Woman Praises Her Husband’s Grandmother for Her Tamales. She Started Acting Confused: ‘Dora the Explorer Really Dropped the Ball on That One’
She hit a language barrier after her husband's grandmother got confused by her Spanish.
Learning a foreign language is a long and difficult process and, even if you feel confident, some tiny intricacy can trip you up. Kighley (@kighleyyy) learned this lesson when she spoke to her husband’s grandmother in Spanish for the first time to compliment her tamales. But instead of praising her effort, the older woman responded with confusion.
Kighley explained in a TikTok video captioned “Dora the Explorer really dropped the ball on that one” that her husband is originally from Mexico. A few years ago, his extended family came to visit, including his ‘buelita’ (short for ‘grandmother’). It was her first time meeting his extended family, including buelita, so Kighley wanted to make a good first impression.
The women were gathered in the kitchen and cooking tamales. Kighley braced herself and walked up to buelita. She had some of the tamales earlier and wanted to compliment the older woman’s cooking in Spanish.
“I don’t know what she’s trying to say.”
“Buelita, tú tamales es muy delicioso,” she told the grandmother. The phrase literally translates to, “Grandmother, your tamales are delicious.” The verbage wasn’t too formal either, because Kighley used the term ‘tú’ to address the grandmother, which is an informal way of saying ‘you.’
“¿Que?” But the grandmother looked at Kighley in confusion. Kighley repeated herself, but she alleged that the grandmother started ignoring her. Buelita turned to her husband and started speaking Spanish to him: “Daniel, what is your little white wife trying to tell me? I don’t know what she’s trying to say.”
Eventually, Daniel came to her and asked her what she told his grandmother. “I told her that her tamales were muy delicioso,” she said. Then, her husband corrected her, saying that she should have used “muy bueno” instead.
“That’s proper Spanish. They don’t speak that way. They speak more slang on the ranch,” Daniel explained. “Well, that’s what Backpack said when he was eating Map on Dora the Explorer. So, someone needs to tell them that they’re misinforming people,” Kighley joked.
“I’m never speaking Spanish again,” she added. Even Spanish bilinguals can struggle with the language. One speaker from North Carolina even had an embarrassing moment at a butcher shop after failing to order the correct meat cuts in Spanish. But for someone like Kighley who is new to the language, the experience was daunting.
Her TikTok clip sparked a social media debate, with Spanish speakers weighing in on the situation. People who claimed to be from different South American countries argued that Kighley was being excluded by the family and that the grandmother was being rude.
One commenter who said they were from Mexico said that Kighley’s husband should have stood up for her. They also wrote that if she had been in their family, they would have invited Kighley into the kitchen and taught her how to make tamales.
Another TikTok user wrote, “She was being rude because that doesn’t matter, I understood what you said, and I’m Colombian.” Others made similar remarks and sent Kighley their sympathies.
Some have also pointed out that just because the family doesn’t often speak formally, it doesn’t mean that they don’t understand formal Spanish. Regardless, speaking another language has a learning curve, and letting go of shame is often the best way to learn. After all, not everyone can wake up fluent in another language like this woman from Los Angeles did on a warm, summer day.
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