What was your most amusing real-time lesson?
I ask, because I'd like to share mine.
I have a long-time friend whom I don't see all that often. She'd gotten married, and I finally met her husband who is a handsome, pleasant fellow. I liked Arturo at once.
Privately, I told Marisela, "Me gusta Arturo. !Mucho!"
Her eyes widened. "Pienso que quisiste decir me cae bien" she said, nearly choking with laughter.
And that's how I learned that me gusta when applied to a person means that one is expressing lust.
At least in Sinaloa, Mexico!
9 Answers
I will never forget the day I learned one word in particular. Just a few months after embarking on my Spanish language journey, I tried interjecting a comment in a conversation some native speaking friends of mine were having. I wanted to practice some new words I had learned, but I made the mistake of mispronouncing the word ‘sociedad’. I instead said ’suciedad’.
Due to the topic being discussed, this simple mistake resulted in some chuckles and smirks. When it dawned on me what I had actually said I tried to ‘roll with the punches’.
“¡Oh!” I said dramatically, “¡Estoy tan embarazado!”
The outburst that followed was not the effect I was hoping for. After the group had wiped their eyes dry and caught their breath from laughing so hard, one of the ladies taught me a new word.
The word I learned that day? Yep! Avergonzado. 
I had just started to learn Spanish and I was in a restaurant. The waiter read out the menu to me and I managed to understand just one item. So I said in my best Spanish: "Quiero la thopa de thebolla por favor" He immediately replied (in English) - a la Manuel in Fawlty Towers: "Pleeth do not take the pith out of me!" I didn't know he had a lisp and I was trying to speak the best Spanish I could
My favorite story was when I was in high school. Our Spanish AP class was combined with Spanish for Native Speakers III, and we had students from all over the world with different dialects. And our class was the first class of the day at 7:30 am. While we were having breakfast right before class, one student said "Quiero una china" which offended a lot of people in the class because although in Puerto Rico una china is an orange, from my understanding in some parts of South America una china is slang for a petite Chinese prostitute.
Just taught me to be careful with dialects.
Years ago, when I was 14, my family kind of 'adopted' a Cuban family that had just come to our town. There was a son and daughter that was the same age as my brother and I so we kind of hit it off. Well, Jorge taught me how to say 'dog' in Spanish, and as you already know, I somehow or other called his sister "perra". I had no clue what I had done, but their parents set me straight in short order. I had never been so embarrassed in my life.
Just a few months ago I embarrassed myself when a man from church introduced me to his wife. I couldn't quite understand what her name was, but he eventually got me to understand. Like an idiot, I said something like "me gusta Karen", and in my mind I was thinking about how pretty her name was. As soon as it came out of my mouth I knew what I had done. They knew that I knew what I had done from the color of my face. Sheesh, that was embarrassing.
Stuff like that helps stoke my fears of speaking in another language ....
Mine was when teaching English body parts to Spanish learners. After about half an hour most students were falling off their chairs laughing - when giving / teaching me the Spanish equivalents.
gustar.
(Del lat. gust?re).
tr. Sentir y percibir el sabor de las cosas.
tr. experimentar (? probar).
intr. Agradar, parecer bien.
intr. Dicho de una persona: Resultar atractiva a otra.
intr. Desear, querer y tener complacencia en algo. Gustar DE correr, DE jugar.
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There is nothing about lust in the above
Yea, you are probably right, I never knew that it was used that way. I'll ask spanish speaking women their thoughts about the word. Of course, my neck might get twisted a few times.
I have a friend who is a professor in the Oficial School of Languages and has a lot of anecdotes to tell, one of the funniest:
Young man comes to her office and asks:¿dónde tienen lugar las inseminaciones?
He wanted to know where the examinations were taking place....and said: inseminations.
The first time I was going to come to Spain, a friend of mine (not a Spanish-speaker) told me not to come back with the Spanish lisp and told me the word for it. I had no idea what she meant.
So I came to Spain, and I was on a tour of the Alhambra, and the tour guide and I started talking about other things. I asked him about the "Spanish teta" and where it came from.... It took me 20 minutes of him gesturing and looking at me like I was a crazy person for me to realize what I had said. He STILL doesn't know what I was asking him.
Apparently talking about the origin of Spanish breasts is a good way to stop a conversation.
