...a language faux pas

My friend and former ELL teaching partner back home just reminded me of a story I've been meaning to tell.  Some background information:

• I teach at an all-girls school.
• The girls here are very sheltered.
• They are very chatty.
• Raising my voice only adds to the noise.

I was trying to come up with a signal to get the girls to settle down, so I printed off a sheet with several phrases:

• Please be quiet.
• Quiet, please!
• Hush!
• Keep it down!
• Chill!
• Zip it!

I slipped this into the back pocket on my notebook, and when I wanted their attention would quietly raise it and wait.  For some reason it had the opposite effect than what I was hoping for.  The girls got louder, and laughed and giggled even more.  I got stern with them and told them that when the notebook was in the air, they were to be quiet.  "Now ZIP IT!" I said.  It took a few times for this to happen before I wised up and asked someone what could possibly be so funny about the phrases.

Um, well, yeah..."zip it" sounds like the slang word for a certain male body part in Arabic. Imagine yourself in a foreign language class and having the teacher repeatedly say a certain slang word to you in English.  Needless to say, "zip it" is no longer on my list of phrases.