Spanish teacher I had my first semester of college. One day the professor said that he had often wondered if people who speak a language other than English say something other than “Ouch!” when they get hurt.        And the opportunity to find out arrived when an exchange student from Spain came to live at the teacher's house for a year.

     One day the teacher walked up to the Spanish exchange student and stuck him with a pin!

     Did he say “Ouch!” ?

    No.

    He said, “Ooooo Eeee!” if you pronounce it phonetically you will get the sound the teacher was describing to us.

    So apparently ouch is not necessarily universal in every language.

    This experiment would work well if one were wanting to know some cuss words in another language – wouldn't it? The professor is lucky he just came away with Oooooo Eeeee!

    The grandkids, even though they were fighting the onset of nap time, were not too impressed with the story, but their Mom was amused.

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