embarrassing moment in chinese

well, i COMPLETELY embarrassed myself in front of Jack today (my Chinese tutor). as he was walking out the door we were wishing him our "zei wei"s (shanghainese for goodbye) and "xin nian kuai le"s (chinese for happy new year) when i went to shut my book and found his pencil underneath my cover...

dun dun dun....

i utter out the phrase in which i thought was, "Zhè shì nǐ de bǐ ma?" -- "Is this your pencil?" (pencil is bǐ)
but i actually said "Zhè shì nǐ de bī ma?" -- which means "Is this your vagina?" (vagina (vulgar) is bī   [as nciku.com states]). *notice the differences in marks over the letter i.


i had no clue obviously that that is what i said and within .342 seconds he is like "wooahhh. ohhh nooo. nooooooo...." and is laughing hysterically, half nervously. he says "this is bad. really, really bad. umm... let me explain. well... ummmm...."
many umms and hmms later he writes the word "womb" on a piece of paper but says "outside womb".
we all say "ooohhh" trying not to explode with laughter as i am slamming my head down on the table.
as soon as he leaves we all explode with laughter.


this just goes to prove to you that so many words are close together that mean TOTALLY different things. 
you could really offend someone without even trying.
makes me wanna keep my mouth shut. 
:)