When you are learning another language, there are always going to the be inevitable moments of face-covering-embarrassment. You might think you’re making polite conversation about the weather, but the strangled sounds that penetrate the ears of your audience may mean something quite different.
The phrase ‘Aide de camp’ is a case is point. It means a sort of personal assistant to a general (“a military officer acting as a confidential assistant to a senior officer.”) I confidently shouted it across a crowded dining table this summer (18th of June – the date forever etched in my memory) to someone who had answered an abandoned, ringing mobile. Silence fell. Only to be replaced with something worse: peels of laughter.
